Doubt & Uncertainty:

Doubt & uncertainty has nothing to do with reality nor is it part and parcel of existence but doubt and uncertainty is a false, woeful emotional condition of the mind that is present in the thinking, speech and movements of all ordinary people to an extent that they seriously underestimate. Doubt and uncertainty are false totally unnecessary forceful or emotional or disturbed states of the mind that have been implanted and nurtured foolishly by the person and by wicked others and are so entrenched that people accept them as natural and even beneficial or necessary (they have become deluded).

First you learn to question or doubt or forcefully disbelieve what others say or what is happening but very soon you become an addict unable to resist questioning or doubting whatever is present to you. Questioning or not accepting what is presented to you leads to uncertainty, a conflicted emotional state of mind that again heads you to question such that through innumerable lifelong cycles of reinforcement doubt and uncertainty becomes easily aroused to intense levels even to matters that shouldn’t arouse any doubt or uncertainty and the person is headed for final loss of control and uncontrollable doubt or inability to accept anything or what should be plain as true and uncertainty.

There are no different types of doubt and uncertainty. The doubt and uncertainty that people experience and raise in themselves and others in daily life without any alarm is the same doubt and uncertainty that the Buddha says is one of three lower fetters to future states of woe.

If doubt and uncertainty are true conditions of existence it would not be possible to escape it but because doubt and uncertainty are nothing more than false, conditioned, unnecessary emotional states of the mind, it can be totally and permanently eradicated.

Only a person who does not goes against himself, who does not apply force directly or through emotions or through constant forceful stretching, changes in speed and loudness in his speech and motion on his mind, who does not wickedly doubt others (are you sure, is that so, really??) can be truly effortlessly free of doubt and uncertainty. If you don’t, each time you experience doubt and uncertainty you are further conditioning yourself to them that will end in madness and thence perdition according to the Buddha.
If your charming smile and ‘effervescent’ laughter is faked, forced to impress others of your friendliness or enjoyment, then you must experience doubt and uncertainty.
If your style that is nothing more than your distinct way of stretching, changing speed and loudness in speech and motion is unnecessary & stresses you, you must experience doubt and uncertainty.
If you keep on questioning others, eg are you sure you want to buy that, I cannot believe this has happen (whatever can happen can be believed), this is incredible, insisting that others eat when they have declined, you must suffer doubt and uncertainty.

To the fool it is a question of semantics or the same but to the wise it is a difference between heaven and hell in saying “it did not happen” and “I doubt it happened”. With the former you are merely saying with certainty something did not happen but in the latter, you are sowing doubt as to whether something actually happened. The former leads to heaven and the latter is suffering and leads to perdition.
Again there is a difference between ‘deal in doubt’ and ‘deal not finalized yet’ or ‘setback to back’.

Tying It All Together:
If I remember correctly the judge pounced on Razak’s lawyer for bringing the good office of the deputy PM into the case when he read from the affidavit that Razak met DSP Musa in the deputy PM’s office the next day.
Does Razak meeting the deputy PM on official business (as stated in the affidavit) necessarily implicate the deputy PM? If it does not necessarily implicate the deputy PM, is the judge exhibiting inappropriate or overzealous behavior or false logic and perception to chide Razak’s lawyer for bringing the good name of the deputy PM into the case? Why should it appear as if it is taboo in the judge’s mind to mention the deputy PM’s name in this case if he has no preconceived notions?
In overzealously chiding Razak’s lawyer for bringing the Deputy PM’s good name into the case, the judge may have inadvertently given the discerning a window into his mind, his inclinations.
AN AFFIDAVIT IS A STATEMENT OF YOUR ROLE IN A CASE AND IF IT CAN BE SHOWN USING LOGIC TO BE IMPLAUSIBLE YOUR ROLE MUST BE GREATER NOT LESSER THAN YOU ADMITTED BECAUSE NO ONE WILL ADMIT GUILT GREATER THAN REALITY.
THUS BECAUSE IT IS IMPLAUSIBLE THAT TWO POLICEMEN WILL END UP MURDERING ALTANTUYA WHEN THEY HAVE MERELY BEEN TOLD TO GET POLICE TO PATROL AROUND HIS HOUSE AND NOT HARM HER, RAZAK’S ROLE MUST IN SOME WAY BE GREATER THAN THAT OF HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH HER AND GETTING HELP FROM POLICE FRIENDS TO PATROL AROUND HIS HOUSE FOR WHICH HE ALREADY HAS SECURITY GUARDS.
IF THE POLICEMEN WITH WHOM ALTANTUYA WAS LAST SEEN ALIVE WITH DENIED KILLING HER OR HAVE NOT IMPLICATED ANYONE, POLICE HAS NO RIGHT TO SAY CATEGORICALLY THAT THERE ARE ONLY THREE PERSONS INVOLVED IN THIS CASE.
IF YOUR INTENTION IS TO SPEAK THE TRUTH, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SAY THAT ONLY THE THREE THAT HAVE BEEN CHARGED ARE INVOLVED IN THE CASE IF NONE AMONGST THE THREE HAS BEEN CHARGED WTIH ORDERING THE MURDER BECAUSE MURDERS DO NOT OCCUR SPONTANEOUSLY BUT MURDERS ALWAYS REQUIRE AN ORIGINATOR.
IF YOUR INTENTION IS NOT TO SPEAK THE TRUTH BUT FOR VESTED INTERESTS EG TO OPPOSE FURTHER INVESTIGATION THEN IT IS UNDERSTANDABLE THAT YOU SAY THERE ARE NO OTHERS THAT ARE INVOLVED WHEN YOU HAVE NOT CHARGED ANYONE WITH ORDERING THE MURDER.
IF IN TRUTH THE POLICEMEN CARRIED OUT THE EXECUTION, IT IS LIKELY THEY WOULD HAVE ADMITTED IN PRIVATE TO THEIR FELLOW POLICEMEN WHO ORDERED THEM TO DO SO AND KNOWING THUS, POLICE COULD NOT CHARGE RAZAK WITH ORDERING THE MURDER, NOR WILL RAZAK TOLERATE IT IF HE DID NOT DO IT BECAUSE IT IS PUNISHABLE BY THE DEATH SENTENCE.
RAZAK IS NOT A SACRIFICIAL LAMB BUT A SACRIFICIAL GOAT BECAUSE HE IS NOT AN INNOCENT LAMB BUT GUILTY GOAT EVEN IF HE DID NOT ORDER THE MURDER.
What The Judge Was Expressing Was Dislike Not Reason Based On Dislike Not Reason:
When the judge ticked off Razak’s lawyer for dragging the good name of the deputy PM into the case by saying that Razak met DSP Musa on official business at the deputy PM’s office the next day, he was merely expressing his dislike or emotional anger at the information tendered, never expressing a reasoned statement of truth. Just as his statement is an expression of dislike not reason or justification, the motivation behind his statement is blind reactive emotion or dislike never calm taking into account reason and therefore that statement is an statement of dislike based on dislike which is not what you would expect of a judge who should set aside all his dislikes and dislikes to assess all information tendered impartially to come to a conclusion based on reason not emotion what is true and what is false.
There may be those who are beset by doubt and uncertainty who think that perhaps the judge has some reason apart from emotion that they cannot think of themselves justifying his ticking off the defense lawyer. The truth is that for one who sees clearly, who knows what is possible and not possible that there cannot be any reason behind what the judge said but it is an expression of emotional dislike based on emotion for reasons best known to himself and not reason.
How does the judge know for sure the meeting did not take place as stated in the affidavit? How does he know the meeting has no relevance to the case? Even before the case has commenced, unless he is privy to police investigations, how can he be certain the deputy PM is not involved? Therefore he has no reason to say what he said except to prejudge it and it is based on dislike because he does not want to hear anything that might besmirch the good name of the deputy PM’s office.
The destination of this doubt and uncertainty that there may be a valid reason for the judge’s statement is according to the Buddha, states of future woe and if you think there is a valid reason for the judge’s statement when there is none, it is wrong view the destination for wrong view according to the Buddha is hell or the animal womb. Therefore those who are in doubt and are uncertain as to the nature and basis of the judge’s statement, who think that what the judge said has a valid basis are headed for perdition.
Quote Star: He (the judge) also chided Abdul Razak for dragging the name of the deputy prime minister into the picture.
ANYONE WHO ASPIRES TO BE A JUDGE SHOULD PREFERABLY HAVE NO LIKES OR DISLIKES OR IF HE HAS, SHOULD SET THEM ASIDE SO THAT HE CAN ADJUDICATE FAIRLY ON A CASE AT HAND. WHY IS HE SO CONCERNED OR OVER ZEALOUS ABOUT THE GOOD NAME OF THE DEPUTY PM? CAN HE BE CERTAIN HE IS NOT INVOLVED?
IF YOU DISLIKE MENTION OF THE DEPUTY PM’S NAME IN THE CASE THAT IS BASIS ENOUGH FOR YOU CHIDING RAZAK. ON WHAT BASIS OR REASON CAN THE JUDGE CHIDE RAZAK?
Why The Judge Has No Reason & Thus Right To Chide Razak’s Lawyer:
It is the right of defense lawyers in any case to tender whatever information and names whether it may be true or false they deem are relevant to the case and it is the duty of the judge to adjudicate, not tick them off or tell them what names they can mention or not mention.
Thus a judge is exceeding his bounds of duty perhaps because of his dislike or aversion to all mention of the name of the deputy prime minister (for reasons best known to him) or he may be trying to impress the deputy prime minister if he is following the trial with his concern for his welfare.
Even if the judge know for certain who ordered the murder and he knows the deputy PM has absolutely nothing to do with the case, he has no reason or right to tick off the defense lawyer. The only reason he does that is because he cannot resist his dislike or aversion at the mention of the name in this case and he is unaware that it his duty to be impartial as a judge.
He is ticking off Razak for dragging in the good name of the deputy PM when the case has not begun yet and there is ample evidence of some connection eg Razak and the deputy PM are close together, the policemen charged are his bodyguards and the C4 explosives can only be issued by the defense ministry.
Rather than an insignificant blip or mole hill, the judge’s action like a Freudian slip, unwittingly betray his penchants (emotional predilections) in the case.
Therefore anyone beset by doubt and uncertainty who thinks that perhaps the judge has some reason that they cannot work out for chiding the lawyer for mentioning the deputy PM’s name is entertaining the impossible or falsity, has wrong view that the Buddha said has two destinations, hell or the animal womb and his doubt and uncertainty is one of three lower fetters that the Buddha said led to future states of woe.
Why It Is A Mountain Not Molehill:
People in this world, even those who call themselves good will not reveal what is in their minds, will not tell you the unflattering thoughts they have about you even as they flatter & beguile you with their smiles and nodding approvals.
Therefore it is through inadvertent, unwitting slips that they expose their true thoughts and intentions and the act of the judge in chiding the defense lawyer far from being an accident or a blip, enables the discerning to glean what is his true intentions.
God or the Buddha does not need this because encompassing mind with mind, he can know what is in your mind and therefore you cannot escape punishment if you are guilty, even if you think you are not guilty but meritorious. This is delusion (thinking you are benefiting others when you are harming yourself and others) and the end point for delusion is insanity and if you think it is fun being insane wait for your turn.
A World Of A Difference:
There is a world of a difference between the judge telling the defence lawyer that the deputy prime minister has nothing to do with this case and his ticking him off for dragging the good name of the deputy PM into this case. In the former he is only making a reasoned judgment or assessment that the deputy PM is not involved but in the latter he is making an emotional sweeping statement that the deputy PM’s good name must not be dragging into the case, it is taboo to mention the deputy PM’s name. If he has been appointed guard for the deputy PM’s good name, then it is understandable he said so.

The judge is presiding in a case on an official basis and therefore he should set aside all personal prejudices, likes and dislikes.

In my mind the duty of a judge presiding over a court is to know the laws well as they apply to the case and to apply these laws to the data that is presented to him by the prosecution or defense in order to come to a fair judgment in accordance to the law. He should not join in the fray.
Jesus said you will be judged for every careless word you say and ordinary people severely underestimate the carelessness of their words.
Judge Has No Right To Say So:
Unless the purpose of the judge is to (indiscriminately) cordon off the deputy PM’s name from all negative mention he has no right to tick off the defense lawyer for dragging in the good name of the deputy PM unless he has seen events as they unfolded from start to finish that the deputy PM was not involved or he has reliable information that this is the case. Is the judge God or can he know with certainty that the deputy PM is entirely uninvolved in this case? If he isn’t God, has not seen with his own eyes or knows with certainty, then the judge has no right to tick off the defense lawyer and risk misleading the gullible.

Whereas the defense can employ the best lawyers to ask all the pertinent questions, the prosecution in this case is (if I am not mistaken) entirely dependent on evidence or investigations supplied by the police and a prosecutor who is government employed who may not ask all the pertinent questions that may be awkward to the accused and thus the prosecution in this case may be hamstrung and far from assured to be top-class. For instance if the prosecutor was Karpal Singh, you can expect more fireworks and questions that may be harder to answer.
A Foreboding Precedent:
Quote: In the Norita Shamsudin murder case, Norita’s friends testified in court that they first found her lying dead in her room but after two mysterious policemen handled the crime scene and left, she was found with her hands tied behind her back. Then her hand phone records were not even included as part of the trial evidence. The night she died she was believed to have made phone calls to VIPs on her hand phone. The Public Prosecutor never queried or questioned any of these issues. Just like Altantuya’s immigration records, Norita’s phone records may have been erased too.
Comment: A conclusion that can be drawn from what is said above is that the prosecution in Altantuya's case is heavily dependent on the quality of police work and also the public prosecutor prosecuting the case.
Why Najib Is In Denial:

If you observe Najib on TV you may perceive that he is carrying on as usual as if nothing has happened and conclude wrongly (wrong view that leads to woe) that he is therefore innocent but the opposite is the case that he is in denial and putting on a show as if nothing has happened when something serious that threatens to ruin the public image of respectability that he cultivates and desires and can potentially lead to prosecution.
Again rather than being admirable, being able to put on such a convincing show as if nothing has happened demands great grim or determined self control which is nothing more than using considerable mental force to deny or banish or refuse to accept awareness (not just thoughts) of what has occurred and mentally act as if nothing has happened that he and those who admire such stoicism do not realize will end in loss of control and insanity. If you deny with great mental will power what happened did not happen, in time you involuntarily perceive it as so and that is torment and insanity because the reality is something did happen, not did not happen.
Anyone who denies what happen did not happen, who acts happy when he is sad or angry is flirting with future certain insanity when what they act so convincingly is finally fulfilled; you truly believe what did happen did not happen and rather than bliss it is torment, separation from reality or truth.

Surely he is aware of rumors circulating of his involvement in the Altantuya case and any man who is innocent will have made a statement to declare his innocence and that those rumors are false. If he is emotional as all ordinary people are, he will publicly express his indignation at such scurrilous innuendos and demand them to stop.
Why has he not done so but instead carried on as if nothing has happened, preferring to ignore the serious allegations in rumors?

Surely he is aware of the serious allegations circulating privately. Would a man who is truly innocent not be indignant about such rumors and confront such rumors directly?
WHILST SOME GUILTY MEN WILL PUBLICLY DENY GUILT, AN INNOCENT MAN FACED WITH SERIOUS ALLEGATIONS WILL PUBLICLY DENY THEM AND THE FACT THAT A PERSON DOES NOT REFUTE THEM BUT CARRIES ON AS IF NOTHING HAS HAPPENED IS NOT INDICATIVE OF INNOCENCE BUT INDICATIVE OF DENIAL OR PRETENDING NOTHING HAS HAPPENED.
EVEN IF RAZAK SOUGHT DSP MUSA’S PRIVATE HELP IN HIS ALLEGED HARRASSMENT BY ALTANTUYA INSTEAD OF GOING TO THE POLICE DIRECTLY, SURELY WITH THE DSP’S CONNECTIONS IN THE POLICE FORCE, HE COULD INSTRUCT MORE APPROPRIATE ORDINARY POLICEMEN TO ATTEND TO RAZAK’S PROBLEM? WHY WERE HIGHLY TRAINED POTENTIALLY LETHAL (TRAINED TO KILL) BODYGUARDS INVOLVED IN A SIMPLE CASE OF HARRASSMENT WHERE RAZAK SAID HIS INTENTION WAS TO GET POLICE TO PATROL AND NOT HARM HER? DO YOU NEED A SLEDGE HAMMER TO CRACK A WALNUT?
ON THE OTHER HAND IF THE TASK WAS TO SECRETLY KILL SOMEONE AND DISPOSE OF ALL EVIDENCE, THEN YOU NEED HIGHLY TRAINED AND EXPERIENCED POLICEMEN WHO HAVE DONE IT BEFORE SO AS NOT TO BOTCH IT.
Jesus said which of you can by being worried, prolong your life by one cubit? Yet many, abetted by doctors (with karma) have become obsessed with reducing cholesterol as the panacea to their well being when if they eliminated their stress, they will have eliminated a cause that medicine says leads to high cholesterol.
Therefore if you are obsessed with addressing your high cholesterol or other maladies you may be barking up the wrong tree and have wrong view that as the Buddha said leads to hell or the animal womb not heaven.
Have we been conned about cholesterol?
by MALCOLM KENDRICK - More by this author » Last updated at 19:59pm on 24th January 2007
Conventional medical wisdom about cholesterol and the role of statins is now being challenged by a small, but growing number of health professionals. Among them is Dr Malcolm Kendrick. A GP for 25 years, he has also worked with the European Society of Cardiology, and writes for leading medical magazines:
When it comes to heart disease, we have been sold a pup. A rather large pup.
Actually, it's more of a full-grown blue whale. We've all been conned.
If you've got a raised risk of heart disease, the standard medical advice is to take a cholesterol-lowering statin drug to cut your chances of having a heart attack because, as we all know, cholesterol is a killer.
Indeed, many of you already believe that you should take statins for the rest of your natural lifespan.
Nearly everybody is in agreement about the need to lower your cholesterol level. The NHS spends nearly £1 billion a year on prescriptions for statins and possibly the same amount administering the cholesterol tests, surgery visits and the rest.
But is it all worth it? According to an article being published in the medical journal The Lancet this week, the answer is probably no.
A leading researcher at Harvard Medical School has found that women don't benefit from taking statins at all, nor do men over 69 who haven't already had a heart attack.
There is a very faint benefit if you are a younger man who also hasn't had a heart attack - out of 50 men who take the drug for five years, one will benefit.
Nor is this the first study to suggest that fighting cholesterol with statins is bunk. Indeed, there are hundreds of doctors and researchers who agree that the cholesterol hypothesis itself is nonsense.
What their work shows, and what your doctor should be saying, is the following:
• A high diet, saturated or otherwise, does not affect blood cholesterol levels.
• High cholesterol levels don't cause heart disease.
• Statins do not protect against heart disease by lowering cholesterol - when they do work, they do so in another way.
• The protection provided by statins is so small as to be not worth bothering about for most people (and all women). The reality is that the benefits have been hyped beyond belief.
• Statins have many more unpleasant side effects than has been admitted, while experts in this area should be treated with healthy scepticism because they are almost universally paid large sums by statin manufacturers to sing loudly from their hymn sheet.
So how can I say saturated fat doesn't matter when everyone knows it is a killer? Could all those millions who have been putting skinless chicken and one per cent fat yoghurts into their trolleys really have been wasting their time?
The experts are so busy urging you to consume less fat and more statins that you are never warned about the contradictions and lack of evidence behind the cholesterol con.
In fact, what many major studies show is that as far as protecting your heart goes, cutting back on saturated fats makes no difference and, in fact, is more likely to do harm.
So how did fat and cholesterol get such a bad name? It all began about 100 years ago, when a researcher found feeding rabbits (vegetarians) a high cholesterol carnivore diet blocked their arteries with plaque.
But it took off in the Fifties with the Seven Countries study by Ancel Keys, which showed that the higher the saturated fat intake in a country, the higher the cholesterol levels and the higher the rate of heart disease.
The countries he chose included Italy, Greece, the USA and the Netherlands. But why these particular ones?
Recently I did my own 14 countries study using figures from the World Health Organisation, and found the opposite.
Countries with the highest saturated fat consumption ? Austria, France, Finland and Belgium ? had the lowest rate of deaths from heart disease, while those with the lowest consumption ? Georgia, Ukraine and Croatia ? had the highest mortality rate from heart disease.
Added to this, the biggest ever trial on dietary modification put 50 million people on a low saturated fat diet for 14 years.
Sausages, eggs, cheese, bacon and milk were restricted. Fruit and fish, however, were freely available. I?m talking about rationing in Britain during and after World War Two. In that time, deaths from heart disease more than doubled.
Even more damning is what happened in 1988. The Surgeon General's office in the US decided to gather all evidence linking saturated fat to heart disease, silencing any nay-sayers for ever.
Eleven years later, however, the project was killed. The letter announcing this stated that the office "did not anticipate fully the magnitude of the additional expertise and staff resources that would be needed".
After eleven years, they needed additional expertise and staff resources? What had they been doing? If they'd found a scrap of evidence, you would never have heard the last of it.
Major trials since have been no more successful. One involved nearly 30,000 middle-aged men and women in Sweden, followed for six years.
The conclusion? "Saturated fat showed no relationship with cardiovascular disease in men. Among the women, cardiovascular mortality showed a downward trend with increasing saturated fat intake." (In other words, the more saturated fat, the less chance of dying from heart disease).
Even stronger evidence of the benefits of increased fat and cholesterol in the diet comes from Japan. Between 1958 and 1999, the Japanese doubled their protein intake, ate 400 per cent more fat and their cholesterol levels went up by 20 per cent.
Did they drop like flies? No. Their stroke rate, which had been the highest in the world, was seven times lower, while deaths from heart attacks, already low, fell by 50 per cent.
It's a bit of a paradox, isn?t it? That's one of the features of the dietary hypothesis - it involves a lot of paradoxes.
The most famous is the French Paradox. They eat more saturated fat than we do in Britain; they smoke more, take less exercise, have the same cholesterol/LDL levels, they also have the same average blood pressure and the same rate of obesity.
And you know what? They have one quarter the rate of heart disease we do.
The official explanation is that the French are protected from heart disease by drinking red wine, eating lightly cooked vegetables and eating garlic.
But there is no evidence that any of these three factors are actually protective. None. By evidence, I mean a randomised, controlled clinical study.
Every time a population is found that doesn't fit the saturated fat/cholestrol hypothesis - the Masai living on blood and milk with no heart disease, the Inuit living on blubber with low heart disease - something is always found to explain it.
One research paper published more than 20 years ago found 246 factors that could protect against heart disease or promote it. By now there must be more than a thousand.
The closer you look the more you find that the cholestrol hypothesis is an amazing beast. It is in a process of constant adaptation in order to encompass all contradictory data without keeling over and expiring.
But you don't need to look at foreign countries to find paradoxes - the biggest one is right here at home. Women are about 300 per cent less likely to suffer heart disease than men, even though on average they have higher cholesterol levels.
For years there was an ad hoc hypothesis to explain this apparent contradiction - women were protected by female sex hormones.
In fact, there has never been a study showing that these hormones protect against heart disease in humans.
But by the Nineties, millions of women were being prescribed HRT to stave off heart disease.
Then came the HERS trial to test the notion. It found HRT increased the risk of heart disease.
So what to do? Put them on statins; bring their cholesterol level down ? below 5.0 mmol is the official advice.
But, as The Lancet article emphasises, women do not benefit from statins. The phrase "Statins do not save lives in women" should be hung in every doctor's surgery.
But it's not just hugely wasteful handing out statins to women and men who are never going to benefit; it also exposes them to the risk of totally unnecessary side effects.
These include muscle weakness (myopathy) and mental and neurological problems such as severe irritability and memory loss.
How common are they? Very rare, say experts, but one trial found that 90 per cent of those on statins complained of side effects, half of them serious.
Only last week, a study reported a link between low LDL cholesterol and developing Parkinson's disease.
Statins are designed to lower LDL. In the face of anticholesterol propaganda, it is easy to forget cholesterol is vital for our bodies to function.
Why do you think an egg yolk is full of cholesterol? Because it takes a lot of cholesterol to build a healthy chicken.
It also takes a hell of a lot to build and maintain a healthy human being.
In fact, cholesterol is so vital that almost all cells can manufacture cholesterol; one of the key functions of the liver is to synthesise cholesterol.
It's vital for the proper functioning of the brain and it's the building bock for most sex hormones.
So it should not be such a surprise to learn that lowering cholesterol can increase death rates.
Woman with a cholesterol level of five or even six have a lower risk of dying than those with a level below four.
The Lancet reported that statins didn't benefit anyone over 69, not even men; in fact, there's good evidence that they may hasten your death.
The Framingham study in the US found that people whose cholesterol levels fell were at a 14 per cent increased risk of death from heart disease for every 1mg/dl.
Set up in 1948, the study screened the whole population of Framingham near Boston for factors that might be involved in heart disease and then followed them to see what happened to them.
It is still going today, making it the longest running and most often quoted study in heart-disease research.
A massive long-term study that looked specifically at cholesterol levels and mortality in older people in Honolulu, published in The Lancet, found that having low cholesterol concentration for a long time increases the risk of death.
This may be because cholesterol is needed to fight off infections or there may be other reasons ? but many other studies have found exactly the same thing.
Low cholesterol levels greatly increase your risk of dying younger. So the cholesterol hypothesis looks something like this:
There is no evidence that saturated fat is bad - and there are lots of 'paradoxes' where countries with a high cholesterol intake don't have a higher death rate from heart disease.
But there is an even more fundamental problem. The theory claims fat and cholesterol do things in the body that just don't make sense.
To begin with, saturated fat and cholesterol are talked of as if they are strongly connected. A low-fat diet lowers cholesterol; a high-fat diet raises it.
What is never explained is how this works. This isn't surprising because saturated fat doesn't raise cholesterol. There is no biochemical connection between the two substances, which may explain all those negative findings.
It's true that foods containing cholesterol also tend to contain saturated fats because both usually come from animals.
It's also true that neither dissolve in water, so in order to travel along the bloodstream they have to be transported in a type of molecule known as a lipoprotein - such as LDLs (low-density lipoproteins) and HDLs (high-density lipoproteins).
But being travelling companions is as close as fats and cholesterol get. Once in the body, most fat from our diet is transported to the fat cells in a lipoprotein called a chylomicron.
Meanwhile, cholesterol is produced in the liver by way of an incredibly complicated 13-step process; the one that statins interfere with.
No biochemist has been able to explain to me why eating saturated fat should have any impact on this cholesterol production line in the liver.
On the other hand, the liver does make fat - lots of it. All the excess carbohydrate that we eat is turned first into glucose and then into fat in the liver.
And what sort of fat does the liver make? Saturated fat; obviously the body doesn't regard it as harmful at all.
Recently, attention has been shifting from the dangers of saturated fat and LDL "bad" cholesterol to the benefits of HDL "good" cholesterol, and new drugs that are going to boost it.
But the idea that more HDLs are going to fight off heart disease is built on equally shaky foundations.
These lipoproteins seem to be cholesterol "scavengers", sucking up the cholesterol that is released when a cell dies and then passing it on to other lipoproteins, which return it to the liver.
Interestingly, the "bad" LDL lipoproteins are involved in the relay. The idea seems to be that HDLs can also get the cholesterol out of the plaques that are blocking arteries.
However, there is a huge difference between absorbing free-floating cholesterol and sucking it out of an atherosclerotic plaque which is covered by an impermeable cap.
• Extracted from The Great Cholesterol Con by Malcolm Kendrick, published by John Blake on January 29 at £9.99.
Statins: the truth
JEROME BURNE - More by this author » Last updated at 22:00pm on 29th January 2007
Those who are taking statins to lower their cholesterol may well be confused about whether it is worth it and how safe they are.
Last week an article in the medical journal The Lancet claimed the drugs don't benefit women or elderly men if they don't have a cardiovascular problem, while for younger men, taking statins only slightly reduces the risk of heart attack if they'd never had an attack.
Also see...• Have we been conned about cholesterol?• Statins won't prevent women getting heart disease, claim doctors• Are statins really the wonder-drug that everyone says they are?
And then Dr Malcolm Kendrick claimed in these pages that statins were useless because, he argued, heart disease isn't caused by raised cholesterol. He also warned they could have side-effects.
The medical establishment, however, insists that statins are important in combatting heart disease.
It argues that more of us should take statins -and that the benefits outweigh the marginal risk of adverse effects. To help you make sense of all this, JEROME BURNE addresses the vital questions...
Should I be taking a statin?
All the experts agree that if you've had a cardiovascular problem, such as a heart attack, taking statins is worthwhile because it does reduce your chances of having another one.
Statins are designed to reduce levels of lowdensity lipoproteins(LDLs) or 'bad' cholesterol - which fur up the arteries and lead to heart disease (although Dr Kendrick believes statins are effective for different reasons, most likely by reducing inflammation).
About four million Britons are taking statins. GPs are recommended to prescribe the drugs to anyone with a 20per cent risk of having a heart attack or stroke in the next ten years.
Then last November researchers at Oxford University recommended mass prescription of statins - claiming that people as young as 35 with even just a one per cent risk of a heart attack or stroke could benefit, gaining an extra nine months of life expectancy.
Two million more people would then be taking the pills.
At this point sceptics point to the risk of side-effects - this is known as risks-benefits analysis. If your chance of having heart disease is very small then the risks of sideeffects from a drug to stop it should also be very low.
So if you have some risk factors for heart disease - such as being overweight, having raised cholesterol, or if you are a man over 55 - is it worth getting low-dose statins from your local pharmacy?
With The Lancet research suggesting the benefits of statins for women and older men are almost non-existent, we need to consider if the risks still outweigh the benefits.
The two widely-recognised risks are muscle pain and weakness (myopathy) and damage to the liver, but these are said to be very rare; a small risk far outweighed by the benefits. A study by Dr Jane Armitage of Oxford University, involving 20,000 UK volunteers, found 'no significant side-effects at all'.
But Professor Beatrice Golomb of the University of California San Diego disagrees.
She found that muscle symptoms are common with statin drugs.
"There's a multibillion-dollar industry ensuring that you hear all the good things about statins," she says.
"But no interest group ensuring that you hear the other side."
She is particularly concerned with the effect of statins on our moods and memory.
"It's common to find patients on the drugs who report trouble finding the right word or forgetting what task they are supposed to be doing," she says.
In a recent paper, Professor Golomb also described patients who were irritable, hostile and had short tempers while taking statins.
Some even had road rage or homicidal impulses. She has also dealt with patients who developed temporary amnesia and cognitive problems.
"After a couple of months of statin use," she says, "one top accountant could no longer balance a cheque book and was fired."
To find out how common these side-effects are and who's likely to suffer from them, Professor Golomb launched a website last autumn on which she's posted a questionnaire called the Statin Effects Survey. She wants patients to report their experiences of statins, good or bad.
She believes that data on sideeffects is lacking because trials are designed to show the benefits of the drugs, not to detect problems.
Her concerns are shared by Swedish physician and cholesterol expert Dr Uffe Ravnskov.
Writing in the British Medical Journal last year, he noted that two of the big statin trials deliberately excluded patients who had suffered side-effects in pre-trial tests, and then claimed that the number of side-effects reported was low.
Earlier this month American research suggested that statins, because they lower cholesterol, could put patients at greater risk of Parkinson's disease.
But it's not all negative. It was recently reported that statins could be a potential treatment for virulent flu strains such as H5N1, which has killed 148 people in Asia.
At one point it was also suggested that statins might reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease, although this has not been proven.
More recently statins were found to slow smokinginduced lung damage.
How do I reduce the statin risks?
The official line is that patients should not stop taking statins. As Professor Peter Weissberg, medical director of the British Heart Foundation, said last week: 'There is overwhelming evidence that statins save lives by preventing heart attacks and strokes.'
But what if you are taking statins because you've had a heart attack and are worried about potential side-effects? Dr Peter Langsjoen, a researcher at East Texas Medical Center in Tyler, Texas, believes he has a simple and practical solution.
Ever since statins were launched, it's been known that they have also dampened production of a vital enzyme called CoQ10 (also known as Q10); like cholesterol, it's made in the liver. Q10 is found in almost every cell in the body and is essential for energy production in the muscles.
So giving patients a supplement of Q10 could reduce side-effects.
Several years ago Langsjoen published a study in which patients with high levels of cholesterol but no evidence of heart disease were given the best-selling statin Lipitor.
A staggering 71 per cent of them developed a problem with their heart muscle that goes with heart failure.
Giving them a supplement of 300mg of Q10 reversed the problem for over half of them.
Many people now take Q10 along with statins as a precaution. If you are on statins and feel they may be causing muscle-related problems or brain fog, Professor Golomb suggests asking your doctor about stopping the drug or reducing the dose.
"If he or she won't do that," she says, "you could agree to increasing the dose for a little while and observe what happens to your symptoms." What if I'm not in a high-risk group?
For those not at a high risk of heart attack there are plenty of diet and lifestyle options for improving the health of your heart. The first is exercise - universally recommended for reducing the risks.
Next, get your doctor to check your levels of an amino acid called homocysteine. High levels are a risk factor for heart disease, independent of cholesterol.
To reduce homocysteine, increase your intake of B vitamins with green vegetables, or look for a supplement containing B6, folic acid and B12.
You could also increase your intake of plant sterols, found in seeds, nuts, and beans, as well as soluble fibre found in oats barley and aubergines - these also lower cholesterol.
A small study in the American Journal Of Clinical Nutrition last year found that plant sterols lowered cholesterol more effectively than statins.
The B vitamin niacin has also been shown to lower LDL cholesterol, along with two other markers for heart disease - lipoprotein (a) and fibrinogen - and raise the supposedly beneficial HDL cholesterol.
Omega-3 fatty acids are also important for the heart. Many studies show they bring down cholesterol and reduce inflammation linked with heart disease.
Finally, try curcumin found in the spice turmeric. Curcumin has been found to reduce the stickiness of platelets in the blood and relax arteries.
Several trials are currently testing its effectiveness.