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Via Top Cardiologist Blasts Nutrition Guidelines by veteran medical journalist Larry Husten PhD on his CardioBrief site, February 27, 2017: 

One of the world’s top cardiologists says that many of the major nutrition guidelines have no good basis in science.

“I’m not a nutrition scientist and that may be an advantage because every week in the newspaper we read something is good for you and the same thing the next week is bad for you,” said Salim Yusuf, MD, DPhil,(McMaster University), at Cardiology Update 2017, a symposium presented by the European Society of Cardiology and the Zurich Heart House.

Yusuf presented evidence that many of the most significant and impactful nutrition recommendations regarding dietary fats, salt, carbohydrates, and even vegetables are not supported by evidence.

...Yusuf volunteered a strong endorsement for Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise, who has been heavily criticized by the nutrition establishment for her defense of dietary fat. “She shook up the nutrition world but she got it right,” said Yusuf.

Zurich Heart House (ZHH) posted a YouTube video of Dr. Yusuf's 20-minute lecture which triggered a March 2 MedPage Today article by Crystal Phend* about some nutrition professionals throwing snit fits about it.

By then ZHH had taken down the video of the lecture from their YouTube site -- click here for their explanation of what happened -- but copies were popping up on other YouTube accounts.

I've reported about various attempts by credentialed professionals to censor Ms. Teicholz, so I downloaded a copy of Dr. Yusuf's lecture, edited out a clip in which Dr. Yusuf praises her work and posted it to my YouTube account.

Last month Zurich Heart House filed a copyright violation claim against me with YouTube which resulted in the clip being taken down.

I promptly responded with a counter-notification that the 50-second clip was protected under Fair Use laws.

On May 11, I received an e-mail (see below) from ZHH manager Regula Schneider asking me to cooperate with their takedown request and informing me that "We have not initiated legal steps."

Was that a legal saber being rattled? Who knows?

I didn't reply because if ZHH wished to properly contest my counter-notification, they should have done so via YouTube, not by contacting me directly. 

In any event, apparently ZHH dropped whatever they were rattling because today YouTube found in my favor and the clip's online again.







* Ms. Phend failed to provide Dr. Yusuf the opportunity to respond to his critics, so I blogged a March 20 item in which journalism ethics experts commented on that aspect of her reporting.

Addendum (4/22/17): This is the second time I've prevailed in a YouTube copyright violation complaint. In 2014, Boise, ID, TV station KTVB tried to take down a 20-second clip I posted that came from a newscast in which a local firefighter stated that he had performed the Heimlich maneuver on a drowning victim. In my counter-claim I insisted the clip was protected under Fair Use laws. YouTube agreed with me.

PCRM's seemingly defunct "Henry J. Heimlich Award for Innovative Medicine," last presented in 2010

According to junk science debunker  Joe "Dr. Joe" Schwarcz PhD, Director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society:

I consider PCRM [The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine] to be a fanatical animal rights group with a clear cut agenda of promoting a vegan lifestyle and eliminating all animal experimentation.

My father joined PCRM in the late 1980s as member of the organization's "medical advisory board."

By then, he'd been exiled from legitimate medicine.

Among other problems, in 1977 dad was fired for misconduct from his last hospital job and subsequently descended into medical quackery.

Nevertheless, he was welcomed with open arms into PCRM by the organization's founding president, celebrity doctor Neal Barnard MD, who's given to wearing a white lab coat in publicity photos.

Here are some of his diet books in which he claims "going vegan" will cure just about anything that ails you.

source

Back in the day, presumably Dr. Barnard thought affiliating with a famous name like Dr. Maneuver would boost the profile and credibility of his operation.

And for the next few decades things seemed to go that way.

But in 2003, as a result of research by my wife Karen and me (and my outreach to reporters), my father was exposed as a dangerous crackpot via scores of mainstream print and broadcast exposes.

Some of that stuff hitting the fan has blown back onto PCRM and Dr. Barnard.

For example, via a hard-hitting 2010 LA Weekly report by Paul Teetor:

Barnard declined repeated requests for comment.

My father died in December but -- per this Fargo, North Dakota TV expose last week by investigative reporter Bradford Arick-- his ghost still haunts Dr. Barnard's organization.

If you were in the area of North University and 12th Avenue, you probably saw about a dozen people holding signs and banners. And you’ve no doubt heard about the Heimlich maneuver to save choking victims. But the group you saw protesting counted the inventor of that life-saving skill as a board member. Our investigation finds Dr. Henry Heimlich passed away last year, but his past is far from clean cut. And the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is promoting what some say is dangerous medical treatment.

...But who is this group?

"How does someone look at I’ll say an event like this demonstration and not say well you're not actually a physician's organization, you're just an animal rights advocacy group?” asked Arick.

...On their board until his recent death, the inventor of the Heimlich maneuver, Dr. Henry Heimlich. PCRM promoted using the maneuver as a way to save a drowning victim, something the American Heart Association calls “unnecessary and potentially dangerous”. How is that responsible medicine?

...Further marring Heimlich’s legacy, his belief in Malariotherapy. It’s deliberately infecting a person with malaria as a cure for things like cancer and HIV, and he carried out human trials in Africa, something the World Health Organization and CDC have both denounced.

...There’s another local connection here too. The President of PCRM is Dr. Neal Barnard, and he says he grew up in Fargo.

Perhaps the ultimate irony, when dad died in December, a tribute to him was published on PCRM's website.

Here's a screenshot:


Here's a screenshot from dad's obituary in the Washington Post, describing how he developed his namesake anti-choking choking treatment in 1973 at Cincinnati's Jewish Hospital:

I don't have any expertise or opinions about the use of animals in medical research, but here are a couple of medical ethics brain teasers.

Would PCRM have attempted to shut down my father's experiments on the four beagles?

Does Dr. Barnard think my father should not have conducted the experiments?

For more about PCRM's 30-year relationship with my father, click here.