THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT 
              Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: Saturday, November 12, 1994            TAG: 9411110029
SECTION: FRONT                    PAGE: A15  EDITION: FINAL 
TYPE: Opinion 
SOURCE: GEORGE HEBERT 
                                             LENGTH: Medium:   57 lines

WHAT WE KNOW THAT ISN'T SO SHOCKS OF A DIFFERENT SORT

Far too much of what we know, like the fellow says, just isn't so. And the situation seems to be getting worse all the time.

We used to know, for instance, that a suntan was a sign of good health. Not true anymore. A lot of sun on the skin, unless you take some elaborate precautions against the ultra-violet rays, brings a high risk of skin cancer.

We used to know that slower driving was the safest. Easier to stop if you had to, less impact damage or injury if there was a collision - that sort of thing. Now some experts argue that slowpokes are invitations to ac-ci-dents.

We used to know that the healthiest coffee was decaffeinated. Now we're told we probably should worry about certain of the systems used to remove the caffeine - that these methods themselves might leave harmful material.

And on and on. The smart people out on the frontiers of knowledge tell us this or that one year. A few years later, after more study, we too often get an oops.

One of the latest and most dramatic examples appeared in the news reports early this month. It had to do with cholesterol.

After all the proclamations of recent years about the urgency of controlling the level of cholesterol (which can clog up blood vessels, bringing on heart attacks, etc.), we're being advised of a major exception to the general rule. For those over 75 (where a lot of the anxiety has been concentrated), screening and cholesterol-lowering procedures should be discontinued.

A Yale University team, confirming results of an earlier University of Washington study, found no link between high cholesterol and increased risk of heart attacks among 997 people ranging in age from 71 to 102, according to a Los Angeles Times account.

The researchers warn, however, that continued concern and treatment should focus on cholesterol levels in the blood of the younger populace, up through individuals in their lower 70s.

Even so, the partial reversal in cholesterol policy is no small thing.

This development may not be on a par with the cosmic change in scientific thinking involved in another recent announcement, one that came late in October. This was the casting of doubt - through measurements by the Hubble space telecope - on the widely held theory that the universe came into being from the explosion of a single, incredibly dense chunk of matter.

But the erasure of a large part of our strongly held belief about cholesterol was still quite a shock. And to have both this and the Big Bang theory demolished within a little over a week -

Egad! MEMO: Mr. Hebert is a former editor of The Ledger-Star.

by CNB