I have no notes left regarding writing ‘Apolipoprotein E isoforms, serum cholesterol, and cancer’,1 but I think I thought it up in Hawaii. I passed through Hawaii on my way to the US from Melbourne, where I had given a talk on diet, low cholesterol, and cancer at the 7th International Atherosclerosis Symposium in October 1985. At that time the dangers of a low serum cholesterol level was a hot topic;2 several scientists thought that a low cholesterol increased your risk of violent death or cancer. This rested both on observational associations and on the outcomes of early cholesterol-lowering trials. The idea became less plausible after the big statin trials showed no relation between lowering of cholesterol and the rates of violent death or cancer, but those studies came later.