CLINICAL RESEARCH
The Cholesterol Deniers
For decades, a tiny encampment of researchers has held that statin treatment
is a hoax. In a time when contrarian views roar to life on social media, how
can medicine keep minority opinions from doing irreparable harm? by Anita Slomski //
Art by Travis Rathbone/Trunk Archive
CARDIOLOGIST STEVEN NISSEN, chief academic officer of the Heart and Vascular Institute at the Cleveland Clinic, delights in the reputation he has earned among his critics. One prized possession is a photograph digitally doctored to show him wearing a tinfoil dunce cap, with the headline, “Steven Nissen goes full quack.” The image appeared on the home page of Natural News, a website that promotes fringe theories about vaccines and other practices of conventional medicine. “Those guys call me the statinator,” Nissen says, a testament to his passionate advocacy of statin drugs a tool to prevent heart at
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