Lipoproteins and atherosclerosis. A look back and a look ahead.

I is an honor and privilege to present the 1982 Duff Memorial Lecture. I should start by confessing that for some years I have felt a bit like a pretender in the field of atherosclerosis research. To be sure, I have been very much involved in lipid and lipoprotein research and so, to the extent that lipoproteins are involved in atherogenesis, I could justify my participation in the proceedings of the Council. But the voice of G. Lyman Duff himself made me uneasy. In a classic review he wrote in 1951 together with one of our outstanding past Chairmen, Gardner McMillan, he referred to overly enthusiastic champions of the lipid hypothesis as follows: "So popular has this view [the lipid hypothesis] become that the casual reader of recent literature might wonder whether some authors conceive of an atherosclerosis so independent of the substrate of the vessel wall that it may occur in the absence of the blood vessels themselves." I hope that I am not one of those authors, but you can see that I would have felt uncomfortable presenting a Duff Lecture in which the cells of the artery wall did not make an appearance. I am relieved to be able to assure you that they will appear — even an intact artery. Duff was one of the greats among the pioneers working with the complex problem of atherosclerosis. Anyone who has read his papers knows how