Twelve Black Code Monkeys

Atkins has responded to the suit brought by PCRM mentioned in my last entry. It does a much better job than my own commentary at punching wholes through PCRM and its motivations. I’m glad Atkins has gotten smart and tough about defending itself. In the past, when the only one who was defending the diet was Dr. Atkins himself, who was not exactly trained in good PR, the whole issue of whether or not low-carb plans were healthy was not as well served. Although some aspects about a large company with commercial interests taking the healm of the Atkins name has concerned me and other low-carb dieters who fear that their main motivation from here on in will be to sell as many low-carb products as possible, we do have some benefits of a well-funded and well-organized company that can activate its personnel to quickly come to the defense of both feeble as well as substantial challenges. And lets face it, even feeble challenges can, when not responded to, become accepted as fact.

Well, our wacky friends at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) are at it again. I’m surprised it’s taken them this long. It seems they have finally hooked a fish from the website they have had up for many, many months that has been asking for people to submit info about how they were harmed by the Atkins diet. It was, no doubt, with this goal in mind that the website was created. Although PCRM is an organization that evangelizes veganism and condemns any and all uses of animals (for food, medicine development, testing, medical training, even seeing eye dogs for the blind), they are truly predatory when it comes to attacking anything that they see as a threat to their goals.

It doesn’t surprise me in the least, and “predatory litigators” or “ambulance chasers” is actually somewhat of a step down from the more recent enlightenment of how far PCRM is willing to go to and how radical and uncompromising they are in their approach. The whole debacle over Atkins’ medical reports showed that PCRM has no professional or ethical scrupples, let alone common dignity for a deceased person and their family. But as you read more about their ties to PETA and other animal “liberation” groups, some of which are open proponents of violence, one starts to really wonder about the sanity of these people and whether they are truly dangerous to the public - “terrorists” as some people have started to call them.

As far as this suit goes, I’m not a lawyer, and sometimes the law seems to rule against common sense, so anything’s possible. However, it seems to me ludicrous that someone can claim a diet they were on gave them high cholesterol. Generally as we age, our cholesterol goes up, even with the same diet. Also, there is still no proof that high cholesterol gives one heart disease. Yes, you heard me right! I know, it sounds like an amazing statement, but it is true! Sure, doctors have played up cholesterol as the evil that must be eliminated at any cost, but there are many medically trained skeptics out there who have very good arguments against any link between the two, other than the red herring that has helped doctors push millions of people onto risky medications to the benefit of the pharmaceutical companies bottom lines and to the benefit of the doctors who prescribe them as they are wined and dined and given other perks by these drug companies as incentives to push yet more people onto the unnecessary meds.

In fact, study after study has shown that for most people, cholesterol actually gets lowered markedly by consuming a low-carb diet! HDL, the “good” cholesterol goes up, triglycerides tend to drop quickly and precipitously, and LDL, the “bad” cholesterol may rise initially only to drop back down to below the initial value. LDL is still seen by most mainstream doctors as the main component to look at when trying to determine whether someone needs drugs. Amazingly, though, this fails to take into account the fact that LDL is actually composed of different subparticles, one group that is associated with health benefits! Those healthy LDL particles seem to increase in proportion to the unhealthy LDL particles on a low carb diet even as the total LDL remains the same, thus improving overal health indicators, but of course this is ignored by most doctors who are eager to put as many patients as possible on drugs. The reason why tests to determine these LDL subparticle groupings are not done as part of the standard cholesterol test, I am sure, is that if this were done, many people might show a more healthy cholesterol profile and would then be harder to convince to take medication.

I’m hoping someone decides to sue PCRM for promoting a vegan diet, which can certainly be abused as much as a low-carb diet to where it becomes unhealthy. That is part of the issue, too, I think. Any diet can be abused. People who don’t understand basic nutrition can take Weight Watchers, Dean Ornish, Atkins, or anyone else’s plan, and creatively mutate it to the point where one is still theoretically “following” the diet, but not eating in a very optimal way. I suppose, though, in this litigious society we have, unless people are told exactly what to eat at every meal in exact quantities, diet books potentially open themselves up to suit when someone who’s followed them for all of a few weeks develops some probably completely unrelated health condition. PCRM of course, has a whole other agenda. Their single-mindedness marks them as not to be trusted in any kind of debate to get at the truth of what is healthy and what is harmful. Their tactics are sensationalistic and in no way represent the scientific sounding name they use which should indicate a body that endeavors to search objectively for the truth, not being dogmatic, aiding frivolous lawsuits, or publicizing private medical records.