The sad and alarming thing about the cholesterol and heart disease claims is that it has become so embedded in our medical approach perpetuated and locked in by a revenue seeking pharmaceutical industry not willing to give up the ultimate cash cow in statins. Society is still fully invested in this belief system. While I agree with everything that Noakes has written, blaming Keys is not helping to change the system. All medical students are educated about the negative effects of cholesterol to the point where the belief system is fully locked in with this concept. Grants to medical schools today primarily come from the pharmaceutical companies, and this informs their curricula. Alarming because those of us on a path to health through sound nutritional practices are always going to run into this at our doctors' offices from the nurse to the PA to the physician. While some have different views, they are still a very small minority. My regular physician retired last year, and it's been a whirlwind establishing a relationship with a new person. I'm still looking for the right person, as when I may have what I would call a visit for a simple medical situation, they're bent on looking at my full history regarding symptoms I no longer have or have been completely resolved. Add to that the increasing patronization of those of us in our 70s or older with the inference that we have no knowledge and need education in this area for us poor dears. To be blunt, it's unacceptable. This is system medicine as a service that has failed and may not be recoverable.

As an alternative to the heart disease/ cholesterol hypothesis (I regret even giving it the hypothesis label), one alternative is to read Malcolm Kendrick's book, "The Clot Thickens." This presents a far more plausible hypothesis in my view.