Sometimes I think that Cholesterol is an indicator, but not a cause, particularly "good" cholesterol. So anything that just re-jiggers the "good" cholesterol level, without dealing with underlying problems, is not going to do any good at all.
And the side effects of some of these drugs are really brutal.
It is a proxy indicator of health. I have no idea how good it is as an actual indicator of health, and suspect it to be nonsense/an excuse to sell statins. If some Freeper could post up some correlations between cholesterol level and heart attacks or other morbidity then that would be helpful.