Diabetes Study Halted

The New York Times has a story today about a diabetes study that was partially halted when findings suggested that lowering the blood sugar level of diabetics actually increased their chances of dying from heart disease.

I thought this particular segment of the article was especially interesting:

“It’s confusing and disturbing that this happened,” said Dr. James Dove, president of the American College of Cardiology. “For 50 years, we’ve talked about getting blood sugar very low. Everything in the literature would suggest this is the right thing to do,” he added.

Dr. Irl Hirsch, a diabetes researcher at the University of Washington, said the study’s results would be hard to explain to some patients who have spent years and made an enormous effort, through diet and medication, getting and keeping their blood sugar down. They will not want to relax their vigilance, he said.

One of the major components of health literacy is scientific literacy, and this particular study truly highlights this particular dimension of health literacy. When researchers are admitting that scientific results are confusing and disturbing, what other response might we expect from the general public - and lower health literate populations in particular - to this study?

It would appear that this study was very well run, so this is just another example of how science progresses - through small steps, building on previous research, with sometimes contradictory findings. But that concept might be a little above the heads of individuals without the scientific literacy to completely understand how science progresses... Anyway, for me this article just highlighted the importance of scientific literacy in people's understanding of health news and information.