“There are many ways to die but happily you only die once” is one of the leitmotifs of this neat, apoplectic little book. It reads like a high explosive grenade being thrown into the epicentre of our smug assumption that medical science is always right and unerringly serves human interests. Dr Kendrick, a humble GP and heart disease enthusiast from Scotland, has made a career out of warning us to stop being so naive and to examine the evidence. We are being fooled by the conspiracy between Big Pharma and a host of frontline biochemical research medics, he argues, to believe that of all the deadly enemies beginning with a capital C which confront us in today’s calamitous world (think Cancer, Covid and Climate Change for instance) the worst of these is CHOLESTEROL

This waxy fatlike substance will show you no mercy, goes conventional wisdom, and is a silent assassin deviously working away even as I write to clog up my arteries and capillaries with toxic refuse that will eventually trigger an aneurism, a cardiac arrest or a stroke (and please note that is not stroke as in the affectionate gesture made to a favourite pet). Shock, double shock, horror! But do not despair because fortunately the pharmaceutical industry has ridden to our rescue like King Arthur’s mythical knights with an invention called the statin, now in its ninth or tenth iteration of development, and if you haven’t heard of it you must be either very very young or a recent arrival from the planet Zog.

At a certain age – say 40 or 50 or maybe 10? – no visit to your doctor is complete without him insisting that the cholesterol level in your blood is dangerously high and you must begin taking a daily statin dose or alternatively write your last will and testament and make appropriate funeral arrangements. This happened to me. I surrendered to my GP’s avuncular wisdom and found within days of taking the statin that my body ached horribly and I was overcome by extreme levels of fatigue. Politely I went back and told him to stick his statins where the sun don’t shine. Totally unabashed Dr X put me on another brand of statin. “Try this one,” he grinned demonically. Apparently statins now exist in numerous fancy forms like liquorice all sorts and “some affect your metabolism less painfully than others” he reassured me. I tried three different ones in all with continued pain and no perceptible gain. What the hell is the NHS coming to? I thought to myself and changed my doctor from X to Y.

I must confess at this juncture that I suffer from an illness called ME/CFS and have been waiting for a magic bullet cure to turn up for almost four decades. (You silly over optimistic twat! I hear you think. ME isn’t a killer disease so nobody’s going to invest megabucks into looking for one!) The main symptoms of ME are tiredness, muscle aches and brain fog so if you make me take a statin that’s going to double at least those symptoms in exchange for the promise of perhaps a few weeks extra life I’m hardly going to take your offer seriously. Kendrick’s book treats the collusion between the medical establishment and capitalism on the alleged link between high cholesterol and heart attacks with utter contempt. That’s one reason I devoured it. All specialist scientific disciplines tend towards being reductive, arrogant and self-serving, and Medicine is no different in my experience. For instance over half the medical community still refuse to believe ME is even an illness. They think it’s a form of hypochondria or depression. And that narrow clinical scepticism sours its way damagingly through every ventricle of the social and welfare support systems. But don’t get me started on all that or you’ll never get away!

Anyway, after a few statin free years out of the blue Dr Y suddenly decided to read my medical notes, proclaimed that my cholesterol level was too high, in addition to my being prediabetic and obese. In fact I was virtually an ambient corpse, he implied. “Take this statin,” he ordered me and I gave him the raised finger salute. “At least try it,” he continued brazenly “It’s a brand new, no side effects generation of the tablet.” I promised to take it for a week and had no adverse reaction. The weeks turned into months, the months into years. So now I am a fully paid up member of the statinated community. But according to Malcolm Kendrick there’s no need for me to be. Cholesterol isn’t a poison, it’s a substance that exists in every cell of our body and without it the mitochondria would not be able to function. Of course, I would argue that my mitochondria don’t function properly anyway and that’s why I have ME.

What you make of this book will very much depend on the degree of faith or otherwise you have in scientific rationalism. As a text it is supersaturated with chemical diagrams, acronyms and statistics. Clearly the author is an obsessive and zealous crusader. He is red hot on conspiracy theories and mockery. At times you feel he missed his real vocation as a stand up comedian. I feel the need to insert here a literary health warning. Firstly, there are so many jokes and factual improbabilities on offer that sometimes I felt unsure if he was being serious or not. Eg “Eat low-fat fat instead of high-fat fat. You know it makes perfect sense. That thudding noise in the background is a chemist beating his head repeatedly against a wall.” Secondly, the number count on typographical errors is catastrophically high and therefore devalues the authority of the author. Surely AI had a hand in this amateurish editorial blundering? In particular the phrase ‘mortality rates’ and ‘morality rates’ become virtually interchangeable. Whether you decide Dr Kendrick is mad, bad or God remains of academic interest to me. He certainly succeeded in fueling all my hard core anti-establishment prejudices and as a result I have summarily stopped taking my statins. Keep watching this space and if I fail to show up again soon, you will no doubt conclude I have made a fatal error of judgement……..

FOUR STARS