Recently a 53 year old man sued the estate of diet guru Dr.  Adkins after seeing his cholesterol increase after two months of  the diet. Is such a lawsuit a comment on our attitudes concerning  risk? Well, according to Dr. Sydney Smith who hosts the website  Medpundit, the answer is yes: “High cholesterol, such as this man  had, is just one of many risk factors for heart disease, along with  age, sex, smoking, diabetes, being out of shape, and, well, you get  the idea. Not one of these risk factors is a cause of heart disease  in the same way that say, the cold virus is the cause of the common  cold. Unfortunately, having widely adopted the precautionary  principle, we have taken the inevitable next step beyond. Risk no  longer means the possibility of harm. Risk is harm.”