Dr. Malcolm Kendrick revisits the response to injury hypothesis as an alternative to the cholesterol hypothesis for explaining the etiology of atherosclerosis. He evaluates three “facts” used to support the cholesterol hypothesis — 1. fatty streaks are early-stage plaques, 2. there is a high concentration of cholesterol in plaques, which must have been derived from LDL, and 3. the lipoprotein found in plaques is LDL — and finds they are all overly simplified or false.

“It is interesting that I had to venture out of the academic realm to find something so profoundly scientific. Here we have, at long last, a definition founded on something measurable, repeatable and evidence based—the ability to perform work per unit time; i.e., the ability to produce and sustain power.”