When you are talking about some of the "help" these drugs are giving if you start the scale at zero it would look like they do nothing. That is why they quote relative risk reduction on television rather than absolute risk reduction. The big number sounds impressive when in reality they have to treat thousands of patients to get one with positive results. Yet if the drug improved the outcome from 5 in ten thousand in the control to four in ten thousand in the treatment group it is a 20% reduction. Who wouldn't take a pill to get a 20% reduction in the chance of having a heart attack??? Yet stated in absolute reduction it doesn't even round up to 1% improvement. Who would take the pill for ten years if they knew it only improved their odds of not having a heart attack (or whatever was being tested) by one person in ten thousand patients? Thousands of patients have to take the drug for years and only one extra persons sees any benefit.

Yet that is the advertising world we live in. Caveat emptor.

John