After all, we now had the following evidence: • Countries with a high saturated-fat consumption have higher cholesterol levels and high deaths rates from heart disease. (See: Ancel Keys) • People with high levels of cholesterol in the blood have high rates of heart disease. (See: Framingham Study and familial hypercholesterolaemia) • Rationing in W

But it wasn’t until the arrival of the statins that the cholesterol hypothesis fully conquered the world. Once it was proved that statins both lowered LDL and prevented heart disease, any remaining doubters were silenced.

2:At this point panic ensued. Stung into action, the medical profession needed some answers – fast. Mainly the answers to two rather important questions. • What causes heart disease? • How do we prevent it, or cure it? Suddenly the earlier work of Virchow and Anitschkov became relevant. A Russian researcher called Kritchevsky carried out experiment

1: It was not until some time in the early 1950s that coronary heart disease (CHD) was seen as a massive health problem. Recognition first occurred in the USA, almost certainly because the USA did have by far the highest rate of heart disease at that time…

For example: tectonic plate movement. First proposed in 1912 by Alfred Wegener, immediately followed by harsh ridicule. Dr Rollin T Chamberlin of the University of Chicago commented, ‘Wegener’s hypothesis in general is of the footloose type, in that it takes considerable liberty with our globe, and is less bound by restrictions or tied down by awkw

That said, spotting the point at which an idea achieves dominance is tricky. Often ideas seem to have been around forever, and it is surprising to find how recent they are.

So, it is fully possible that heart disease, or coronary heart disease (CHD), was wiping out millions in the 1930s, but that no one really noticed. I have to admit that this sounds unlikely, but the ability of doctors to ignore diseases that they haven’t been trained to recognise is a recurrent pattern in medicine. ‘It’s not in a textbook, so it do

However, even after Anitschkov, no one was really that interested in heart disease. Was this because it was very rare, or not recognised? Hard to say. The first medical description of a heart attack was not published until 1926 by Dr James B Herrick, in the USA. Even then, I get the impression that this was seen as a medical rarity, not something t

And how silly of me even to question such research. Let me see. Rabbits are carnivores… check. Rabbits normally eat a high-cholesterol diet… check. And the thickenings that they get in their arteries are exactly the same as those found in humans… check. Ergo, feeding rabbits is an excellent model for heart-disease causation in humans… check.