Cholesterol: the race to the bottom

In 1955, I began my third cardiology fellowship (I was a slow learner) in the Cardiovascular Physiology Laboratory directed by the noted physiologist Stanley J. Sarnoff, in the National Heart Institute (now the NHLBI). One of the other major laboratories in the institute at the time, located on the same floor of the building in which I worked, was focused on lipid biochemistry and the possible relations between dyslipidaemias and coronary artery disease. The senior scientist of the group was Christian B. Anfinsen, a noted biochemist, who was on his way to win a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. When I left the institute in 1968, I had been thoroughly indoctrinated into the lipid hypothesis of atherogenesis and I was convinced of its validity, even though it was not yet accepted by most clinicians, including cardiologists.1 Our group carried out only a single study in the field, in which we...