By: Dr. Enrique Gavilán

Petr Skrabanek wrote in his book <em>"The death of human medicine" </em>a priceless passage which masterfully illustrated how we torment with the hammer of cholesterol lowering <em>"evidences"</em>, to the point of losing our head. <em>"Food faddism is not only an affection of the simple-minded. In a piece-of-mind article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a cardiologist wrote touchingly about seeing his four-year-old daughter Ariel sneaking to the fridge in order to have some of the ice-cream that her granny had bought. 'From conversation around the house she knew what foods were high in saturated fat and cholesterol and that they should be avoided'. She felt guilty and her daddy felt guilty about her guilt. He also felt guilty that he had not yet measured her cholesterol, but he consoled himself that 'there is no uniform agreement among all experts on when to start screening small children'. Poor Ariel!"</em> Finally they've reached a consensus. <em>Non sensus</em> consensus, of course. Consensus, like most of them, harmful. Poor Ariel, poor children!