it was her

you idiot unfortunately by the time i got to the you know i'm really starting to write about this she she passed away she died and i never got to speak to her she's like You know, a great disappointment, but there were people that are people, you know, and then I started going back and saying, well, who else has been thinking that the cholesterol hypothesis is a heap of whatever? And you find that there's a phrase, and it's an Austrian philosopher, the ghost in the machine.

There's a ghost in the machine, which is...

there are remnants of things around.

When you start looking at them, you realize that actually they're all over the place.

You know, the people have been talking about this for a long time.

You know, there are people who have a different idea about all of this.

of any country in the world in history.

They don't ask the question, why does it happen? It's incredible.

Why does it happen? Exactly.

And so you've also got, obviously, you've got your lungs as well, which have got veins and arteries, although they're sort of the other way around because...

And veins and arteries in your, in your lungs don't develop atherosclerosis plaques either.

They never develop here.

All right? And the concentration, uh, you know, the concentration in the veins and the arteries in the lungs is slightly higher than it is in the rest of the body, of LDL.

So, so it only travels through artery walls.

What's your view of that?

Take us back when you, when you first started seeing, um, that we had been, we had been sold a bill of goods, we had been sold lies, uh, around, uh, cholesterol and that y- 'cause you've, you've been, you've been teaching th- about this for quite a while.

Uh, yes.

Uh, obviously it's had little effect on the mainstream view, which seems to have been strengthening over the decades.

But, uh, um, I first started, uh, it's interesting, uh, I would never consider myself a, a great scientist or researcher, but, uh, some- it's amazing how your life takes different turns.

Um, I, I went to university in Aberdeen, uh, Scotland, uh, at the time, and it was early '80s, um, Scotland had the highest rate of heart disease in the world, at least that's what the statistics said.

How accurate they are is sometimes up for debate.

So it was obviously a major thing.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Like, I can't even get my head around that idea.

Anyway, her idea was that what happens is that you get damage to the lining of the arteries, whatever causes it.

This causes a blood clot to form, because as soon as the lining of an artery is damaged, it releases chemicals going, "Clot, here, now, immediately." Because the body doesn't like damaged arteries, as you can imagine.

So it forms a very rapid blood clot, using an entirely different blood clotting system than the one that causes clots in your legs, for instance.

There's two different systems.

Anyway, it's a very fast system, and it's triggered by a thing called tissue factor, which sits in your artery walls.

Right.