The correct
answer is (b).
When a therapy reduces
the risk of an adverse outcome of the disease, such as short-term
mortality, those at high risk will benefit most in an absolute
sense. This reasoning has been applied to thrombolytic therapy
for patients with an acute MI (Califf
et al., 1997) (Boersma
et al., 1998) and cholesterol lowering therapy for patients
at varying risk for cardiac events (Simon
et al., 1997).