Here’s Who Pressured the Medical Journal
Do we want to live in a world in which medical journals are afraid to publish certain conclusions?
By Donna Laframboise | Big Picture News | January 29, 2020
I recently described an organized campaign against a medical journal that published research over the objections of anti-meat activists. After the Annals of Internal Medicine refused to halt publication, the US Federal Trade Commission was urged to intervene. So was the Philadelphia district attorney’s office.
Do we really want to live in a world in which medical journals are afraid to publish certain conclusions because activists will sic the authorities on them? Does it really need to be said that, once government officials and the courts start second-guessing medical journals, free speech and honest scholarship are as good as dead?
So who, precisely, tried to get this research retracted before it saw the light of day? Who arrogantly wanted to extinguish the public’s right to hear that the evidence linking meat consumption and poor health is quite weak?
A lot of people who should know better. People associated with prestigious institutions.
Let’s start with David L. Katz, of Yale University. In a bizarre newspaper column Katz implies the journal is guilty of “information terrorism.” In his universe, this isn’t a matter of different researchers examining the same evidence and coming to different conclusions. It’s a matter of anyone-who-disagrees-with-me-has-nefarious-motives. It’s how-dare-you-challenge-the-prevailing-consensus!
Katz is the founder/director of the True Health Initiative. That organization describes itself as a “voice of reason and consensus.” It claims to be “fighting fake facts” and “combating false doubts” via an “evidence-based” approach. Shutting down competing perspectives is not the voice of reason. It’s the voice of authoritarianism.
Neal Barnard, of George Washington University’s School of Medicine, heads the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine. It was his organization that appealed to the Trade Commission and then to the district attorney.
Other signatories to the letter urging the journal to halt publication include Frank Hu, JoAnn E. Manson, Eric Rimm, Meir Stampfer, and Walter Willett. All of these people are associated with Harvard’s School of Public Health. That entity has a party line where meat is concerned. It’s difficult to imagine a researcher with an alternative perspective surviving there long. I wrote about Willett’s vegetarian climate change activism last year.
These are the other individuals who took the highly unusual step of trying to influence the editorial decisions of a respected medical journal:
Dariush Mozaffarian – a Dean at Tufts University
Richard Carmona of the University of Arizona
Christopher Gardner of Stanford University
David J.A. Jenkins and John Sievenpiper of the University of Toronto
Dean Ornish of the University of California
Kim A. Williams of Rush University
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The transformation of Zionism as a political ideology to Zionism as a religious ideology begins, in part, with Theodor Herzl’s “infatuation with British imperialism,” as noted by literary scholar and cultural historian Eitan Bar-Yosef in his book A Villa In The Jungle: Herzl, Zionist Culture, And The Great African Adventure. “Herzl’s phrase – a ‘miniature England in reverse’ – preserves the imperfect colonial mimicry that stood at the heart of Herzl’s Zionist project, and which was exposed so explicitly… in his decision to align himself with the British Empire.” Herzl would form the Zionist Organization (now The World Zionist Congress) in 1897 and promote the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, while continuing to identify with British colonialism and those who facilitated colonialism – the colonialists themselves. While Herzl, in his book The Jewish State, published in 1895, argued that the ‘Jewish question’ was not social or religious but political, the historical account of the rise of religious Zionism shows that it began to take hold not long before the passing of Herzl in 1904. … continue
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Apparently this author is not aware of the power of Monsanto and the vaccine lobby to not only have journals retract articles, but also have the researchers fired. In other words, we already live in this world. Does he not know this? Or is he ignoring this fact to make his complaint seem stronger?
These authors believe that the overwhelming amount of evidence for reducing meat is being countered by corrupt studies meant to muddy the waters at the behest of a powerful industry rather than to bring genuine new research to contribute to our scientific awareness. As far as I understand it, the cigarette industry was proven to have done this. And let the buyer beware – it is not just the meat industry that has an interest in muddying the waters – there are large pharmaceutical and surgery interests that prefer making billions of dollars off of treating the results of these dietary choices rather than empowering people to no longer need their drugs and surgeries as people like Dr. Neal Barnard do.
BTW, the Jewish lobby has also gone to the extent to have an article retracted and purchasers instructed to remove the pages in the copies they had bought!
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/nov/25/medicalscience.genetics
So while academic freedom is certainly under attack in many ways – there are much more clear examples than what these people are up to. But these forces that corrupt academic freedom also do not hesitate to go after people in the mainstream media either – so perhaps what this author is up to. However he could just be genuinely misguided about the safety of meat consumption.
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Objectively, you will discover that the “powerful industry” (big ag) makes much more profit from selling you soy and corn derivatives than dairy or meat.
Likewise with the medical establishment. Diabetes is bankrupting us, but all that money flows somewhere.
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The biggest consumer of soy products are the animals that are raised for meat consumption. Big soy profits either way. If you look at the Kempner rice diet protocol, people were treated for diabetes with a diet of white rice and fruit and refined sugar.
Click to access kempner.pdf
Sugar on its own can’t be the problem.
Sugar spikes in the presence of fatty blood is another story. You have to talk about the whole picture, not just one component, imo.
I do agree with you that there are ideologically motivated speakers who will cherry pick their presentations to make people think that it is not safe to eat any animal products at all. But people like McDougall were first driven by the results they observed in their medical practice and a curiosity about how to use lifestyle to prevent disease – not a concern for animal welfare and not requirring 100% abstention from animal products.
I suspect that the typical American eats refined sugar in the presence of blood made fatty by a diet too high in fat and that they also eat too much protein which Kempner shows the danger of. But Dr. T Colin Campbell thinks even this might be incomplete. It may be that animal products themselves – regardless of the fat and protein composition could be problematic in quantity. There is some support for this idea by studies that show insulin spikes from white rice get worse when meat is added but get reduced when plants are added. Is there an inflammation response to animal products that complicates the endocrine system response?
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-to-prevent-blood-sugar-and-triglyceride-spikes-after-meals/
https://nutritionfacts.org/video/if-white-rice-is-linked-to-diabetes-what-about-china/
In other words, a Happy Meal is terrible not only because of the soda (which *is* terrible), but perhaps the soda plus the white bread plus the meat is a perfect storm for disease promotion?
Anyhow, these are my thoughts but I am happy to keep considering yours and everyone else’s. I have been slightly obsessed with this topic from both a health and safety point of view, but also from a public health/medical cost cutting point of view. I am interested in what steps we as individuals and communities can take to free ourselves as much as possible from the enslavement to big pharma, big medicine, big bankers, big university education, big media, etc.
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“The biggest consumer of soy products are the animals that are raised for meat consumption. Big soy profits either way.”
This is just wrong. Processed foods are loaded with corn and soy which can be stored in heaps out doors and after industrial processing can be warehoused for years. Meat and dairy must be kept cold and have short shelf lives. Each gram of soy protein fed to cattle returns 1/10 gram of beef protein.
They want you to eat the soy kibble and still pay for a meal. This is the very basis of fast food/processed food profitability. The percentage of the content that can be corn and soy.
What discount do you get when you buy 2% milk? How much do they make selling the butter?
It’s tough to face the fact that shills have had you going, but it’s best to face it.
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I am glad to learn new angles and new perspectives, fear not.
What I am saying is that most of the soy that is raised is turned into feed for animals – they have to eat many more pounds of food then they produce in meat weight as you point out.
Soy winds up in many processed foods, but things like lecithin are usually a small percent of the food volume. How many people eat tofu? Probably a lot, but way less than eat meat. Many people dose protein powder from soy, whey, pea. But how much is that compared to animal consumption?
Here are the US stats.
Click to access coexistence-soybeans-factsheet.pdf
I neglected soy oil, but even still – 70% for animal feed.
Why would “Big Soy” want to go against its biggest customers?
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“things like lecithin are usually a small percent of the food volume.”
Think again. Those dry products are factored by weight not volume.
“Vegetable” oils and corn syrup are often where most of the calories in these products come from.
Yes, animals are fed lots of corn and soy also. But that hardly makes a point for you.
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