In his editorial,1 Castelli makes the rather striking claim that Seventh-Day Adventists experience only one seventh the risk of heart attack as other Americans, thereby suggesting that the reported data2 may have only limited application to the wider population. We can only assume that, in the context of the editorial, Castelli was playing on a repetition of the word seven, and did not intend any factual basis. Unfortunately, the misstatement was included in press releases and led to some confusion with journalists and the reading public.
Contrary to the above statement by Castelli, previous comparisons of coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality suggest that California male Adventists have 50% to 70% of the CHD mortality risk, and female Adventists have 50% to 90% of the CHD mortality risk (depending on length of follow-up) of non-Adventist Californians. The non-Adventist comparison group were participants in a contemporaneous study that used similar