It is becoming increasingly obvious to anyone who examines the scientific literature with an open mind that the justification for cholesterol-lowering simply does not exist. So I have been digging into the background to try to find out how it all originated. Although the work of Ancel Keys stimuated interest in cholesterol, it was a trial which commenced in 1958, which started the ball rolling with massive programmes. These have continued to the present day.
The Lipid Research Clinics Coronary Primary Prevention Trial (LRC-CPPT)
This LRC-CPT was a major NHLBI study, which cost about $150 million (1). Men with high TC values were recruited. One group was given a cholesterol-lowering drug, cholestyramine, and the other acted as control.
At the end of the trial it was found that 1.6% of those in the treatment group had suffered a fatal heart attack compared with 2.0% of those in the controls. For all-cause mortality (ACM), the results were almost identical: 3.6% in the cholestyramine group and 3.7% in the controls. So in absolute terms this was not exactly a profound difference. Nevertheless this did not prevent Dr. Basil Rifkind, the trials director, from proclaiming that:
“The cholestyramine group had a 19% reduction in risk …. of the primary endpoint of definite CHD, death or definite nonfatal myocardial infarction” (2).
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