Cholesterol Myth Making
Regarding your Sept. 7 piece about the Atlantic’s article on “The Cholesterol Myth” (by Garry Abrams), Thomas Moore is not alone in challenging popular thinking. On March 28, a maverick scientist from New Zealand also made waves in the tranquil waters of Los Angeles cardiology circles. He lectured to a group of eminent heart specialists at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on “Atherosclerosis and the Cholesterol Myth.” Atherosclerosis is the more correct term for what is commonly known as arteriosclerosis or “hardening of the arteries.”
The speaker, William E. Stehbens, is a professor of pathology at the University of Otago in Wellington, New Zealand. He is no novice in the cardiac research field and is dedicated to finding the true cause of atherosclerosis.
He contends with much supporting evidence that there is no scientific basis for assuming that a diet that will lower low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL) and that raises high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL) can favorably alter the process of atherosclerosis.
One of the sharpest arrows in his quiver is directed at the evidence used to evaluate the effects of heart disease therapy. It has long been known that statistics obtained from death certificate records are so notoriously inaccurate as to be meaningless. A humorous but macabre example is the exceptionally high incidence of brain hemorrhage recorded as the cause of death in Japan. Because of a cultural quirk, death from brain hemorrhage connotes a person of considerable intellect, while to die of heart disease implies a mundane existence. The resultant lopsided statistical picture is meaningless scientifically.
Stehbens takes on with a vengeance those scientists who indicate that the lipid hypothesis has already been proven. He is especially incensed at the unchallenging way in which this has been accepted not only by newspapers, television and radio, but by scientific journals as well.
Other imaginative scientists are currently investigating ways of directly affecting the atherosclerosis changes responsible for heart disease other than by changing the blood cholesterol level. These do hold out hope for concrete methods of preventing coronary artery disease.
DR. ALEX G. SHULMAN
Fellow,
American College of Surgeons
Los Angeles
