My understanding of "the statin issue" is that in the 1970's drug companies found new chemicals to poison the liver's ability to manufacture cholesterol. They reasoned, "as cholseterol is a major part of the arteriosclerosis that hardens blood vessels, people whose bodies are depositing cholesterol where it shouldn't will benefit from poisoning their liver," and promoted the new patent medicines to medical professionals as anti-heart-disease medications.

The medical profession is rather vulnerable the promise of miracle cures to offer their patients, and prescribed the new anti-cholesterol drugs with gusto. Later studies have found the benefit of statin therapy to be minuscule: the "number needed to treat" to prevent one fatal cardiac event is rather high, on the order of 217 for low-risk patients [1]. That is, ~216 patients get to experience the side effects of artificially-reduced cholesterol levels while only 1 person avoids the problem the pill was prescribed to prevent.

In the holistic way of looking at the role of cholesterol, it is more important to think about why the body is manufacturing excess cholesterol and depositing it where it does. As you indicated above, inflammation is an important consideration. Another line of thinking is that there is a roadblock in the steroidogenesis pathway, and that supporting the body's effort to make steroids takes care of the elevated cholesterol levels too.

But our medical professionals tend to develop tunnel vision as they specialize, and assume their specialty's understandings of their domain is basically correct. The drug companies find it much more profitable to peddle anti-cholesterol drugs than to address patients' actual problems.

At least patients who are harmed by statins have the freedom to discontinue their anti-treatment.

[1] http://www.thennt.com/nnt/statins-persons-low-risk-cardiovas...