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How to Identify and Avoid the Bad Guys

Recently while on vacation with our two grandsons, ages three and six, we came across a crime scene with two police cars, four officers, and one “bad guy.” The boys’ first question to me was, “What did he do, Grandpa?” I told them I didn’t know what the “bad guy” did. Next they asked, “How can you tell he is a bad guy, Grandpa?” I answered, “Because he’s in handcuffs.” They continued, “He doesn’t look like a bad guy: his face looks nice and his clothes are clean.” I explained to them that you can only tell who the bad guys are after they are caught. Before the discovery of their wrong doings they look just like good guys, and most of them even believe themselves to be good guys. Finally, my grandsons wanted to know if the bad guy was going to hurt them. But I assured the boys: “The bad guy won’t be able to hurt anyone if the authorities do their job.”

The story is much the same when it comes to the businesses of making people healthier and relieving their sickness: you only find out who the bad guys are after they are caught. This usually happens when scientific research proves a product or procedure to be harmful after it has been used on patients for a long time. On July 13-14, 2010 a US advisory panel for the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) reviewed the safety of Avandia (rosiglitazone maleate), once one of the top-selling diabetic medications in the world, and found for the second time that this medication is dangerous.

A Scientific Critique of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee's Report for the Dietary Guidelines
for Americans

This article was introduced in the June 2010 newsletter.

Conflicting recommendations for plant-food vs. animal-food consumption dominate the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee’s recent report, meaning that real solutions for obese and sick Americans will, unfortunately, not be forthcoming. Except for a few hopeful sentences, the committee presents a report filled with fear mongering, doubletalk, omissions of major topics, consistently biased views of the scientific literature, and inexcusable factual errors that favor the livestock industries.

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Fat or Carbs: Which is Worse?

Dr. Andrew Weil’s article in the Huffington Post has led his readers to believe that saturated fats in the diet, which are primarily from meats and dairy products, are better for them to eat than carbohydrates, which are from plant foods. He bases this on a March 2010 analysis that was “published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (that) found that ‘saturated fat was not associated with an increased risk’ of coronary heart disease, stroke or coronary vascular disease.” In his opinion this piece of research is a significant exoneration of the dietary saturated fat theory for the cause of heart disease. He failed to mention that the National Dairy Council funded this study.

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Saving U.S. Dietary Advice from Conflicts of Interest
By Jeff Herman

https://www.drmcdougall.com