From: "Robert Cohen" <notmilk@...>
Date: Thu May 19, 2005  12:21 pm
Subject: Coronary Cholesterol Confusion (Part 1)  notmilk2002
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Coronary Cholesterol Confusion (Part 1)

I went to Medline's website:

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi >

And typed in the keyword, "cholesterol"

The good news is that up came links to 145,211 different
cholesterol studies which have been published in peer-reviewed
scientific journals.

The bad news is that I would have to pay, on average,
$20 to obtain each study. To make matters worse, my
wife (she writes all the checks) refused to cooperate.
Seeing the crazed look in my eyes, she hid the checkbook.

The even-worse news is that averaging 10 minutes per study
review, I would have to invest 1.5 million minutes of my
time (over 1000 days without setting aside time for sleep)
to become America's cholesterol expert. Of course, during
that time frame, there most likely would be tens of thousands
of additional new studies to review.

Facing the task of painting the Golden Gate Bridge as
my life's work (when one finishes, one begins anew),
I decided not to read, review, analyze, and critique all
that has been and is to be written about cholesterol.

Instead, I began to wonder about the system which fuels
such studies. The system that provides funding for
scientific research. At $50,000 per study (just my
own arbitrary number...after all, scientists and lab
rats have to eat), we obtain a collective cost to society
of over $7,250,000,000. Is that economical? Of course it is.
Those same funds could be used to finance the construction
of two Air Force AWACS planes. Or one space shuttle flight.
Or, three week's effort of searching for Bin Laden.

So...rats and scientists scurry and consume and publish
and reveal to the world one hundred and fifty thousand
different tidbits of cholesterol information, and what
does the public do? Eat more bacon and eggs, that's what.
Consume more cholesterol-rich foods such as cheese, pizza,
and ice cream.

Which brings me to the question which will be answered
in tomorrow's column:

What the heck does cholesterol have to do with heart disease?

Robert Cohen
http://www.notmilk.com

(to be continued)