Re: High cholesterol may protect---book excerpt from Uffe Ravnskov

From: Herman Rubin (hrubin_at_mean.stat.purdue.edu)
Date: 07/16/04 

Date: 16 Jul 2004 09:47:55 -0500

In article <I0wyFx.84M@campus-news-reading.utoronto.ca>,
Gregory Poon <mk.poon@utoronto.ca> wrote:
>> Ok you convinced me that a high cholesterol is good for you. Now let's get
>a
>> drug company to make a pill so that everybodies cholesterol can be high
>and
>> let's sell it. What a minute though because if a drug company is involved
>in
>> making money than you must be against it.

>Pills deliciously packaged as burgers, fries, and fried chicken deligently
>sold by evil manufacturers including DOW component Mickey Dees.

>> Please explain why I would be wrong since you brought up the topic of high
>> cholesterol being good or protective?

>I dunno, but saying cholesterol is good for you is on par as saying uric
>acid is great for you because it's an antioxidant (which it is) but if you
>end up getting up getting gout, or, worse still, die of kidney failure,
>that's just TOO BAD.

I believe it was Isaac Asimov, in one of his science
articles, who conjectured that uric acid may have been
instrumental in humans achieving and maintaining their
mental abilities. It seems to have a biological function
in some species, and it may be the "natural" caffeine.

We have lots of anti-immune diseases, but does that mean
we should weaken the immune system? Cholesterol is used
in the immune response; if what high cholesterol causes
is in the nature of an auto-immune response, we should be
wary of lowering it too much. Type 1 (juvenile) diabetes
is an auto-immune response, and there is a genetic tendency
to have it among those with strong immune genes. It has
been found that low cholesterol increases susceptibility
to infectious diseases. 

-- 
This address is for information only.  I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@stat.purdue.edu         Phone: (765)494-6054   FAX: (765)494-0558
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