Doctoring Facts: The Ugly Face Of Medical Research

At the outset, let me begin with a disclosure. I am an engineer by education and am not funded by any industry to write this piece. I don’t get BRIBES dressed as weekend SPEAKING FEES from the industry.

However, as a Type 2 diabetic into my eighth year on zero medications and non-diabetic numbers, I am inherently sceptical of everything that mainstream experts have to say about diet, diabetes and drugs. Nothing unusual there. Why so?

Engineering is an exact science; you won’t find cozy clubs (aka associations) issuing diktats for all engineers to follow or risk losing their “right” to be an engineer. Engineering science relies on the binary – True or False, a definitive outcome without exception, for a given stimulus. Engineers look for definitive reproducibility.

In stark contrast, Medicine is not an exact science. Perhaps that’s why all-powerful associations still rule the roost. Influential think tanks behind closed doors, draw up guidelines that become gospel for the rest of the world. Others in the profession have to parrot or perish.

Two classical cases of parrot or perish are Dr Gary Fettke and Prof. Tim Noakes – hounded and persecuted only because they passionately backed the science of the LCHF diet. It is a different matter altogether that they came out winners in the end. The witch-hunt now has Dr Aseem Malhotra from the UK, in its crosshairs — Butter nonsense: the rise of the cholesterol deniers. Why him? Because he is taking head on the statin cheerleaders like Rory Collins et al. Statins after all is a billion-dollar market. So, doctoring data is natural.

The human body is not a machine and the Practice of Medicine can never be an exact science. A true or false binary in this scenario gets replaced with “ambiguity”. I’m yet to find a single RCT concluding unambiguously with “WILL” instead of “MAY”. Most, if not all studies invariably conclude with a vague “MAY”, making a mockery of the millions that have been blown on data dredging.

Difference in perception of a given “observation” – Engineer Vs Doctor

Stimulus: A slaps B and in turn B slaps C. This could be an observation in 100,000 cases.

Engineer’s Perception: Would find nothing interesting about this observation.

Doctor’s/Researcher’s Perception: Dollar signs light up in the eyes: “What a fantastic opportunity for yet another million dollar funded study!”

In such farcical studies the conclusion is often drawn long before the study even begins. The pre-decided conclusion meanders along the following course:

If A slapped B and B slapped C then A slapped C.

This genius observation will then be carefully worded and sugar-coated with doublespeak to keep escape routes open if they are challenged by more intellectual minds. The conclusion of this exhaustive study would be:

A MAY Slap C, but more, larger studies will be needed.​
They will never say A WILL slap C and end it there.​

The cry for bigger and better studies will never end as it throws open the possibility of roping in more industry funding – even if it is clear that the study itself is bogus.

The economic impact of obesity after 40+ years of low-fat rubbish in the US is estimated to be $1.7 trillion, almost 9% of national GDP . For India, it is estimated that healthcare costs to the country would be in the region of $ 270 billion by 2020. Given the rate at which the diabetes epidemic is growing, I won’t be surprised if that estimate overshoots by a big number.

Saturated FAT raises LDL, LDL causes CVD (this claim has been debunked several times over) therefore Saturated Fats cause CVD. This is the inanity that mainstream medical science has been shouting from the roof-tops to all and sundry. This flawed diet-heart theory has been force-fed to the public for over four decades now. Ancel Keys famously concluded that A MAY slap C, based on the observation of A slapping B and B slapping C.

Lessons from the Sydney Diet Heart Study

This study is nothing but another dismal example of A slapped C pre-decided outcome. The objective here was to paint a rosy picture of n-6 pufa loaded industrial vegetable seed oils. They did this at the expense of dumping part of the data tapes in a garage because the results with that data merged in, was not complying with their pre-decided conclusion.

“Paradox” and “Anecdote” the Two Barbie Dolls of the Medical World

Ancel Keys’ fanboys classify the case of France as a PARADOX, since the data did not agree with their notion of A May Slap C. I am pretty sure that vegans, taking a leaf out of their Godfather’s book, will call the case of Hong Kong’s high life expectancy a PARADOX too. Despite being a region with one of the highest meat consumption per capita, people can expect to live longer in Hong Kong. This data inconsistency refuses to neatly dovetail into the vegan’s religion, so they hide behind jargon and gloss over it by calling it yet another paradox. The same modalities would be engaged with regard to Sweden Vs America projections. When stumped for answers they simply bandied about with “PARADOX” like you would with a Barbie doll.

Coming back to the engineer’s love with “reproducibility”: LCHF diet helped me stay medicine-free for the 8th year running now. When many others started replicating this success – dropping their A1C values, regulating weight, and improving lipids, this established “reproducibility”. This reproducibility, accompanied by a huge reduction in the use of insulin and drugs hits the industry where it hurts. Many on dLife.in have gone off up to 70 units of insulin, gone off pancreas whipping drugs, expensive designer pills like Invokana, Januvia, jardiance, etc, and yet improved their A1C drastically. 200+ success stories and counting… How unfortunate is it that all this stupendous achievement is dismissed as “Anecdotal” by the researchers in favor of the dietary status quo.

Thus we see that Anecdote and Paradox are two playmates of a healthcare industry that refuses to learn from mistakes or keep pace with changing times. They just want to keep serving juice and bread to patients in the hospitals, no questions asked.

Absolute Vs Relative – The Marketing Weapon of the Pharma Lords?

Since SFA (A), LDL (B) and CVD (C) (A, B, C are the slapping entities from above) are central to this piece, instead of expanding this section in words, take a look at this video:

The Presstitutes of Medical Journalism

Ethical Journalism is all about “reporting” and not about “selective reporting” or “garbage reporting”. Let me quote a few cases:

Look AHEAD study on Type 2 diabetics: This was one of the largest federally funded study designed to be for a period of 13 years.  The “pre-decided” conclusion was that Eat Less Move More (the junk food industry’s CICO model of Obesity, often called Coke’s model) works wonders vis-à-vis Cardiovascular Disease in Type 2 diabetics.

However, at around 12 years, after having spent $ 100+ million, data showed that “eat less move more” interventions had no discernible benefits in T2 Diabetics with respect to CVD. The study was then covertly terminated and complicit medical journalists decided to quietly sweep it under the carpet. This is a typical case of “SELECTIVE” reporting that makes sure dietary status quo is maintained and personal profits keep soaring at the expense of public health. Meanwhile we, the general public continue to be led on, like lambs to the slaughter.

Coconut Oil Is Poison

The propaganda against coconut oil is nothing new. It reared its ugly head when Proctor & Gamble came up with the first man-made harmful-for-humans TRANS FAT- CRISCO. P&G went on to donate a few million dollars to a then private club “American Heart Association”. This article, like the next one, came from experts at Harvard.

Coconut oil and its newfound popularity proved to be a thorn in the side of major vegetable oil companies. Without a doubt, coconut oil is a poison for the sales of Canola, Saffola, Soy, and Corn oils. Their top-line takes a major share-cut because of coconut oil. At this point, I must repeat, n-6 PUFA loaded oils are not good even for lighting lamps, let alone being a cooking medium that is supposedly good for the heart.

LCHF Diet Reduces Lifespan?

This was a flawed study based on a false hypothesis and should be laughed off as a totally amateur experiment. The study was done with carbs forming 32% of the dietary intake. Nowhere in the Low carb world would anyone classify 32% carbs as Low Carb. Misinformed media both big and small, lapped it up, and fell over each other in their eagerness to get this breaking news out to the real world. Little birdies on social media platforms chattered that $5000 was paid to get this study published. If that is indeed the case, one wonders who funded it.

Follow the money trail: let’s face it, much of this drama played out the way it did simply because way too much money is invested in the high carb industry; the cabal wants to protect the interests of their shareholders. The last two studies (the relevance of a questionnaire based study remains questionable) got wide publicity — thanks to the “presstitutes”.

Quoting Dr. Angell:

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.”​

Dr. Angell cites the case of Dr. Joseph L. Biederman, professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and chief of pediatric psychopharmacology at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital. She explains:​

“Thanks largely to him, children as young as two years old are now being diagnosed with bipolar disorder and treated with a cocktail of powerful drugs, many of which were not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for that purpose, and none of which were approved for children below ten years of age.”​

Former longtime (17y) Editor of JAMA and “ultimate insider” says “It’s Not the Fat that Makes us Unhealthy” Says he was involved in disseminating bad nutrition science but now realizes it was never true.

The list is long and damning. However, instead of flogging a dead horse, I will move on to the next section by referencing how even the conclusion of the famous ACCORD TRIAL was drawn ignoring the researchers involved. A sad case of pre-decided conclusion yet again.

Old ‘Whine’ In A New Bottle – Militant Veganism

It is clear that in 40+ years, medical science’s ‘revolutionary’ dietary theory of A MAY slap C has been an epic fail. Well-informed netizens on Social Media are increasingly becoming a headache for the fanboys of a HIGH CARB LOW FAT diet (passed off as a “Balanced & Healthy” diet). So what new strategic twist does the industry bring in now? VEGANISM: the same old drivel repackaged as a new concept.

I personally have utter disdain for the militant brand of vegans (and almost all vegans are card-holding members of this fight club) as their pseudo-science is built on the following logical fallacies:

1. Appeal to Authority.
2. Appeal to Emotion.
3. Texas Sharpshooter.

When an aggressive and abusive stance with a propensity to violence (looting, arson etc. all in a day’s work) is added to the mix, it creates an explosive situation, no less. It is acceptable to wear ignorance and dogma as a badge of honour when the logical brain has gone into hibernation from lack of essential nutrients.

Ancel Keys and Barnard are demi-Gods in a vegan’s holy book. Since we are on the topic of diabetes, it is pertinent to evaluate Barnard’s success with VEGANISM on diabetics. Check out this chart:

Even the worst cases of diabetes reversal at dLife.in are far better than the best case results of Barnard. By our standards, an A1C of 7.3% that steadily climbs back up does not qualify as diabetes reversal regardless of what the cheerleaders from the VEGAN camp claim.​

Now Barnard vs dLife.in Member’s Data:

Updating this post after publishing summary of 50 (out of 200+) cases of diabetes and/or obesity success stories on dLife.in As they say, numbers never lie, so it’s an open comparison.

The Sweet Science of Diabetes Reversal – Low Carb High Fat Vs. Vegan

Conclusion

Commercialization of medicine forever changed the way medicine was practiced. Somewhere along the journey from the family physician who made house calls, to the modern-day super specialist in swank 5 star hospitals, we lost track. We got even more lost when scientists worked hand in glove with industry giants who finance mega research projects. The integrity and objectivity of such studies is anybody’s guess.

It is heartening to note that in the midst of this anarchy we still have doctors who have not sold their soul to the mercenaries. These are the brave hearts who have the audacity to question authority, the spine to stand with the truth, and the conviction to lend their voice to causes they believe in. Hope may not be quite dead…

In this digital age information is available at your fingertips. Ivory towers are coming crashing down and knowledge is no longer the prerogative of a select few. The wisdom of the crowd is enabling people to engineer their own health. False propaganda and vested interests will no longer get a foothold in mass consciousness. People have woken up to the fact that the health care industry prioritizes bottom-lines over everything else.

In closing I’ll leave you with a fun fact:

Why is it that anything that’s manipulated is called “Doctored” and anything that’s built is called “Engineered”?

Acknowledgement: Elle Jay, a type 2 diabetic who reduced her A1C from 12.5 to sub 5.0 levels and lost 25Kg weight on Indian LCHF diet has also contributed to the article. She too is medicine free.

 

 

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