The downside to this story is that he developed iatrogenic parkinsons and that is what he ultimately died from.

Nothing you could tell me would serve better than that to let me know that you are someone who understands the current state of the medical industrial complex. Seems sometimes like First, do no harm really means nothing anymore, it's become something that impossible to achieve. Once you have chronic whatever, they will do many things that current science says will help and then find out later what they did causes something else, maybe worse, maybe not. If nothing else, after several years of ministering by the complex, your kidneys will fail from all the meds and treatments.

On "trans fats" et. al., I have been noticing that in more nuanced research circles, they are following thoughts along these lines:

“Different types of saturated fats behave differently.” quote from a non-profit Dietician Association, from a NYT article "Once a Villain, Coconut Oil Charms the Health Food World."

But the F.D.A. rarely gets into nuance.

Best advice I ever read on this was in more than one wholistic medicine book I read decades ago: just stay away from the hydrogenation process with fats. Any cold pressed (that is, pressed out the old fashioned way in an actual press) fat in moderation is good food. That all this current excitement over olive oil is folly, that olive fat is no better than a lot of other fats. It's just that it is almost always cold pressed. That hydrogenation is the main culprit, changing the molecular structure into frankenfood. To just look for "cold pressed" on the label and pay the price for the extra labor involved (most Hain-brand oils, for example, are cold pressed.)

On before the now common practice of implanting stents

Oh doncha know, on cardiac-related stents, part of "best medical care in the world"? NOT. Just the current fad, that even ex-presidents are still falling for. Because they happened to work for some people with some certain conditions, then everybody with heart risk must have one!?

Related: after recently checking out stent treatment for kidney stones on the internet for a relation, I also happened upon this news in my searches:  stents seem to be a big growth business for attorneys who are in the specialty of suing medical device manufacturers. It appears most of them are sucky, nobody has really invented one yet that doesn't have lots of complications.

And on artery clogging, from my reading from sources I trust, for at least a couple decades now, and of course mho as idiot laywoman practicing without a license ,  I am betting on inflammation conditions being the main cause. (Like Mr. Smith said on a recent thread, inflammation = always bad.)  Like you say, there's gotta be a reason those clog molecules attach in some and not in others. I know  there is a blood test available for the arterial inflammation that many suspect is a culprit, but that they have not finished studies on it yet so nobody in the for-the-public media talks about it.

And I think statins are one of those things where they will be sorry that they gave them to so many people. Worse than stents, got too popular too fast (and they don't really understand what they do to people. ) Have learned to always be wary of something that does. Especially if doctors start taking the stuff or doing the stuff to themselves; they are prone to fads just like anyone else. If not more.