On 24 February 2011, the Rafael del Pino Foundation, as part of its Master Lecture programme, received Dr. Valentín Fuster, who gave a lecture on "Health, youth and old age".
Valentín Fuster stated: "There is no recipe for eternal youth. We continually focus the health problem on treating the disease. Unfortunately, we treat cardiovascular disease too late and that treatment is becoming more and more expensive. That is why it is essential to go back to basics, i.e. to ask ourselves how we can promote health. This has important implications because, in my view, economics is going to be a determining factor in the approach to health from now on. We are going to move from treating illness to being obsessive about promoting health. There is no alternative from an economic analysis.
Regarding the implementation of the so-called "anti-smoking law", Valentín Fuster argued that "adults only change under social pressure or by legal imposition. We are facing an epidemic; cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of mortality and the most important factors in its development are smoking and hypertension. If you tell me that you want to be free and that, therefore, nobody should force you not to smoke in public places, I will reply that you have two problems: firstly, your smoking is not only harming you, it is also harming the people around you. Secondly, you are contributing to an economic debacle.
