That... does not seem to match most other modern commentaries I've found on EPA & DHA studies, and whenever I'm looking through
studies it's rather overwhelming in favor EPA & DHA omega 3s. It's very difficult to find anything to the contrary, you really have to dig, and from what I've read elsewhere those tend to be the poorer studies based more on some vague correlation than actual cause and effect. The last time I heard it come up was a supposed correlation between fish oil and prostate cancer. A review called the article irresponsible because not only was it a poor study that used a rather round-about way of measuring the correlation, even then it would be worth it for the overwhelming evidence of other benefits.
EPA & DHA are called essential fatty acids because they are fats that the body cannot make. To say they are not beneficial or are harmful to fatty tissue and general fat health, and all cell membranes for that matter, is as dubious as saying that calcium & vitamin D are bad for the bones or that protein is bad for muscle. Fat is a major structural component of the body and the body cannot make all types of it.
It's not just the American Heart Association recommendation either. It's the recommendation of the World Health Organization and a hundred or so governments.
It's much easier to confuse people because of the lack of public understanding on these essential fats and other nutrients because we are educated on very few building materials. We hear that all plants mainly need is NPK and the rest is minor, but for example the green in leaves for chlorophyll photosynthesis is magnesium. Photosynthesis seems somewhat necessary to plant life too. Thyroid hormone has an iodine atom in it. Skin is coated in oil to keep it moisturized and the wrong thickness of this oil clogs pores. The brain is made largely of all kinds of fats and from choline and inositol. The electron transport chain for aerobic metabolism includes calcium and zinc atoms to pass on the electrons so you can get energy from your food; otherwise you can't. The N in NADH which passes energy from sugar to ATP is nicotinamide aka niacin. To use that phosphate energy from ATP on an enzyme to break a molecule, often the phosphate is passed through pyridoxal phosphate aka B6 which then bonds to the enzyme and uses the release of the phosphate to bend the enzyme and break the substrate molecule. Enzymes that require energy to break a molecule are kinda important to a fully functioning body. All nutrients are *not* some industry fad or drug with possible benefit, harm, or neutral effect that we can't be sure about. They are components for the normal functioning of the body and are always required. In fact if your body didn't partially convert some plant oils into small amounts of EPA & DHA, and after many years your reserves got depleted, you would flat out die because you would be missing all of a required component of the body. In babies especially a lack of these causes a fourfold increase in birth defect risk because they have too little of a material and so some of them is simply missing.
If you want something vegan for EPA & DHA, there are algae based supplements you can use. ALA found from sources like flax oil is also 10% converted into EPA & DHA which is minimal but better than nothing, plus the ALAs in flax oil have other benefits so you may as well get flax just to get the ALAs and then getting a minimial amount of EPA & DHA is a side benefit.