From what I've been able to review of the literature of the past thirty years, including a lot of European, Japanese, Israeli, and other studies (which I often tend to trust more than American ones, as there seems to be less likelihood they were influenced by the priorities of Big Pharma, which has much less lobbying influence in those places), the connection between cholesterol--whatever kind--and heart disease is not cut-and-dried at all. Much of it is circumstantial/correlational, not double-blinded, and there's often insufficient effort to distinguish among the effects of many kinds of cholesterol particles (there are far more than just HDL and LDL).

As just a broad stroke (and the Forbes article hints at this), triglyceride levels seem to have a much stronger link to heart disease than any specific type of cholesterol. Moreover, many people have high cholesterol levels without heart disease because they have low levels of inflammation--their cholesterol does not form as many fatty plaques on artery walls, as apparently some sort of inflammatory process is associated with getting the cholesterol to stick there. This is part of the reason for taking anti-inflammatory supplements such as fish oil and niacin in those who are susceptible--and why inflammatory measures such as C-reactive protein and/or homocysteine levels may be better indicators of heart disease risk.

I have a presonal interest in this--I've inherited from Mom the tendency to have high cholesterol levels. (Mom's been skinny as a rail all her life, but has always had high total cholesterol, HDL, LDL . . . ) I do a lot of supplementaion--and exercise, of course--to keep my triglyceride and C-reactive levels very low. My total cholesterol, HDL.. LDL levels are not optimal, but my triglycerides are consistently well below 100 and my C-reactive levels basically nonexistent. I'm hoping this is protective.