FOR THE past 50 years, serious research has been done on hypertension. It has taken some of us at least 25 years to persuade physicians, the government, and the public that hypertension is important. We have also known of several reasonably good treatments for approximately 25 years, a brief history of which I have written.1 And now for the last decade, there have been three cheers for a few investigators and government officials and two for the rest of us. I do not believe we have yet earned the last cheer.
And why not? Because a few of us were reared in the old-fashioned school of skeptical science, tempered with cautious enthusiasm, that currently is unpopular with government, the media, and those in public relations. True enough, our stodgy, doubting, often contentious pattern tended to keep us on the straight and narrow without inhibiting the fruition of the Golden Age