Like many older people, I was brought up to have considerable respect for members of the medical profession. Pronouncements from the family doctor were to be taken very seriously - almost a latter-day sort of 'gospel truth'. And what was true for ones family doctor was even more so of august bodies such as the Royal Colleges of Physicians and of Surgeons
So it was with some surprise that a year or so ago I saw advertised a book entitled "The Great Cholesterol Con". Like most ordinary people, I had never questioned the widely held belief, encouraged by both the pharmaceutical companies and the medical profession at large, that cholesterol was a very bad thing to have too much of, and that we should all try to keep the level of it in our bloodstream down as far as possible. If necessary - as prescribed by our doctors - by taking courses of the drugs known as statins, just as I had done.
It was even more of a surprise when I discovered that the author of the book in question was himself a doctor. And not some third-world maverick, but a well-respected home-grown M.D, - and a dour scot to boot !
But surely there would soon be a great chorus of rebuttals of the book's claims from spokesmen for the medical profession ? Surely the media would soon be full of inteviews with medical experts explaining how misconceived were the book's claims?
But it didn't happen - and still hasn't happened. It's as if a conspiracy of silence had been imposed. That was so unexpected that I just had to read the book and form my own judgement of its worth. When I did so, I found good descriptions of my own (statin-induced) symptoms. And not only that, but convincing explanations as to why the medical profession and the pharmaceutical companies are so fixated on cholesterol and its supposed importance. The reasons have very little to do with concern for the nation's health, and everything to do with maximizing the income of doctors and the profits of the pharmaceutical companies.
Jim Hawkins