Following up on recent posts here and here, don’t miss this John E. Calfee/American.com op-ed on how recent research into heart disease treatments has not only changed medicine, but also basic science research:

How do we know where heart attacks come from? The answer lies in feedback from pharmaceutical clinical trials to basic research. Long before the stent trials began to upset received wisdom, massive trials of heart drugs had first validated previously controversial hypotheses and then upset the next generation of hypotheses. Eventually, these trials pushed basic research in unexpected directions. [. . .]
So there is a bit more to this weekís news about stents and heart attacks than meets the eye or is described in the media. We are witnessing another episode in the remarkable story of feedback from drug and device development to basic science. And we can expect more drug-tools to wreak more havoc in scientific understanding of human biology.

Read the entire piece, which is an excellent summary on how clinical research spurs development of better drugs, superior treatment and even better-focused research. Check out the new design of American.com, which has quickly developed into one of the most interesting and insightful on-line magazines.