Cholesterol Skeptics
Ravnskov's Final Word
You may have observed that the arguments presented by Dr. Weintraub don't really present a concrete rebuttal to the question of the impact of saturated fats on heart disease. In his response (to Dr. Weintraub's response), Ravnskov notes that that in 30 countries, national heart mortality rates have gone up with increased saturated fat consumption, but in 23 countries, mortality has decreased with increasing saturated fat consumption. So again, there is no clear trend showing that saturated fat poses a health problem.
Concerning the relationship between high cholesterol and atherosclerosis, Ravnskov claims that no animal studies were ever able to show a heart attack resulting from high cholesterol. Likewise, the connection between high cholesterol and coronary heart disease remains questionable - he claims that Dr. Weintraub ignored some confounding factors in the Gemfibrozil trials, and didn't include a third study that disagreed with his (Weintraub's) hypothesis. In other words, changing the level of cholesterol does not in itself impact CHD. (Statins do reduce CHD risk and cholesterol, but the risk reduction may not be a result of the cholesterol reduction.)