The leading cause of death, in humans, is heart disease — the whole family of heart and blood vessel ailments that end, most famously, in heart attacks.

These diseases slay around 20,000,000 people annually, a third of all deaths worldwide. Most heart attacks are the result of years of exposure to high LDL cholesterol, the ‘bad cholesterol’ your doctor might’ve told you about.

In the most extreme cases — people who are born and persist with extremely elevated levels of the stuff — about 40% of affected people have a heart attack or some other major cardiovascular issue by the time they turned 39. Almost 10% simply died from a cardiovascular problem caused by slowly accumulating damage from high LDL.

Since the late 80s, the solution has been statins — pills you have to take daily. They block HMG-CoA reductase, a liver enzyme needed to make cholesterol. Some ~40 million people have been prescribed statins or another LDL-lowering therapeutic, and as a result, the share of remaining heart disease attributable to LDL is down from about 91% in 1970 to 53% today.

But it’s not zero.

Now, thanks to the wonders of genetic science, it might be possible to eliminate most of the remaining LDL-driven heart disease, and thus most heart disease in humans.