"Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?" "To the curious incident of the dog in the night time." "The dog did nothing in the night time." "That was the curious incident," remarked Sherlock Holmes.

By Fintan Dunne, 30 Dec '02
Editor www.SickofDoctors.com

Those of you in the US can tuck into the bacon and eggs with gay abandon. Latest analysis shows that heart disease has but tenuous links to diet and has trends that give lie to the cholesterol theory. Much of what we have been taught now looks dubious.

James Le Fanu, a London-based general practitioner, writing recently in the British Medical Journal, asserts that the WHO-Monica study of trends in heart disease in 27 countries, shows coronary mortality in middle-aged US males peaked in the mid-1960's and has since declined back to pre-1940's levels.

Dr. Le Fanu did not get his data directly from the WHO report. The voluminous tome had many tables showing such as: "the average annual percentage change in coronary events over the last five years." But it was far too coy to provide the historical data in the stark terms of Dr. Le Fanu's representation.

His laborious analysis of the source data shows the abrupt reversal of the rising trend in the mid-1960's. That's a little sudden to have resulted from mass changes in diet, he maintains.

So order that egg sunny side up.


THE SOUND OF NO DOG BARKING

There is good reason for the coyness of the heart disease pundits. To explain, Dr. Le Fanu adopts the persona of Sherlock Holmes in the Conan Doyle classic, "Silver Blaze."

In the novel, while investigating an apparent murder during the overnight stealing of a racehorse, Holmes was intrigued by what did not happen. The stable dog never barked. It must have known the perpetrator, Holmes concluded.

The heart disease establishment is similarly mute.

In Canada and Australia rates followed exactly the same pattern as the US. In Western Europe a similar trend appeared, albeit with a ten year lag --peaking in the 1970's. Dr. Le Fanu doesn't accept that a few hundred million people in the US, Australia and Canada simultaneously and collectively decided to suddenly improve their diets. Or that Western Europeans followed suit en masse ten years later.

Is all this news to you? Didn't you hear the dog bark?


A CASE OF CURIOUS ANOMALIES

The heart disease establishment dog didn't bark because it recognizes the perpetrator. The words "cozy cartel" come to mind. Were that dog to bark the truth, we might only awaken and realize we have been robbed.

The data do not fit. For US coronary mortality to have fallen in the 1960's any diet-dependent changes would have had to take place around 1950. America in the 1950's was in love with all the wrong kinds of food. Yet by 1965 coronary mortality was falling. And it has continued to decline even as Americans have grown more obese.

Call Holmes. Something is wrong with this picture.

The outlook for big breakfasts is less sunny in Eastern Europe. Their rates of mortality are only now climbing to the rates the US experienced in the 1940's. The trite assumption might be that they are only recently discovering the downside of a 'Big Mac' lifestyle. But if we accept that diet is too facile an explanation, what is the alternative?

Coming up with a consistent answer is going to be difficult, as the data can readily mislead, according to Dr. Le Fanu. Cross cultural comparisons can readily differ from comparisons within cultures.


FAR FROM ALIMENTARY, DEAR WATSON

For example, viewed worldwide, the more dairy product in diet, the more heart disease. But among Western Europeans, the Finnish heart disease rate is four times the rate in Switzerland even though dairy consumption is equivalent.

It would be convenient if we could attribute that anomaly to genetic differences between Finns and Swiss. But, studies of migrants to the US have shown that genes offer no overriding protection. Swedish immigrants, whose native diet has a similar fat content to the US, soon double their heart disease rates to match that in their adopted environment.

Flailing around for coherence as our certainties dissolve, perhaps it is time to jettison all our ill-founded assumptions and go back to the drawing board on heart disease risks.

From an epidemiological viewpoint, Dr. Le Fanu specualtes that the fall and rise of heart disease looks more like a biological phenomenon, like an infectious outbreak, than a lifestyle issue.

Perhaps, but a host of other possibilities beckon. In any event, this is far from being a simple case of cholesterol. Diet is a dud.

All of which is still news to the many who live by the Gospel of the Food Pyramid. The dietary moralists are not about to remove the smokescreen around the data and expose their big fat lie.

Not alone will that dog not bark. That dog won't even hunt.

BMJ Article by Dr. Le Fanu
http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/325/7378/1490

  SickofDoctors.com
  CURRENT STORIES
• Bee Gee Surgeon In Legal Suit
• US Weather War A Global Threat
• Top 100 Aids Inconstencies
• Depleted Uranium it's NOT!
• Gulag Doctor For Supreme Court
• Smallpox and Bedbugs Linked
• Rat Poison Killed 'Shaken Baby'
• West Nile = Petrochemical Fever

  PREVIOUS STORIES
• Mad Cows or Mad Scientists
• Uncovering the Big Fat Lie
• State of the Vaccine Nation
• Real Causes of Mad Cows & Deer
• What If It's All Been A Big FAT Lie?
• Understanding Chemical Intolerance
• What's Up With HIV, Please
• Return of The Killer Bowel Drug
• Michael J. Fox Sips Liquid Parkinsons
• The Antidepressant Nightmare
• Cord Clamping and Autism/ADD
• Modern Medicine -New World Religion

Free Subscribe to Sick of Doctors
Click for Private List eNewsletter