The China Study - T. Colin Campbell and Thomas M. Campbell

Science-The Dark Side

WHEN I WAS LIVING IN AMOUNTAIN VALLEY outside of Blacksburg, Virginia, my family enjoyed visiting a retired farmer down the road, Mr. Kinsey, who always had a funny story to tell. We used to look forward to eve- nings listening to his stories on his front porch. One of my favorites was the great potato bug scam.
He told us of his farm days before pesticides, and recounted that when a potato crop became infested with potato bugs, the bugs had to be removed and killed, one by one, by hand. One day, Mr. Kinsey noticed an advertisement in a farm magazine for a great potato bug killer, on sale for five dollars. Although five dollars was no small sum of money in those days, Mr. Kinsey figured the bugs were enough of a hassle to warrant the investment. A short while later, when he received the great potato bug killer, he opened the package and found two blocks of wood and a short list of three instructions:
• Pickuponeblockofwood.
• Place the potato bug on the flat face of the wood.
• Pick up the second block of wood and press firmly onto the potato bug.
Scams, tricks and outright deception for personal gain are as old as history itself, and perhaps no diScipline in our society has suffered more from this affliction than the diScipline of health. Very few experiences are as personal and as powerful as those of people who have lost their health prematurely. Understandably, they are willing to believe and try just about anything that might help. They are a highly vulnerable group of consumers.
In the mid-1970s, along came a prime example of a health scam, at least according to the medical establishment. It concerned an alternative cancer treatment called Laetrile, a natural compound made largely from apricot pits. If you had cancer and had been unsuccessfully treated by your regular doctors here in the United States, you may have considered heading to Tijuana, Mexico. Washington Post Magazine documented the story of Sylvia Dutton, a fifty-three-year-old woman from Florida, who had done just that as a last attempt to thwart a cancer that had already spread from her ovaries to her lymph system.1 Friends and fellow churchgoers had told her and her husband about the Laetrile treatment and its ability to cure advanced cancer. In the magazine article,1 Sylvia's husband said, "There are at least a dozen people in this area who were told they were going to be dead from cancer who used Laetrile and now they're out playing tennis."
The catch, however, was that Laetrile was a highly contentious treat- ment. Some people in the medical establishment argued that animal studies had repeatedly shown Laetrile to have no effect on tumors.1 Because of this, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had decided to suppress the use of Laetrile, which gave rise to the popular clinics south of the border. One famous hospital in Tijuana treated "as many as 20,000 American patients a year."l One of those patients was Sylvia Dutton, for whom Laetrile unfortunately did not work.
But Laetrile was only one of many alternative health products. By the
end of the 1970s, Americans were spending $1 billion a year on vari-
ous supplements and potions that promised magical benefits. These
included pangamic acid, which was touted as a previously undiscovered vitamin with virtually unlimited powers, various bee concoctions and
other supplement products including garlic and zinc.
At the same time in the scientific community, more and more health
information, specifically nutrition information, was being generated at a furious pace. In 1976, Senator George McGovern had convened a committee that drafted dietary goals recommending decreased con- sumption of fatty animal foods and increased consumption of fruits and vegetables because of their effects on heart disease. The first draft of this report, linking heart disease and food, caused such an uproar that a ma- jor revision was required before it was released for publication. In a per- sonal conversation McGovern told me that he and five other powerful senators from agricultural states lost their respective elections in 1980 in part because they had dared to take on the animal foods industry.
At the end of the 1970s, the McGovern report succeeded in prodding the government to produce its first-ever dietary guidelines, which were rumored to promote a message similar to that of McGovern's commit- tee. At about the same time, there were widely publicized government debates about whether food additives were safe, and whether saccharin caused cancer.
PLAYING MY PART
In the late 1970s I found myself in the middle of this rapidly changing environment. By 1975 my program in the Philippines had ended, and I was well into my experimental laboratory work here in the United States, after having accepted a full professorship with tenure at Cornell University. Some of my early work on aflatoxin and liver cancer in the Philippines (chapter two) had garnered widespread interest, and my subsequent laboratory work investigating nutritional factors, carcino- gens and cancer (chapter three) was attracting national attention. At that time, I had one of only two or three laboratories in the country do- ing basic research on nutrition and cancer. It was a novel endeavor.
From 1978 to 19791 took a year-long sabbatical leave from Cornell to go to the epicenter of national nutritional activity, Bethesda, Maryland. The organization that I was working with was the Federation of Ameri- can Societies for Experimental Biology and Medicine, or FASEB. Six in- dividual research societies made up the federation, representing patholo- gy, biochemistry, pharmacology, nutrition, immunology and physiology. The FASEB sponsored the annual joint meetings of all six societies, and upwards of more than 20,000 scientists attended. I was a member of two of these societies, nutrition and pharmacology, and was particularly ac- tive in the American Institution of Nutrition (now named the American Society for Nutritional Sciences). My principle work was to chair, under contract to the Food and Drug Administration, a committee of scientists investigating potential hazards of using nutrient supplements.
While there, I also was invited to be on a public affairs committee that served as liaison between the FASEB and Congress. The commit- tee's charge was to stay on top of congreSSional activity and represent our societies' interests in dealings with lawmakers. We reviewed poli- cies, budgets and position statements, met with congressional staffs, and held meetings around big, impressive "boardroom" tables in dis- tinguished, august meeting rooms. I often got the feeling I was in the citadel of science.
As a prerequisite to representing my nutrition society on this pub- lic affairs committee, I first had to decide, for myself, how nutrition is best defined. It's a far more difficult question than you may think. We had scientists who were interested in applied nutrition, which involves people and communities. We had medical doctors interested in isolated food compounds as pharmacological drugs and research scientists who only worked with isolated cells and well-identified chemicals in the laboratory. We even had people who thought nutrition studies should focus on livestock as well as people. The concept of nutrition was far from clear; clarification was critical. The average American's view of nu- trition was even more varied and confused. Consumers were constantly being duped by fads, yet remained intensely interested in nutrient supplements and dietary advice coming from any source, whether that source was a diet book or a government official.
One day in late spring of 1979, while doing my more routine work, I got a call from the director of the public affairs office at the FASEB who coordinated the work of our congressional "liaison" committee.
Ellis informed me that there was yet another new committee being formed within one of the FASEB Societies, the American Institute of Nutrition, that might interest me.
"It's being called the Public Nutrition Information Committee," he told me, "and one of its responsibilities will be to decide what is sound nutritional advice to give to the public.
"Obviously," he said, "there's a big overlap between what this new committee wants to do and what we do on the public affairs commit- tee."
I agreed.
"If you're interested, I would like to have you join this new commit- tee as a representative of the public affairs office," he said.
The proposal sounded good to me because it was early in my career and it meant getting a chance to hear the scholarly views of some of the "big name" nutrition researchers. It also was a committee, accord- ing to its organizers, that could evolve into a "supreme court" of public nutrition information. It might serve, for example, to identify nutrition quackery.
A BIG SURPRISE
At the time that this new Public Nutrition Information Committee was being formed, a maelstrom was developing across town at the presti- gious National Academy of Sciences (NAS) . A public dispute was taking place between the NAS president, Phil Handler, and the internal NAS Food and Nutrition Board. Handler wanted to bring in a group of distin- gUished scientists from outside of the NAS organization to deliberate on the subject of diet, nutrition and cancer and to write a report. This did not please his internal Food and Nutrition Board, which wanted con- trol over this project. Handler's NAS was being offered funding, from Congress, to produce a report on a subject that had not been previously considered in this way.
Within the scientific community it was widely known that the NAS Food and Nutrition Board was strongly influenced by the meat, dairy and egg industries. Two of its leaders, Bob Olson and Alf Harper, had strong connections to these industries. Olson was a well-paid consul- tant to the egg industry, and Harper acknowledged that lO% of his income came from offering his services to food companies, including
large dairy corporations.
Ultimately Handler, as president of the NAS, went around his Food
and Nutrition Board and arranged for a panel of expert scientists from outside of his organization to write the 1982 report Diet, Nutrition, and
As it turned out, I was one of thirteen scientists chosen to be on the panel to write the report.
As could be expected, Alf Harper, Bob Olson and their Food and Nutrition Board colleagues were not happy about losing control of this landmark report. They knew that the report could greatly influence na- tional opinion about diet and disease. Mostly, they feared that the great American diet was going to be challenged, perhaps even called a pos- sible cause of cancer.
James S. Turner, chairman of a related Consumer Liaison Panel with- in the NAS, was critical of the Food and Nutrition Board and wrote, "We can only conclude that the [Food and Nutrition) Board is dominated by a group of change-resistant scientists who share a rather isolated view about diet and disease."3
After being denied control of this promising new report on diet, nutrition and cancer, the pro-industry Board needed to do some dam- age control. An alternate group was quickly established elsewhere: the
Cancer. new Public Nutrition Information Committee. Who were the leaders of the new Public Nutrition Information Committee? Bob Olson, Alfred Harper and Tom Jukes, a long-time industry scientist, each of whom held a university faculty position. I was initially innocent of the group's purpose, but by our first meeting in the spring of 1980, I had discovered that, of the eighteen members on that committee, I was the only indi- vidual who did not have ties to the commercial world of food and drug companies and their coalitions.
This committee was a stacked deck; its members were entrenched in the status quo. Their professional associations, their friends, the people they fraternized with, were all pro-industry. They enjoyed the meaty American diet themselves and were unwilling to consider the possibility that their views were wrong. In addition, some of them enjoyed hand- some benefits, including first-class travel expenses and nice consulting fees, paid by animal foods companies. Although there was nothing il- legal about any of these activities, it certainly laid bare a serious conflict of interest that put most of the committee members at odds with the public interest.
This is analogous to the situation, as it unfolded, surrounding ciga- rettes and health. When scientific evidence first emerged to show that cigarettes were dangerous, there were hordes of health professionals who vigorously defended smoking. For example, the Journal of the American Medical Association continued to advertise tobacco products, and many others played their part to staunchly defend tobacco use. In many cases, these scientists were motivated by understandable caution. But there were quite a few others, particularly as the evidence against tobacco mounted, whose motivations were clearly personal bias and greed.
So there I was, on a committee that was to judge the merit of nutri- tion information, a committee that was comprised of some of the most powerful pro-industry scientists. I was the only one not hand-picked by the industry cronies, as I was there at the behest of the director of the FA5EB public affairs office. At that point in my career, I had not formed any particularly strong views for or against the standard American diet. More than anything, I was interested in promoting honest, open de- bate-something that would immediately put me at odds with this new organization.
THE FIRST MEETING
From the first moment of the first meeting in April 1980, I knew I was the chicken who had wandered into a fox's den, although I went in with high hopes and an open, though naive, mind. After all, lots of scien- tists, myself included, have consulted with companies while working to maintain an objective mind in the best interest of the public health.
In the second session of our first committee meeting the chairman, Tom Jukes, passed around a proposed news release, handwritten by himself, regarding the mission of the committee. In addition to an- nouncing our formation, the news release listed examples of the kind of nutrition frauds that our committee intended to expose.
As I scanned the list of so-called frauds, I was stunned to see the 1977 McGovern dietary goals5 on the list. First drafted in 1976, these relatively modest goals suggested that less meat and fat consumption and more fruit and vegetable consumption might prevent heart disease. In this proposed news release, they were described as nothing more than simple quackery, just like the widely condemned Laetrile and pangamic acid preparations. In essence, the recommendation to shift our eating habits to more fruits and vegetables and whole grains was a fraud. This was the committee's attempt to demonstrate their ability to
be the supreme arbiter ofreliable scientific information!
Having looked forward to my membership on this new committee, I was shocked to see what was emerging. Although I had no particular predilection toward anyone type of diet at the time, I knew that the landmark diet, nutrition and cancer panel that I was on at the National Academy of Sciences would likely recommend something similar to Mc- Govern's goals, this time citing cancer research instead of heart disease research. The scientific results with which I was familiar very clearly seemed to justify the moderate recommendations made by McGovern's
dietary goals committee.
Sitting next to me at our first meeting was Alf Harper, whom I had
held in high esteem since our days at MIT where he was the General Foods Professor of Nutritional Sciences. Early in the meeting, when this handwritten proposed news release was passed out to the commit- tee members, I leaned over to Harper and pointed to the place where it listed McGovern's dietary goals amongst other common scams and whispered incredulously, "Do you see this?"
Harper could sense my unease, even disbelief, and so quickly spoke
up. In a patronizing tone, he said to the group, "There are honorable people in our society who may not necessarily agree with this list. Per- haps we should put it on hold." A reluctant discussion ensued, and they decided to forgo the proposed press release.
With the conclusion of the news release issue, the meeting came to an end. As far as I was concerned, it was a dubious beginning, at best.
A couple of weeks later, back in upstate New York, I turned on a morning TV news show and Tom Brokaw appeared on the screen and started talking about nutrition with Bob Olson, of all people. They were discussing a recent report that Olson and friends had produced at the National Academy of Sciences called "Toward Healthful Diets." This report, which was one of the briefest, most superficial reports on health ever produced by the NAS, extolled the virtues of the high-fat, high- meat American diet and basically confirmed that all was well with how America was eating.
From a scientific point of view, the message was a doozy. I remem- ber one exchange where Tom Brokaw asked about fast food, and Olson confidently stated that McDonald's hamburgers were fine. With millions of viewers watching this "expert" praise the health value of McDonald's hamburgers, it's no wonder that consumers around the country were confused. Only a handful of insiders could possibly know that his views did not even come close to reflecting the best understanding of the sci- ence at the time.
THE SECOND MEETING
We were back for round two in Atlantic City at our annual meeting in late spring of 1981. From our correspondence over the past year, the committee already had an informal agenda in place. First, we were to establish the proposition that nutrition scams were eroding the public's trust in the nutrition research community. Second, we needed to pub- licize the idea that advocating more vegetable and fruit consumption and less meat and high-fat foods was, itself, a scam. Third, we intended to position our committee as a permanent, standing organization. Up to this point, our group had only served in a temporary capacity, as an exploratory committee. Now it was time to get on with our job of becoming the permanent, principle source of reliable nutrition informa- tion in the U.S.
Within the first few days of arriving at the convention, a fellow mem- ber of the committee, Howard Applebaum, told me of the developing gossip. "Did you hear?" he whispered. "Olson's decided that they're go- ing to reconstitute the committee and you are going to be removed." At that time, Olson was still serving his one-year term as president of the parent society, the American Institute of Nutrition, and had the power to do such things.
I remember thinking that this news was neither surprising nor dis- appointing. I knew I was the black sheep of the committee and had al- ready stepped out of line at our inaugural meeting the previous year. My continued involvement in this particular group was going to amount to nothing more than trying to swim up Niagara Falls. The only reason I was involved in the first place was because the director of the public af- fairs office at the FASEB had secured me the spot.
I had thought the first year's committee meeting was dubious, but I ran into an even more bizarre beginning at that second meeting a year later, before Olson had the chance to remove me. When the proposal to become a permanent organization within our society was put forth, I was the only one to challenge the idea. I expressed concern that this committee and its activities reeked of McCarthyism, which had no place in a scientific research society. What I was saying made the chair of the committee intensely angry and physically hostile, and I decided it was best to just leave the room. I was clearly a threat to everything the com- mittee members wanted to achieve.
After relating the whole ordeal to the newly-elected incoming presi- dent of the society, Professor Doris Calloway of UC Berkeley, the com- mittee was abolished and reformed, with me as the chair. Fortunately, I persuaded our six-member committee to disband after less than a year, and the whole sorry affair came to an end.
To stay and "fight the good fight," so to speak, was not an option. It was early in my career and the awesome power wielded by the seniors in my society was stark and intellectually brutal. For many of these char- acters, searching for a truth that promoted public health over the status quo was not an option. I am absolutely convinced that had I busied myself with tackling these issues so early in my career, I would not be writing this book. Research funding and publications would have been difficult if not impossible to obtain.
Meanwhile, Bob Olson and some of his colleagues turned their at- tention elsewhere, focusing on a relatively new organization founded in 1978 called the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH). Headquartered in New York City, the ACSH bills itself, still today, as a
"consumer education consortium concerned with issues related to food, nutrition, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, lifestyle, the environment and health." The group also claims to be an "independent, nonprofit, tax-ex- empt organization,"6 but they receive 76% of their funding from corpo- rations and corporate donors, according to the National Environmental Trust who cite the Congressional Quarterly's Public Interest Profiles. According to the National Environmental Trust,? the ACSH has claimed, in their reports, that cholesterol is not related to coronary heart disease, "the unpopularity of food irradiation. .. is not based in science," "endocrine disruptors" (e.g., PCBs, dioxins, etc.) are not a human health problem, saccharin is not carcinogenic and implementa- tion of fossil-fuel restrictions to control global warming should not be implemented. Searching for a serious critique of the food industry from the ACSH is like searching for a needle in a haystack. Although I believe that some of their arguments may have merit, I seriously question their
claim to be an objective broker of "consumer education."
FALLING ON MY PETARD
During the entire experience with the Public Nutrition Information Com- mittee, I continued to work on the National Academy of Sciences report on diet, nutrition and cancer, which was released in June 1982.4 As might have been expected, when this report was published all hell broke loose. Being the first such report on diet and cancer, it received extensive public- ity; fast becoming the most sought-after report in NAS history. It was estab- lishing high-profile goals for the dietary prevention of cancer which were very similar to those of the 1976 McGovern Committee report on diet and heart disease. Principally; we were encouraging the consumption of fruits, vegetables and whole grain cereal products, while decreasing total fat in- take. The fact that this report was concerned with cancer instead of heart disease, however, elevated emotions. The stakes were high and getting higher; cancer incites a far greater fear than heart disease.
Given the stakes, some powerful enemies came out of the woodwork. Within two weeks, the Council on Agriculture, Science and Technology (CAST), an influential lobbying group for the livestock-based farming industry, produced a report summarizing the views of fifty-six "experts" who were concerned about the effect of our NAS report on the agricul- ture and food industries. Olson, Jukes, Harper and their like-minded colleagues on the now defunct Public Nutrition Information Commit- tee weighed in as experts. Their report was quickly published, then placed in the hands of all 535 u.s. congressional members. It was clear that the CAST was deeply concerned about the possible impact that our report might have on the public.
The CAST wasn't the only group that stepped up to criticize the report. In addition, there were the American Meat Institute, National Broiler Council, National Cattlemen's Association, National Livestock and Meat Board, National Meat Association, National Milk Producers Federation, National Pork Producers Council, National Turkey Fed- eration and United Egg Producers.3 I wouldn't presume to know how much cancer research the National Turkey Federation conducts, but I'm guessing that their criticism of our report was not born out of their de- sire for truth in science.
It was ironic that I had learned some of my most valuable lessons growing up on a dairy farm, and yet the work I was doing was portrayed as being at odds with agricultural interests. Of course, these mammoth corporate interests were far removed from the farmers I knew growing up-the hardworking, honest families that maintained small farms, just big enough to get by comfortably. I often have wondered whether these Washington agricultural interests truly represent America's great farm- ing tradition, or whether they only represent agricultural conglomerates with operations worth tens of millions of dollars.
Alf Harper, who had written a strong letter of support for my first faculty position after leaving MIT, wrote me a stern personal letter in which he declared that I had "fallen on [my] own petard." A petard is a type of bomb or firecracker. Apparently, my involvement in the Public Nutrition Information Committee and the NAS Diet, Nutrition and Can- cer report was finally too much for even him to bear.
Times were hot, to be sure. Congressional hearings, in which I testi- fied, were held on the NAS report itself; People magazine featured me in a prominent article, and an endless series of news media reports contin- ued over the next year.
AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR CANCER RESEARCH
It seemed that for the first time in our history, the government was seri- ously thinking about what we eat as a means of controlling cancer. This was fertile territory for doing something new, and something new did indeed fall into my lap. I was invited to assist a new organization called the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) in Falls Church, Virginia. The founders of this organization were fund-raisers and had learned that it was possible to raise, through mailing campaigns, large sums of money for cancer research. It seemed that many people were interested in learning something new about cancer beyond the usual model of surgery, radiation and cytotoxic drugs.
This budding organization was well aware of our 1982 NAS report4 that focused on diet and cancer, and so invited me to join them as their senior science advisor. I encouraged them to focus on diet because the nutrition connection with cancer was becoming an important area of research, yet was receiving very little, if any, support from the major funding agencies. I especially encouraged them to emphasize whole foods as a source of nutrition, not nutrient supplements, partly because this was the message of the NAS report.
As I began to work with the AICR, two challenges Simultaneously arose. First, the AICR needed to get established as a credible organization to promote the message and to support research. Second, the NAS recom- mendations needed to be publiCized. Therefore, I thought it made sense for the AICR to help publicize the NAS recommendations. Dr. Sushma Palmer, executive director of the NAS project,4 and Harvard professor Mark Hegsted, who was the key advisor to the McGovern Committee, agreed to join me in endorsing this AICR project. Simultaneously, the AICR preSident, Marilyn Gentry, suggested that the AICR could publish the NAS report and send free copies to 50,000 physicians in the u.s. These projects, which seemed to me to be logical, useful and socially responsible, were also highly successful. The associations we were mak- ing and the exposure we were generating were aimed at increasing the public's health. As I was qUick to find out, however, creating an organiza- tion focused on diet as a central link in cancer causation was seen as a threat to a great many people. It was clear that the AICR's projects were beginning to hit the mark because of the hostile feedback coming from the food, medical and drug industries. It seemed that every effort was be- ing made to discredit them.
I was surprised that government interference was particularly harsh. National and state attorney general offices questioned the AICR's status and its fund-raising procedures. The U.s. Post Office joined in the fray, questioning whether the AICR could use the mail to spread "junk" in- formation. We all had our suspicions as to who were encouraging these government offices to quash the dissemination of this diet and cancer information. Collectively, these public agencies were making life very difficult. Why were they attacking a nonprofit organization promoting f cancer research? It all came down to the fact that the AICR, like the NAS, was pushing an agenda that connected diet and cancer.
The American Cancer Society became an especially vigorous detrac- tor. In its eyes, the AICR had two strikes against it: it might compete for the same funding donors, and it was trying to shift the cancer discus- sion toward diet. The American Cancer Society had not yet acknowl- edged that diet and nutrition were connected to cancer. (It wasn't until many years later in the early 1990s that it developed dietary recom- mendations to control cancer when the idea was receiving considerable currency with the public.) It was very much a medically-based organi- zation invested in the conventional use of drugs, radiation and surgery. A short while before, the American Cancer Society had contacted our NAS committee about the possibility of our joining them to produce dietary recommendations to prevent cancer. As a committee, we de- clined, although a couple of the people on our committee did offer their individual services. The American Cancer Society seemed to sense a big
story on the horizon and didn't like the idea that another organization, the AICR, might get the credit.
MISINFORMATION
It may seem that I am coming down a tad harshly on an organization that most people regard as purely benevolent, but the American Cancer Society acted differently behind the scenes than it did in public.
On one occasion, I traveled to an upstate New York town where I had been invited to give a lecture to the local chapter of the American Cancer Society, as I had done elsewhere. During my lecture, I showed a slide that made reference to the new AICR organization. I did not men- tion my personal association, so the audience was not aware that I was their senior science advisor.
After the lecture, I took questions and my host asked me, "Do you know that AICR is an organization of quacks?"
"No," 1 said, "I don't." I'm afraid 1 didn't do such a good job of hid- ing my skepticism of her comment, because she felt obliged to explain, "That organization is being run by a group of quacks and discredited doctors. Some of them have even served time in prison."
Prison time? This was news to me!
Again, without revealing my association with the AICR, 1 asked, "How do you know that?" She said she saw a memo that had been cir- culated to local American Cancer SOciety offices around the country.
Before leaving, I arranged for her to send me a copy of the memo she was referring to, and, in a day or so, she did.
The memo had been sent from the office of the national president of the American Cancer Society, who also was a senior executive of the pres- tigious Roswell Park Memorial Institute for Cancer Research in Buffalo. This memo alleged that the scientific "chair" of the organization, without naming me, was heading up a group of "eight or nine" discredited physi- cians, several of whom had spent time in prison. It was total fabrication. I didn't even recognize the names of these discredited physicians and had no idea how something so vicious could have gotten started.
After snooping around a little more, I discovered the person in the American Cancer Society office in Buffalo who was responsible for the memo. I phoned him. Not surprisingly, he was evasive and only said that he had gotten this information from an unnamed reporter. It was impossible to trace the original source. The one thing I do know for sure was that this memo was distributed by the office of the American Cancer Society's president.
I also learned that the National Dairy Council, a powerful industry lobbying group, had obtained a copy of the same memo and proceeded to distribute a notice of its own to its local offices around the country. The smear campaign against the AICR was widespread. The food, phar- maceutical and medical industries through and/or parallel to the Ameri- can Cancer Society and the National Dairy Council were showing their true colors. Prevention of cancer with low-cost, low-profit plant foods was not welcomed by the food and pharmaco-medical industries. With support from a trusting media, their combined power to influence the public was overwhelming.
PERSONAL CONSEQUENCES
The ending of this story, however, is a happy one. Although the AICR's first couple of years were turbulent and difficult for me both personally and profeSSionally, the smear campaigns finally started to wane. No lon- ger considered "on the fringe," the AICR has now expanded to England (the World Cancer Research Fund, WCRF, in London) and elsewhere. For over twenty years now, the AICR has run a program that funds research and education projects on the link between diet and cancer. I initially organized and chaired that grant program, and then continued as the AICR's senior science advisor for several years, in a few different stints, after its initial founding.
One more unfortunate affair, however, bears mention. I was informed by my nutrition society's Board of Directors that two society members (Bob Olson and Alf Harper) had proposed to have me expelled from the society, supposedly because of my association with the AICR. It would have been the first expulsion in the history of the society. I had to go to Washington to be "interviewed" by the president of the society and the director of nutrition at the FDA. Most of their questions concerned the AICR.
The whole ordeal proved stranger than fiction. Expel a prominent society member-shortly after I was nominated to be the organization's president-for being involved with a cancer research organization? Lat- er, I found myself reflecting on the whole ordeal with a colleague who knew the inner workings of our society, Professor Sam Tove of North Carolina State University. He, of course, knew all about the investiga- tion, as well as other shenanigans. In our discussion, I told him about AICR being a worthy organization with good intentions. His response has resonated with me ever since. "It's not about AICR," he said. "It's about what you did on the National Academy of Sciences report on diet, nutrition and cancer."
When the NAS's report concluded in June 1982 that a lower intake of fat and a higher intake of fruits, vegetables and whole grain products would make for a healthier diet, I had betrayed, in the eyes of some, the nutrition research community. Supposedly, as one of the two diet and cancer experimental researchers on the panel, it was my job to protect the reputation of the American diet as it was. After my failure to do so, my subsequent involvement with the AICR and its promotion of the NAS report only made matters worse.
Luckily, reason prevailed in this whole farcical encounter. A board meeting was held to vote on whether I should be expelled from my so- ciety, and I handily survived the vote (6-0, with two abstentions).
It was hard not to take all of this personally, but there's a larger point here, and it's not personal. In the world of nutrition and health, scien- tists are not free to pursue their research wherever it leads. Coming to the "wrong" conclusions, even through first-rate science, can damage your career. Trying to disseminate these "wrong" conclusions to the public, for the sake of public health, can destroy your career. Mine was not destroyed-I was lucky, and some good people stood up for me. But it could have gone much worse.
After all of these numerous ordeals, I have a better understanding of
why my society did the things it did. The awards funded by Mead John- son Nutritionals, Lederle Laboratories, BioServe Biotechnologies and previously Procter and Gamble and the Dannon Institute-all food and drug outfits-represented a strange marriage between industry and my sOciety.8 Do you believe that these "friends" of the society are interested in pursuing scientific investigation, no matter what the conclusions maybe?
CONSEQUENCES FOR THE PUBLIC
Ultimately, the lessons I learned in my career had little to do with specific names or specific institutions. These lessons have more to do with what goes on behind the scenes of any large institution. What happens behind the scenes during national policy discussions, wheth- er it happens in scientific societies, the government or in industry boardrooms, is supremely important for our health as a nation. The personal experiences I have talked about in this chapter-only a sam- ple of such experiences-have consequences far greater than personal aggravation and damage to my career. These experiences illustrate the dark side of science, the side that harms not just individual research- ers who get in the way, but all of society. It does this by systematically attempting to conceal, defeat and destroy viewpoints that oppose the status quo.
There are some people in very influential government and university positions who operate under the guise of being scientific "experts," whose real jobs are to stifle open and honest scientific debate. Perhaps they receive significant personal compensation for attending to the in- terests of powerful food and drug companies, or perhaps they merely have an honest personal bias toward a company-friendly viewpoint. Personal bias is stronger than you may think. I know scientists with family members who died from cancer and it angers them to entertain the possibility that personal choices, like diet, could have played a role in the death of their loved ones. Likewise, there are scientists for whom the high-fat, high animal-based food diet they eat every day is simply what they learned was healthy at a young age; they love the habit, and they don't want to change.
The vast majority of scientists are honorable, intelligent and dedicated to the search for the common good rather than personal gain. However, there are a few scientists who are willing to sell their souls to the high- est bidder. They may not be many in number, but their influence can be, I
vast. They can corrupt the good name of institutions of which they are a part and, most importantly, they can create vast confusion among the public, which often cannot know who is who. You might turn on the TV one day to see an expert praising McDonald's hamburgers, and then read a magazine the same day that you should eat less high-fat red meat to protect yourself against cancer. Who is to be believed?
Institutions also are part of the dark side of science. Committees like the Public Nutrition Information Committee and the American Council on Science and Health generate lopsided panels and committees and institutions that are far more interested in promoting their point of view than debating scientific research with an open mind. If a Public Nutrition Information Committee report says that low-fat diets are fraudulent scams, and a National Academy of Sciences report says the opposite, which one is right?
In addition, this closed-mindedness in science spreads across entire systems. The American Cancer SOCiety was not the only health insti- tution that worked to make life difficult for the AICR. The National Cancer Institute public information office, Harvard Medical School and a few other universities with medical schools were highly skepti- cal of the AICR and, in some cases, outright hostile. The hostility of medical schools first surprised me, but when the American Cancer Society, a very traditional medical institution, also joined the fray, it became obvious that there really was a "Medical Establishment." The behemoth did not take kindly to the idea of a serious connec- tion between diet and cancer or, for that matter, virtually any other disease. Big Medicine in America is in the business of treating disease with drugs and surgery after symptoms appear. This means that you might have turned on the TV to see that the American Cancer Society gives almost no credence to the idea that diet is linked to cancer, and then opened the paper to see that the American Institute for Cancer Research says what you eat impacts your risk of getting cancer. Who do you trust?
Only someone familiar with the inside of the system can distinguish between sincere positions based in science and insincere, self-serving positions. I was on the inside of the system for many years, working at the very top levels, and saw enough to be able to say that science is not always the honest search for truth that so many believe it to be. It far too often involves money, power, ego and protection of personal interests above the common good. Very few, if any, illegal acts need to occur. It doesn't involve large payoffs being delivered to secret bank accounts or to private investigators in smoky hotel lobbies. It's not a Hollywood story; it's just day-to-day government, science and industry in the United States.