18th December 2019
As readers of this blog know I was obliterated from Wikipedia recently. Many have expressed support and told me not to get down about it. To be perfectly frank, the only time I knew I was on Wikipedia was when someone told me I was going to be removed. So it hasn’t caused great psychological trauma.
In fact my feelings about this are probably best expressed on a Roman tombstone. It has been translated in different ways, but my favourite version is the following:
I was not
I was
I am not
I care not
However, in the greater scheme of things, whilst my removal from Wiki is completely irrelevant, in another way it is hugely important. As Saladin said of Jerusalem, whilst he was battling with the Christians during the crusades. ‘What is Jerusalem? Jerusalem is nothing; Jerusalem is everything.’
My removal from Wikipedia is nothing. My removal from Wikipedia is everything. Not because it is me, but because of what it represents. Not to beat about the bush, there is a war going on out there between scientific enlightenment, and the forces of darkness.
You think that is too dramatic? Well, this is what Richard Horton – editor of the Lancet for many years – has to say about the current state of medical science.
‘The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue…science has taken a turn towards darkness.’ Richard Horton
Science has taken a turn towards darkness? Of course science cannot really turn anywhere. It is not an entity. Science is simply made up of people. The scientific method itself is simply an attempt to discover what is factually true, by removing human bias. It is, like everything humans do, imperfect. Bias is always there.
What Horton means is that the methods used to pursue science have increasingly moved from the pure Olympian ideal, a disinterested quest for truth, to something else. Distortion, manipulation and bias. In some cases downright lies. I hesitate to use the term ‘fake news’, but that is what it is. What it is becoming.
As John Ioannidis had to say in his seminal paper ‘Why most published research findings are false’
‘Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. It is more likely for a research claim to be false than true.’1
I think, in truth, this very much depends on the area of science you are looking at. Someone examining the food intake of the fruit bat is probably working away free from any pressure to make their findings fit with pre-existing ideas. Whilst they could be wrong, they will not been working to any agenda.
Some areas are highly contentious, where truth becomes the first casualty. For example, global warming, where you can see dreadful science being done on all sides, as people desperately try to prove their point. I watch on, in scientific despair. I have no idea what to believe, or who to believe, anymore.
Moving back to medical scientific research, which is more my area. Much of what is going on here is a complete disaster, but nutritional science is particularly awful. A complete mess. I have virtually given up reading any paper in this area as they just annoy me so much. I simply look at the authors involved, and I know what the paper is going to say. This does save time.
Ioannidis has turned his attention to nutritional science, in some detail. To quote from The American Council on Science and Health:
Dr. Ioannidis bluntly states that nutrition epidemiology is in need of “radical reform.” In a paragraph that perfectly captures the absurdity of the field, he writes:
“…eating 12 hazelnuts daily (1 oz) would prolong life by 12 years (ie,1 year per hazelnut), drinking 3 cups of coffee daily would achieve a similar gain of 12 extra years, and eating a single mandarin orange daily (80 g) would add 5 years of life. Conversely, consuming 1 egg daily would reduce life expectancy by 6 years, and eating 2 slices of bacon (30 g) daily would shorten life by a decade, an effect worse than smoking. Could these results possibly be true?”
The answer to his rhetorical question is obviously no. So, how did this garbage get published?
How did this garbage get published? How does the garbage get published? On the other hand how did a major study on replacing saturated fat with polyunsaturated fat (The Minnesota Coronary Experiment) NOT get published?
Because it found that polyunsaturated fat did lower cholesterol levels, but the more it lowered the cholesterol level, the greater the risk of death! That is in the results, and you can read that for yourself – this was the conclusion:
Available evidence from randomized controlled trials shows that replacement of saturated fat in the diet with linoleic acid effectively lowers serum cholesterol but does not support the hypothesis that this translates to a lower risk of death from coronary heart disease or all causes. Findings from the Minnesota Coronary Experiment add to growing evidence that incomplete publication has contributed to overestimation of the benefits of replacing saturated fat with vegetable oils rich in linoleic acid. 2
The results of this study were, eventually found in the garage of the son of one of the lead investigators. It was recovered and published forty years later in the British Medical Journal. Long after one of the lead investigators, Ancel Keys, had died. Yes, indeed.
I wrote the book “Doctoring Data” to try and shine some light on the methods used to distort and manipulate data. I try, as best as I can, to follow the scientific method. That includes discussion and debate, to test ones ideas in the furnace of sustained attacks.
However, if you try to do this, the forces of darkness come after you, and they come hard. Especially if ever dare to suggest that animal fats, saturated fats, are not in the least harmful. At which point you waken the vegan beast, and this beast is not the least interested in science, or the scientific method, or discussion or debate.
It has one aim, and that is to silence anyone, anywhere, who dares to question the vegan philosophy. Aided and abetted by the Seventh Day Adventist church. Below is a short list, non-exhaustive list, of those who have suffered their wrath:
Prof Tim Noakes – South Africa
Dr Maryanne Demasi – Australia
Dr Gary Fettke – Australia
Professor John Yudkin – UK
Dr Aseem Malhotra – UK
Dr Uffe Ravnskov – Sweden
Dr Andreas Eenfeldt – Sweden
Dr Zoe Harcombe – UK
Dr Robert Atkins – US
Nina Teicholz – US
Gary Taubes – US
Dr. Anna Dahlqvist – Sweden
Several of these doctors have been dragged in front of the medical authorities, usually by dieticians, who claim that patients are being damaged. So far, they have all won their cases – often after prolonged and expensive legal hearings. Luckily, the courts recognise logic when they see it.
Uffe Ravnskov has his book, the Cholesterol Myths, questioning the cholesterol hypothesis burned, live on air. All of the brave souls on this list have been accused of ‘killing thousands’ at one time or another. Maryanne Demasi lost her job with the Australian Broadcasting Company.
Now, it seems, the attacks have moved into a different area, such as a determined effort to remove everyone from Wikipedia. When the vegans find someone they don’t like, they work tirelessly to extinguish them from the record. They call them kooks and quacks – but they never ever reveal who they truly are. They exist in the shadows.
They got rid of me from Wikipedia; they are currently attacking Aseem Malhotra, Uffe Ravnskov, Jimmy Moore, and the entire THINCS network. (The International Network of Cholesterol Sceptics). There are even worse things going on, that I cannot speak about yet.
Yes, this is science today. At least it is one part of science – which is not science, and it has definitely turned to the darkness. You can be accused of being a kook and a quack by someone who hides behind anonymity and never dares to show their face. In truth, I know who it is. Someone found out for me. Yes MCE, it is you.
You want a debate, come out into the open, and reveal yourself, your motives and your arguments to the world. Then we can do science. Until then please expect me to hold you in the contempt that you deserve.
1: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16060722/
2: https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i1246
Thanks again, so that I can see the comments easily
Dear Malcolm,
It isn’t just Wikipedia. A whole clutch of health-related organisations which don’t support the Big Pharma status quo have been removed from Pinterest. I quote from an e-mail today:
Dear Reader,
Yesterday, we announced that*Pinterest,*a major social media platform with 250 million users,*banned GreenMedInfo*for posting natural health information, including research questioning vaccine safety.
*The outpouring of support we received from you was simply amazing, *with dozens reporting in that they deleted their Pinterest account in protest (not something we suggested they do!).
*The reality, I believe, is that people are fed up with the increasingly widespread censorship* of content that does not align with powerful financial interests and political agendas which do not serve the common good. This is why, instead of simply ignoring sites like ours, *they are now actively banning us.* And this does not bode well for the future, since much larger platforms like *Facebook have purged hundreds of pages like ours* in the past few months simply for holding a dissenting or minority view about health or politics.
*This is why taking a stand is important. *For me, that stand is to report on the facts so far, which is why I wrote today’s featured article on the topic: *Pinterest Bans GreenMedInfo for Posting Natural Health & Vaccine Safety Info .*
*We are also asking our supporters to do any or all of the following: *
1.
*Join our remaining social media pages, such as Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , Youtube , while they last.*
2.
*File a complaint with Pinterest *
3.
*Join our newsletter (for those who are receiving this as a forward)*
4.
*Become a member or Donate *
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*Don’t let this event get flushed down the Orwellian memory hole. Share this article, to make others aware! *
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*Use our research database: http:///www.greenmedinfo.com *
*/Together, we are making a difference that is having a real impact. /*Natural health and medicine is becoming more and more mainstream than ever before … but so is powerful opposition to it. *Don’t let them take away our voice.* Please forward this email to friends, family, or your health care providers as part of our grassroots movement to educate and empower the world!
*Finally, if it not for _/this newsletter/_**, which renders us entirely independent* from social media, we’d have no leg to stand on. Thankfully, we realized a while ago that the writing was on the wall and unless we wanted to outsource control of our message, or at least its delivery, to publicly traded companies, we’d better build on our own grassroots foundation. *And that’s why we need your support now more than ever. *Please consider donating or becoming a supporting member of our 100% user-supported, ad-free website.
The “it’s more than one social media site” aspect of this is disturbing. It’s very possible that this is in response to the two reports published very recently finally proving the Russian involvement in social media. Harming our faith in science and harming people medically would not be outside the bounds of a cold war. Making soldiers sick is a tactic used before in wars. Just, now they can do it by sowing uncertainty and polarization via leveraging censorship on private platforms. Harming our ability to talk to each other is also a possible act of the cold war (we’ve all heard of the DARPA project that led to the internet in the first place). We may find that these aren’t “vegans” at all. After all, what do we know of them? They talk the most radical vegan talk in a very troll fashion. So far there is no sign of the compassion for animals, peace and love, hippy veganism that I was once a part of.
If Dr Kendrick appears on Russian Wikipedia but not English Wikipedia, it might support your argument.
However, I searched for Малкольм Кендрик (Malcolm Kendrick) on ru.wikipedia.org and drew a blank.
@Martin This would have more weight if someone knew whether he ever did have a page in Russian Wikipedia. It never reached any level of importance in my mind whether he did or not, so I don’t know.
The point still stands that when you see trollish behavior coming supposedly from a certain group, and the behavior doesn’t fit, it’s probably time to ask whether it really is the group members. Or whether the idea to do this really came from the vegans organically, or if it was suggested and supported by bad actors. It’s not unprecedented. Here’s the actual report from Oxford itself.
Click to access IRA-Report.pdf
I may be influenced by the timing, the investigation is very much on my mind. But like I said elsewhere, bias is not an indication of truth or falsehood either. Developments will tell. But will we be living in a censored world by the time developments tell?
Are you suggesting this is part of Russian trolling? Deleting Dr Kendrick from Wiki?
Sasha: No need for Russian trolls. The U.S. and U.K. governments are as thoroughly corrupt as the Russian government. The trolls are most certainly homegrown. While Putin has every right to be paranoid, being nearly surrounded by NATO and facing great hostility from the neocons Trump (I think unintentionally) brought in, the elites in the U.S. and U.K. have much more to lose economically from the truth getting out. Trump wanted improved relations with Russia, but it won’t happen. The neocons don’t want it, and the Democrats would use any overtures to improve relations to scream “Russian collusion!” It was they themselves who colluded with Russian sources through Christopher Steele to attempt to derail Trump’s election (and the Uranium One deal), and since then, to mire us in an investigation which has found nothing, and will find nothing. A bit of a national sport now in the media: Blame the Russians!
I also thought it’s unlikely. I find it strange, though, how people commenting on here and cheering Dr Kendrick’s deletion go out of their way to say that they are vegan…
Sasha: I agree that is odd. The only thing I can think of is that there are a lot of people with nothing better to do than sit at the computer. I also remember Denise Minger describing the torrent of abuse she received when she realized the vegan diet had damaged her health, and blogged about it. The community these people come from has the hallmarks of fundamentalist religion. My own view is that people should be free to eat as they wish without my judging them. What raises my hackles is when government gets involved and encourages or mandates particular ways of eating or medical treatment, whether or not they have a solid scientific basis. It is not government’s role to micromanage our lives, but we are now living in a world where powerful forces wish nothing other than complete control, and it appears to me that the Left has become more dangerous than the Right, though I think those are false distinctions.
Gary: either that or people are trying to deflect attention from where their true ideology (or funding is coming). Or maybe it’s neither. People do lead strange lives on the internet sometimes…
Sasha – The link between paid Russian internet influencers (ie. trolls) is no longer a question. Two reports in the past couple of days have shown exactly what they intended and how far their reach was. The reports focus on social and political issues, so health issues are not in the crosshairs right now.
The two reports are discussed on my blog (not for national or international audiences but for local ones), or if you prefer to seek the news yourself, they came from a company called New Knowledge and another from the Computational Propaganda Project. They were published in the past few days. A few years ago the NY Times Magazine had an article called The Agency which was a landmark in the issue. The reports show that the carrier for the numerous anonymous accounts that drove the trolling came from Russia. And they have screenshots in many cases from accounts which are now banned.
@Gary — the “blame the Russians” theme just got a whole lot more valid, and less conspiracy. We globally, have to consider what this means for us online. The first thing to do is not jump overboard and declare that our institutions are fatally flawed and beyond fixing. That would be what they want us to do.
We need to believe that the institutions in the UK for instance, are going to treat Dr. K’s ideas with the reasoned debate he deserves. In fact, we should require and expect that the NHS will apply fairness to Dr. K’s ideas, not dogma. And it’s not just an issue for Brits. The world watches HHS and NHS and often adopts its policies for their own. So it’s not just a Brit issue. Both those organizations have blundered terribly at times. But to give up on them is to abdicate responsibility and I won’t play that game.
Yes, I think that if we completely lose trust in our institutions we are headed for the rocks. I am trying to make things better, not rip everything apart. Although a bit of ripping may not go amiss
Angelica: all true regarding the fights for influence going on online but my question was – how do you connect it to what is happening in Wiki deletions? As a counter argument, Russia Today at one point interviewed Prof Goetzche on the issue of polypharmacy and later interviewed Dr Tenpenny and RFK, Jr on vaccines. I don’t have the links but I think it can be found online. That’s more than what they got in mainstream Western media which basically ignores their points of view. One could always argue, of course, that Russia Today doesn’t really care about these issues and it’s all just another attempt by Putin to destroy Western democracies…
Sasha: What Russia Today has done with those interviews is what the U.S. media should be doing, but cannot do, because they are so heavily dependent on pharmaceutical advertising. I’ve watched them all, but this is not a Kremlin plot. All of those interviews present facts and opinions the interviewee’s have expressed numerous times elsewhere. RT does a real service to the public by doing this. They surely have a political bias, like every other media outlet, but to smear them simply for being Russian is an act of shooting the messenger and ignoring the message.
Gary, I agree. I was surprised and delighted to see RT interview them. I have no idea whether those interviews were ever translated for Russian speaking audiences. As far as Kremlin trying to destroy the health of Western citizens, I think the medical industrial complex, together with Big Food, are doing a fine job of it and don’t need any help…
It’s unfortunate that RT is now discredited along with everything else. I think all media in every country is part good, part propaganda. The question is, is the propaganda honestly trying to improve public feelings of patriotism (as opposed to nationalism), or is it cynically manipulating people into become more pliant to self serving interests? RT has disappointed me on other issues, unrelated to health, long before now.
On the subject of how I connect social media manipulation with Wikipedia manipulation, it’s simple, Wikipedia is a social media site. It is little more than a forum with moderators. As such it has very little difference and considering its importance (ubiquity, even FDA pulls content directly from it), it would be foolish for IRA to ignore it as a target for manipulating public thought.
I have no doubt that there’s manipulation of media, including social media and Wiki specifically. But I think your original post implied that it could be not vegans but Russian trolls. Or have I misunderstood? I also have doubts that it’s vegans. But Russians? Going after Dr Kendrick?
@Sasha I agree that an average Russian, would be more likely to agree with Dr. K than disagree. But that doesn’t conflict with the trolls, who aren’t sincere in their criticisms, but paid for them. Anyway, there’s no way to prove it without looking at in depth network connection records. It’s just my suspicion and speculation based on behavior. It would be up to social media administrators or authorities to find out, if such a search was warranted. Meanwhile, we guess.
Angelica Nelson: Mistrusting our institutions certainly does not mean giving up on them. It is rather a call to action. To hold their feet to the fire. I see my role, and perceive Dr. Kendrick’s main thrust in this blog, as research and education. Our media has largely failed to inform us, our regulatory agencies have largely failed to protect us, and our political parties (at least in the U.S.) have become two sides of the same coin. It is up to the public. Only the people can fix what ails us, and the internet is still our most democratic forum for communication and education. It has been a long time since I’ve been out of school, but I’ve heard from many sources that Wikipedia is not considered a reliable reference for student work among university faculty. I’ve also learned over the past 3-4 years not to trust the New York Times any more than the New York Post.
@Gary Yes we’ve been poorly informed and infantilized by institutions. I think what the Internet has shown is that people are much more intelligent than we thought. And what trolling has taught, is that even the intelligent can become a billboard for ideology if ridiculed enough for anything that is outside the ideology. This applies also to science and regulation of health issues. Pressuring dissenting voices in medicine to turn mainstream is as bad if not worse than trolling people into fearful silence on social media. I think we need to communicate clearly with the officials that are there to help us and replace them if they don’t help us. The trouble is, there will never be a majority of people affected by bad medical advice. We can’t just win by majority. Even something as common as heart disease doesn’t affect more than 1 in 4 people to a life threatening level (1 in 4 deaths are attrrib to HD in the US). Most of those people never question the mainstream “wisdom.” So we rely on responsible officials to allow dissent in medicine, and act on it when appropriate.
Bravo! I am retired and have a background in research. My MD believes I have FH and immediately prescribed a statin, because my ldl particles were extremely high. I immediately went into research mode, read everything I could get my hands on and opted out of the Statin poisoning! We exercise religiously, eat a clean organic Paleo diet, don’t smoke, mediate and love life. Hence, I believe my risk factors for CHD are very low! Keep up the good fight! Your book was very informative! Helped me to know I was making the right decision and it was a joy to read! From Albuquerque, New Mexico
Get a CAC score. Coronary Artery Calcification – you can read about it. It is the best indicator of CVD risk.
Don’t get a CAC test.
It’s a current favorite of establishment medicine, but what will the results tell you or your doctor? It might at best suggest a bit of your vascular history. If he tells you you must go on statins because of a number, see if he tells you that that would INCREASE your calcification. It would. Is that good? Is that bad? What else is there to do? Nobody can tell you where you stand with any degree of certainty. They may talk about density or lack of it in those deposits. Do they really know what it means? I think not. They might give you a free pass if you have a very low number. Does that mean you don’t have large soft plaque deposits ripe for rupturing because they don’t have the toughening calcification?
Show me the duplicating and confirming double blinded RCTs.
Would a CAC number lead you to change your lifestyle? I hope not.
Overtesting can lead to anxiety and further testing and unnecessary treatment and . . . iatrogenesis
JDPatten
That is my opinion also.
I havé Friends, apparently healthy, always getting á new test for something
Don’t worry, be happy may seem flippant, but there is a lot of truth in it.
Anna Pudelek: Watch Dr. Kendrick’s Ten Contradictions talk from 2014. Dr. Mercola posted it a few days ago, but I suspect it could easily be found, unless youtube is also dropping the hammer of censorship. He talks about FH, and as I recall, the data shows those heterozygous for FH have the same lifespan as the rest of us.
They made a similar argument here:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306987718304729
I don’t think the full paper is available now, though. The abstract is a pretty good summary of their arguments, however.
Anna,
Read this book “Reversing Heart Disease” found here: https://dancobbdom.com/
The author, Daniel Cobb is in Santa Fe and you could consult with him. He knows all about FH. He uses Pauling Therapy (lots of vit C and Lysine + other things) to keep the arteries clean.
Here, here and so say all of us!
Vegans are ignorant and annoying but it’s all about $$$$
OMG. This sounds like a collaboration between (among) William Golding, George Orwell, and Kafka.
Except it’s not fiction!
Exactly my thoughts….
Yes!
When I was young I used to read Stand On Zanzibar (John Brunner), 1984 etc. thinking “this must not happen here!”
Now I realise my contemporaries were reading the same books and thinking “that’s a really good idea!”
Nicely, yet profoundly stated.
Thank you Malcolm.
Lowell
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Lowell,
Sorry to prick your balloon; Snopes does not support you in the quote above.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/soul-voice-of-reason/
I fear these comments could have been applied to research ever since. However today with the proliferation of information and access to it, the problem has become exponentially problematic.
The truth is, surely, that research is about constantly asking questions, not finally coming up with correct answers. However, the general public want correct answers and the temptation is in the rush to provide them.
Someone made the point that on the one hand there are hordes of researchers doing valid science, and on the other hand even more researchers emitting grant-seeking behaviour.
I think it was Isaac Asimov who pointed out that science doesn’t progress via “Eureka!” but by “That’s odd!”
Hi Malcolm, the attack against the THINCS fellows on Wikipedia is not a vegan mafia operation, this is a “skeptics” operation against statin critics. The “skeptics” are a big pharma front group that operate anonymously on Wikipedia to discredit or remove big pharma opponents. The same group attacks Corbyn and other establishment critics.
You may be right. If no-one will reveal themselves to the sunshine, it is difficult to be certain who is after you.
Practically “The Fugitive” in real life. Don’t give up the fight!
Bloody Hell, I’ve heard some insults in my time, but to be compared to a lame-brained Trotskyist takes the biscuit!
Trotsky was extremely intelligent. Mind you, he was also extremely stupid.
I could not agree more with Thomas Jefferson and Dr. Kendrick. Thank you for your truth and wisdom.
Bias is like the relationship between a parent and a straight A student. The parent is proud. The parent believes there is a good reason to be proud. The parent would still be proud if it wasn’t an A but a B, because it’s THEIR child. However all of that is irrelevant to the fact of the success of the child. It may cause the child to work harder, but it didn’t cause the A, nor is it wrong to be proud of the child who got an A.
Bias is tricky. I can be biased that herbs work. And in some cases that has been borne out in scientific tests (poppies, marijuana, turmeric, colchicine ginseng, chamomile, yohimbe… ). But my bias comes from my grandmother anyway. The facts and the bias are interwoven. Bias can lead us to ask questions like “What if it was true? How do we test it?” but it’s treated like it’s proof of the falsehood of the claimed fact. Assuming a biased opinion always refers to a falsehood, is not correct.
The structure of scientific hypothesis and theory is quite good. But people can corrupt anything if they put their bias above the truth, and there is an incentive to do so. To dig out of this, we need to look at the incentives.
I’m pretty sure Dr. K is aware of the incentives, I’ve read Doctoring Data (spectacular by the way), but it’s the ones living in the dark, nurturing precious biases who should be asking for their own biases to be rigorously tested and proved or disproved, instead of attacking doctors who are seeking solutions.
I stand in awe of your self-restraint and demonstration of the Christian behaviour espoused – (but studiously ignored in this battle) – by one of your implacable satans, you know, the one marketing a 250ml ‘liquid breakfast’ that contains 30g of carbs and around 20grams of SUGAR. But fear not, for the 198 calories / 790 kilojoules will be burned off with a 22 minute jogging…
Dr Kendrick, I marvel at your restraint & agree with your all your comments. The list of people you mention all deserve our respect & thanks for shining a light in the dark place Nutriton science finds itself. Progress depends on open discourse, if the annonymous critics of yourself and the others are only prepared to sling mud from their dark corners of the internet, we have a duty to call them on the misinformation they persist in spreading. 1st rule is ‘do no harm’ ! Thank you for your insights & practical approach to hypotheses that are clearly … umm … wrong ! & causing patients harm.
There’s a trend of de-platforming what could be unfairly labelled “political dissidents” at the moment. This soviet era strategy is principally being implemented by large chunks of silicon valley. It includes channels being banned from youtube, political commentators being punted off patreon and thus having their incomes interfered with or social media bans. I’m not at all surprised it is effecting people in your situation, which doesn’t make it less appalling.
It’s very disturbing what is going on all over social media.
The intellectual equivalent of ethnic cleansing.
I’m afraid that social media is only one facet of the problem, virtually all media has been infiltrated. Even mainstream media that I used to respect has given in to their advertisers and paymasters.
Well said, Malcolm, and maybe you should reveal the full name of the culprit, so we can hold this piece if s*** accountable.
In the mean time, please stop waisting you precious energy on these idiots and keep on enlightening us with your knowledge. Our numbers are growing and we will prevail.
Yvonne, if you read carefully through all the 582 comments in Dr Kendrick’s previous blog post, you will find out who the culprit is! (Hint – it’s quite near the end, so read comments from the bottom upwards!)
I am a rather busy person so most of the times I do ot read all the comments, but this seems a nice passtime in the coming holidays 🙂 Thank you
Don’t let the idiots get you down. Keep up the great work.
I have done what little I could. I cancelled my donation subscription to Wikipedia!
Sad that you have to spend valuable time on pointing out the anti-science falsehoods that are being broadcast, and the idealogical weapons that are being used to attack science and scientists. However, tahnk you for doing so. In the end they will win, loud mouthed liars usually do (IMO) in the meantime it is fun irrtating them by writing, as far as we know, facts.
An anecdote which I find amusing, I offered someone a chocolate a few days ago. The chocolates are not very good, until you compare them with all the mainstream products, then they are outstanding, A heatlhy job with unpasteurised cream and 85% chocolate, (this is getting a bit lke a Ronnie Corbett story) so anyway, the offer was declined, with the comment “I have to be careful what I eat”. Oh dear, I always want to know what the perceived problem is, as I have usually guessed before the answer is revealed. Yep, you have probably guessed too “my cholesterol is high”. So I explained the possible life expectation outcomes, with and without, and to explain why the successive results fluctuated, that test itself wasn’t a very good test. I also sent a link to one of your videos. I received the reply “Very interesting, it does make you stop and think”. So a promising result. I suppose I could be accused of attempted murder by some, but, hey ho, you’ve got to go sometime.
AH Notepad,
well done. I have stopped discussing unless asked. the usual result before was to say are you a doctor, and then smile sadly and walk away. I have a friend who has been taking statins for three years and I already see brain fog moving in.
So sad
It’s not just Wikipedia removing people, It’s PayPal, it’s YouTube, it’s Patreon, And probably others I’ve not heard about. There is a great drive currently to remove all people who are overstepping the mark. One has to ask who are the people with such influence and what is ‘the mark’. I think ‘the mark’ is an opinion that they find disagreeable. It is the new dark force operating on the Internet. It is an attempt to sanitise society into only receiving one kind of information. The kind that is acceptable in the eyes of ‘they’. Who are ‘they’? ‘They’ is anyone with an interest that they can promote instead. The Internet makes tiny people vast, and vast corporations, dictators. Sorry for how you have been treated.
Pinterest has removed Sayer Ji’s GreenMedInfo. Who are “they”? I think “they” are the pharmaceutical, chemical and food industries, which all have insiders in the FDA which appears to have a widespread influence worldwide. It’s all about money and profits for shareholders.
I don’t accept “it’s not personal, it’s just business”. This is behaviour likely to cause harm to people through consuming toxic subsrtances, therefore the companies should be accepting liability, not trying to quash opinions that they don’t agree with. They list the nasties that can occur on their product inserts.
You are the light, Dr. K, you are the light. Keep shining!
Great post, well done!
Sent from my iPhone
Very worrying indeed, for all the reasons you mention.
But I am even more concerned about your statement, “There are even worse things going on, that I cannot speak about yet.” I have to assume that you and/or your like-minded colleagues are being attacked at the level of professional registrations, and consequently of employment. If this is the case, there are many who would willingly offer their concrete support. Remember that Dr Sarah Myhill was repeatedly attacked in this way, and with the help of her colleagues and patients she won every one of the spurious actions started against her.
You can win cases against you, but it is time consuming and tiring and may be costly – that’s the plan to discourage ‘heresy’.
I know. When you have lots of time, and lawyers, you can win – even when you lose
I don’t make the suggestion lightly. I have personal experience of how utterly draining such cases can be. The alternative, of course, is to retire from the fray.
Yes, how true!
Both Dr. Fettke, Prof. Noakes as well as our Dr. Dahlqvist know the high cost of fighting for science and the acceptance of the clinical reality in medicin. But when you have won your fight over dangerous dogma it must just “feel fine”. It is a little about “David versus Goliat”.
Malcolm
I find this totally disgusting and beyond belief.
Please keep up the good work
Tell you what, this is getting exciting. Can I make a bid for the film rights?
Brad Pitt gets the lead role…right? Playing me.
That would probably work, Malcolm. I have already spoken to Darth Vader’s agent and he’d be happy to play the leader of the forces of darkness.
Oh, no. Not Brad! I would much rather watch Steve Carell or Bryan Cranston. Much more radical characters who are believable on the big screen. Keep up the fight. You are adored by those of us who do not have the time or the resources or the knowledge to fight the fight. But we are the grassroots movement who follow your advice and make a small wave of energy in the direction of truth. Loved your article. Am forwarding it to many others who need to see the light and come out of the darkness.
I’m thinking Tom Hanks.
Maybe Keanu Reeves… and before you object, read this: https://thefreethoughtproject.com/keanu-reeves-children-hospitals/
Definitely not Brad…..isn’t he one of them vegans? Speaking of which, I really do think there is a NWO agenda; I’m noticing it all around me. *Someone* is desperately trying to make the world go vegan- (and even using “Climate Change” as a pull to try to get us all to stop eating meat). Either that, or it’s an intense backlash- (or probably both?)- because too many people are listening to the “unorthodox view” and getting healthy. In any case, please keep up the good work; we need people like you, Dr. Kendrick! I have read so many of your posts and books throughout the years, and have learned so much.
Is J. Michael Straczynski available for the screenwrite / production / directing? It’s his kind of story.
The title of Peter Gotzsche’s book tells all – Deadly Medicines and Organized Crime.
Yes, and they got rid of him too. Actually, forgot to put his name up there. Forgot.
Forgot ? – Did someone slip a statin into your haggis ?
😉
You can propably add dr. Robert Lustig as well. Late in November ‘MatthewManchester1994’ (former ‘Skeptic From Britain’) changed the category of dr. Lustig Wikipedia page from ‘Low-carbohydrate diets’ to ‘Low-carbohydrate diet advocates’. Apparently also Dr. Lustig has been ‘detected’ by the vegan’s radar.
The level of corruption in medicin is today just unbelievable.
Yes, there are many reasons to get upset, discouraged, but there are also reasons to believe that the truth will eventually win. I see many examples of it around me. People are beginning to question the established truths that don’t appear to do them a lot of good. More and more people are beginning to doubt that the doctor knows all. Or even knows anything at all outside his parameters. At the same time I am running into doctors who are venturing out into the field of so called alternative health. Whatever it means, as long as it gets people better and possibly off their medication. Diabetes type 2 might begin to experience some of these changed attitudes.
But of course it is true ” there is a war going on out there between scientific enlightenment, and the forces of darkness.”, and there will still be victims on the altars of Big Pharma.
Pharma companies are neither good, nor bad, they just do what they do. Make money, increase shareholder value, sell drugs – some good, some bad. They protect their investment and guard against risk to those investments by squashing people like me who threaten to damage profitability. Its not personal. Its business.
In America the PHRma companies have a lot of control over politics (lobbying, you know) so I say this: it’s personal for the company workers, it’s business for the corporate doods, and it’s political, as well. I guess they feel they might as well cover all the bases.
Also, I wanted to comment on your statement in the article about Seventh Dayer’s being vegan. Not all of them are. We have many friends who are 7th’ers and when I was in high school eons ago, I dated a 7th Day guy, and they eat meat. Not often, not daily, but they do eat meat. I think there are probably different “rules” for each individual group but they are not ALL vegans or vegetarians. This has been a misconception about their religion for decades.
Selling bad drugs isn’t just bad; it’s criminal.
Lock them up!
Marjorie Daw: My view of this is similar to Dr. Kendrick’s; however, when a business does engage in criminal activities, which most of pharma does, I think they should be locked up. As it is, when caught bending they are merely fined (even a very large fine is pocket change to them), and this is considered a part of doing business. No incentive whatsoever to change their ways. No shame. So yes, lock them (and her!) up.
I cannot accept this, Malcolm. Every one of them has been sued successfully for knowingly doing great harm.
I also think it is time for society to stop accepting that corporations have some sort of inalienable right to make profit regardless of the harm to the environment or people. We need to remember the concept of the common good.
Sundancer,
Many 7th Dayers may eat some meat because, after all, most people do cheat on their diets. The ones I know are vegan and becoming more strident about it. But that is not the point. The point is that the church is funding clandestine research to promote veganism and they seem to have a lot of power and clout, and yet hardly anyone knows about them. I do believe if memory serves that the Bible has something to say about keeping your deeds in the dark.
Their prophetess thought eating meat promotes lust.
AnnaM: And a little bit of lust never hurt anyone!
It might if given way to. 🤭
AhNotepad: Just make sure to ask permission.
AnnaM, the bible also talks about only eating certain types of meat. I’m sure the “lust” thing has to do with the fact that meat is protein. Heck, so are beans!
A pharma company that raises the cost of a thyroid medicine by over 5000% (as per The Times today) is immoral and evil. So are companies that unjustly hike up insulin and Epipen prices.
Here’s the case where glyphosate was linked legally to a man’s cancer. And the jury also found they had acted with malice or oppression. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/10/monsanto-trial-cancer-dewayne-johnson-ruling Pardon for using the Guardian, many people here don’t like it, but it’s a good story anyway. Sometimes the megacorps get a sting, but it’s not often enough to incentivize basic human decency. Corporate responsibility or even crime is hard to prosecute in the current climate. Kudos to this guy for hanging in there.. can you imagine going through this while undergoing cancer treatment? (shudder)
And I am sure there are doctors who hav their doubts but are not confident enough to move from the comfort of established dogma, training and the pharma push. I recall my own doctor reacting to my concerns about statins by unconvincingly reciting & somewhat forlornly, the anti cholestoral pro statin established line. I felt she was pained by the debate & by my non-believing. Sad to say, while I am still alive, my lovely doctor succumbed to the other big western health ailment.
Was there a stress factor ?
If GPs become aware of the underlying science behind role of cholestoral and the negative effect of carbohydrates how can they be comfortable with the established baloney ?
The discomfort is growing
The GP thing seems to be a bit of a lottery. My sister, having had a blood test and being called in for a chat about her cholesterol levels, went armed with printouts from such sources as Dr Kendrick et al, only to find that her GP was totally on her side and said she was glad my sister had done her own research. She also said that her father, who had also been a GP, wouldn’t touch statins with a barge pole!
However, a work colleague went to her GP and declined statins, only to have the GP angrily punching stuff into the computer along the lines of my friend being ‘totally unco-operative’.
You win some and lose some.
Malcolm Kendrick said, “The discomfort is growing”
I think there might be something to this. I don’t know how long your Wikipedia entry existed (not like I went running to Wikipedia to look you up), but you must have been unmolested for awhile. Something has changed that draws more public attention to your perspective and that of others who buck the “establishment.” It is human nature for the establishment to sense threat.
Sad to say, but no matter how much we appreciate Dr Kendrick, he has not yet achieved the public notoriety which might immunize him from the airbrush of the establishment True Believer. Same with Ravnskov, Gotzsche, Zoe Harcombe, Lustig, Tim Noakes, and others. The real barn-burners, like Atkins (truly the original torch bearer of a different brigade), Gary Taubes, Nina Teicholz, and so on have such large megaphones the True Believers can’t casually shut them down.
And don’t underestimate Jordan Peterson’s impact. His megaphone is large and growing, and his followers and others know he and his daughter are “keto” dieters. Peterson credits the diet with saving his daughter’s life. With the “great unwashed masses” taking increasing interest in alternative approaches, the establishment has a huge hassle on the its hands.
And that gives me optimism.
I think they eat meat only, not keto
LA_Bob: Me, too.
Hi, Sasha,
You are correct. The Petersons are really meat-only eaters. But, I think the practical differences between Atkins, keto, paleo, and meat-only in the popular mind is nil. It’s all bacon and eggs, bunless burgers, no fries, and just plain water.
But, it’s catching on.
Wonderful, don’t stop!
John Qualtrough (retired GP and fellow sceptic)
“I try, as best as I can, to follow the scientific method. That includes discussion and debate, to test ones ideas in the furnace of sustained attacks.”
Dr. Kendrick, You are truly a man of science. Which is to say, a courageous man seeking truth.
I’m glad I found you. I’m sorry that this virtuous behavior has put a target on your back. Thank you for being a man of integrity.
The only thing I can think to actually do is stop going to my local vegan cafe in protest. Pity, they had lovely organic chicken & salad wraps. 😦
Ahh the poor hungry mislead vegans.. Can we be compassionate about them ? Probably not.
Bill
I see your point and feel sometimes ambiguous about them.
There is though a saying about vegans:
“Valuable “idiots” for Big Pharma/Agro.”
Their intentions are good but they are sincerely being fooled by our establishment (Please read Lierre Keith “The Vegetarian Myth” which you though probably are already familiar with) – a sad fact indeed.
I guess this is why vegans are heavily embraced as politically correct and vigorously promoted by MSM.
Stupidity is all around us today and true science is at low esteem!
Goran, I was trying to be sadly ironic..And the chicken wrapp definitely had chicken in it..Not fale vegan substitute…
I don’t think it is only direct antagonism that is used against those who try to confront bad science with better ideas. A very powerful method by embedded medical cliques is simply to ignore the ideas of any opposition, to the bitter end. Very strangely though, sometimes as if by magic, the correct understanding arises, and again as if by magic, what was believed earlier disappears from view. The bellowing herd have turned, but woe betide anyone who has the temerity to suggest that once they faced in the opposite direction.
They have indeed been ignoring it for a long time. The problem, I believe, is that we are beginning to win. This calls for stronger measures.
Malcolm Kendrick and all those others he lists above like Uffe Ravnskov and Aseem Malhotra are quacks and pseudo-scientists offering false medical advice.
MCE is an absolute legend for deleting various low-carb cranks from Wikipedia, I fully support him and we will utilize other wikis to debunk LCHF nonsense. MCE is a hero. Carbohydrates are not bad but a high-fat diet is!!!
Thank you for your well reasoned and highly scientific argument.
P.S. I have never said that carbohydrates are bad (not a highly scientific term, but I think I know what you mean). I have said that excess carbohydrates (and this varies from person to person) can lead to significant metabolic dysfunction. Perhaps you could find, from somewhere in my writings, the phrase ‘carbohydrates are bad.’ If so, I shall apologise.
Hi Veggie
Glad to see you are still following Dr Kendrick! I have no idea how old you are, but if you’d started life in the late 50s, as I did, and personally witnessed the decline in people’s health once they started eating the recommended ‘low-fat’ diet, I suspect you’d not be criticising the LCHF diet that is clearly reversing type 2 diabetes, normalising people’s blood cholesterol levels etc.
As for supporting MCE, well, maybe when you and he have ‘grown up’ enough to realise that the science you appear to support is faulty and biased, you might be able to have a sensible discussion about health and diet. It’s very sad that your evident lack of EFAs from your preferred diet has affected your ability to think logically…
Deleting evidence for LCHF or people who promote it does not debunk it, rather it suggests that you cannot debunk with evidence. It is the equivalent of shooting the messenger. I have been following a LCHF diet for a very long time. My blood panel is excellent, especially A1C, and after minimizing carb foods my weight dropped. I feel well and people say I look well. I’m well past the three score & ten. I have been piano playing for about 70 years and still have very flexible joints, etc
I suspect I am not alone.
Veggie for Life, if a high fat diet is so bad, how was it the Innuit survived with only animal products until relatively recently when the infamous “western” high-carb-for-the-convenience-of-producers diet came in? I suspect you are young, rebellious, intelligent but I know that as you grow up you will be embarrassed holding such views as you learn about life. How do I know? We were all like it when young, we knew everything, but once you are older you realise just how little you know.
Veggie for Life calling qualified professional doctors “quacks and pseudo-scientists” makes no contribution to debate but just antagonises. Likewise commenters who use phrases like “vegan beast”, “vegans are ignorant”, “vegan mafia”, “poor hungry mislead vegans”, “vegetarian and vegan nutters” just rub people up the wrong way whose views they do not share.
As to the Inuit in the 19th century they had an average life expectancy of about 45 years. I accept that life expectancy was lower generally. A more recent study shows that up to 2001, despite a more balanced diet, Inuit life expectancy was ten years lower than the rest of Canada.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18457208
Can somebody tell me where “paid shills” get their pay-cheques please?
johnplatinumgoss: One of them is the CDC Foundation, funded by industry, among others, who hire PR firms to hire anonymous commenters on a variety of issues that threaten profits.
Perhaps this book, written by a vegetarian will interest you https://www.westonaprice.org/book-reviews/the-vegetarian-myth-by-lierre-keith/
AhNotepad
Yes – that is the book to read for vegans!
I learnt a lot from reading it and to convince me that I was on the right track with my LCHF-life “conversion”, not least from a moral standpoint. The book is in the spirit of Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” which made a strong spiritual imprint on the world 50 years ago,
Deleting things you don’t like or agree with is no way to try to strengthen your argument – surely if you think it is nonsense then leaving counter arguments is a much better way
Well “Veggie for life”, eat plenty of carbs and cut out saturated fat.
Veggie for life
Drive by troll.
Got it. The term is False Flag.
Malcolm, here’s how it goes with the whole diet thing. There’s basically only two sides, regardless of your particular lean. The official guidelines, the rest of us. No doubt the rest of us fight amongst ourselves all the time, especially the pro-meat and the anti-meat, or as a function of the general principles, the pro-carb-anti-fat and the pro-fat-anti-carb, but with a common element – we’re all pretty much dedicated to helping others with various health related aspects of any particular diet. That is to say, if you, Malcolm, believed and advised that carbs were good for us and that fat was bad for us, you’d still do so in the context of helping others, not in the context of making a quick buck. Though I guess there are some who try to make a quick buck, but you get the point. The official guidelines are neither, they’re pro-profit, thus anti-everything else. This is to say they’re the only ones who benefit from us fighting amongst ourselves all the time.
There’s a term for this. Divide and control (the term divide and conquer, while famous, is actually a misnomer). This is especially true when the divided – if united – have the numbers to overwhelm the divider. So, whether opponents are who they claim to be or not is irrelevant, what matters is that they are opponents. And false flag methods are used to maintain this division. In fact, all the better if opponents believe they’re fighting the good fight. We can see this all the time with all kinds of righteous arguments from all sides.
What can we do? Unite. I know it’s cliche. In practice for our purpose, this means acknowledging the opposition, and inviting them to participate on our forum, and vice versa. I had the idea of linking to opponents’ websites and blogs.
In contrast, trying to change the official guidelines will not work, no matter what we’re trying to change it into. None of us on this side of the fence have the means to do any of that. But we do have ample means to keep the fight going amongst ourselves, maybe even with the illusion that the victor will get his nut up on that pedestal. Never gonna happen. What can we do? Ironically, unite with the official guidelines as well, but obviously with the understanding that it’s now become just another opponent we link to on our blogs (not that I’ve done that myself, cuz I’m just lazy). Just another voice in the crowd, given no more or less mike time than any other. From there, let’s see what happens.
We have the numbers.
Actually, I think the divisiveness in the polity has led to a level of contempt among regular folks. We should turn away from those sources that keep us angry and divided and come together as peoples.
On the subject of science turning to the dark side, here is a translation of a recent article by Dr Peter Gøtzsche, who has also been dismissed from his post at the Danish hospital, Rigshospitalet, as well as Cochrane itself…
“It is a full-blown scandal that Rigshospitalet will dismiss me. It is a clear attack on both independent research and freedom of expression.”
http://www.nogracias.eu/2018/12/15/my-dismissal-is-scientific-judicial-murder-by-peter-c-gotzsche/
Well said Malcolm. On the other hand, you have many admirers including me!
Sadly, besides wreaking their harm in silencing real scientists, the “vegans” are never exposed for the paid shills they are. In rare cases where you can penetrate their anonymity, you find they have financial ties to the food industry. Those pushing to have us all eat more unnatural oils from vegetable sources are financed, at least in part, by the large veg oil manufacturers. They need to be exposed, as the “dieticians” of AND were a few years ago in the report “AND Now a Word from Our Sponsors”.
Who is MCE?
MCE is a vegetarian fanatic who is trying to remove low-carb diets from Wikipedia, he uses the name Skeptic From Britain. He submitted Jimmy Moore and Malcolm’s Wikipedia entry for deletion and many others yet never attacks plant-based diets. This guy is 100% a paid editor. Jimmy Wales the founder of Wikipedia rushed to his defense on twitter. I have never seen that before for any other editor. There is something big going on here.
You should get media exposure on this. I would like to know who this person is, and which company he works for. The pictures on his Instagram are 5 years old, so it is possible that he actually lives in Manchester.
I like him. He sure as hell has raised my profile – and thus the audience for my messages.
Hello. ‘Skeptic From Britain’ does not exist anymore.
December 15th 2018 Wikipedia (by Céréales Killer) renamed user ‘Skeptic from Britain’ (4526 edits) to ‘MatthewManchester1994’ (per request)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Skeptic_from_Britain
Who is MCE? A Manic Carrot Eater of course!
Dr. Kendrick: Thank you very much for this. The solution to medical, scientific, and nutritional nonsense will have to come from the public, as it seems governments are fully captured by the interests of industry, and academia by perverse incentives, and both are capable of, and have done, immense harm. I am reading “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” A good read. The author doesn’t appear to be aware that she is describing a horror show (medical research), but describe it she does, going back to 1912 and one Dr. Alexis Carrel at the Rockefeller Institute. Let the worms and cowards come out of their caves and show their faces.
Thank you for writing this Malcolm. Written plainly and simply, it’s an important resource to help those of us who care about integrity in science to get the message to a trusting public.
The vegans! Could be. From my experience there are many groups waving different banners that have an interest to not question the status quo with heart disease and other areas of science.
This has left me a sadder but wiser person. No more donations to Wikipedia and very careful research from now on.
Yes Dr Kendrick you can add Dr Wolfgang Lutz as well to your list……His Wikipedia entry was challenged by “UK Sceptic” on 13-12-18 . Sad times indeed.
Am I missing something? Adolf Hitler, Fred West & Dr Harold Shipman all have a Wiki entries. What are you not telling us Dr Kendrick?
Even Tony Blair!
You forget, Adolph Hitler was a vegetarian, therefore hes untouchable.
Scary! How do we know whom to trust?
marthaltoodlehorn: Simple. Trust your own God-given intelligence. There never has been an unbiased newspaper or broadcast outlet, and there never will be. In science and medicine trust those who give multiple references of replicated studies which have good study design and are highly powered. And have no ties to industry or government. And display proper intellectual humility. Dr. Kendrick does this. Dr. DiNicolantonio does this. Dr. Mercola does this. All of them I trust. There are many more I trust, most of them outside the mainstream. The scales fell from my eyes in 2015, when, as a result of a draconian vaccine-mandate bill in California, I began research of vaccines and their history. Twenty books; hundreds of published papers. Shocking, to say the least. If anything deserves the title of quackery, it is vaccination. It is a testament to the resilience of the human biological system that more are not injured by it.
I know some people here are not fans of Donald Trump, but it seems to me that the whole process of trying to censor parts of the internet, ramped up after he was elected.
We are told that “the Russians” or “the Kremlin” seeded social media with false news that resulted in his election, and the vote in favour of BREXIT. The BBC is happy to discuss how to counter this insidious trend. It is far less keen to pick apart actual examples of “fake news” – probably because most are valid news that someone finds inconvenient.
The BBC recently made a decision not to allow anyone to express doubt about Global Warming (a.k.a Climate Change) on air. This seems to have open the doors to a series of fake claims about ‘Climate Change’, such as this:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2018/12/15/bbcs-fake-african-penguin-claim-complaint-upheld/?utm_source=CCNet+Newsletter&utm_campaign=d6919b7529-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_12_17_12_32&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_fe4b2f45ef-d6919b7529-20174325
I think Dr Kendrick was correct to widen the issue to include “Global Warming” because it seems to me that a lot of interest groups have come to realise that a lot of science is so unreliable, that a bit of pressure can make it totally biased and inaccurate.
Some pressure groups are no doubt shadowy vegans, but I’ll bet others are charities such as Diabetes UK. Why do they want to distort the scientific – simply so they aren’t exposed as having used public donations to publish bad advice for many, many years! No doubt other green charities are engaged in something similar, and so on and so on!
The election of Trump seems to have made the cabal more desperate, and they are showing their hands more and more. It is a war out there, an information war.
I do think it is bigger than diet.
I’m terribly ashamed of the BBC. I don’t really know what your laws are in the UK. It saddens me that people think the same old repression is ‘different’ this time, ‘different’ if it is THEIR pet cause. I’m told in Saudi Arabia you can get executed for publicly promoting atheism. If you can’t discuss something, you do not have freedom of speech. Period. Doesn’t matter if it is climate change, or gender or whatever.
AnnaM: And you can’t even tell a bad, perfectly innocuous, joke, even if you are a Nobel laureate, without getting fired. A sure sign they are desperate. Jokes are not allowed in a totalitarian society.
The BBC also charge you a license fee to condone their opinions…a political bias that influences the wider audience, it’s a double ‘wammy’ , left wing politics with the associated bias……their charter declares their ‘ indepence’ but the truth lies elswhere……
Those trapped in bias do not even recognise the concept that they are biased. Twas ever thus.
These are dark times indeed.
I’m afraid it isn’t just isolated to the world of nutrition, it seems that anyone in any sphere who is on the the fringes and offers a contrarian view is either being shut down, deplatformed or demonetised.
Your case is another depressing example of the censorious, authoritarian attitudes that are starting to permeate the Silicon Valley elite; Last Summer James Damore writes a memo outlining the possible reasons why there are more male engineers at Google and he gets fired, this summer Alex Jones gets deplatformed by several social media platforms in a coordinated effort for no other reason than being a bit of a nut job and last week successful, political commentator Youtuber Sargon of Akkad has his funding arbitrarily pulled from him by Patreon despite not having transgressed any terms of service.
Hold a wrong opinion and it’s off to the virtual gulag you go.
George Orwell was out by 34 years.
Doctor Kendrick.
I am so pleased to see that you have weathered this storm so far and come through the other side with the same fire in your belly that was always there. Your work is so much appreciated by so many people.
The support which you have received so far from like-minded people is simply fantastic, but not surprising, as you continue to battle on against all the odds.
Thank you so very much.
Hi Jill, I don’t expect that you will have signed up on Dr Kendrick’s site to receive these news letters ( some people have too much spare time ), but I thought you would find this one interesting and enlightening. So this way you get only “extra” e-mails that I choose for you. You can unsubscribe of course by placing a strategic needle in the spot you choose……. Regards Robin
MCE is obviously a very cowardly individual. Plus he probably has a good idea that he cannot honestly refute anything you say without looking stupid. I am closing my pininterest account forthwith. Onward Dr K. Keep on keeping on.
Who specifically is MCE, and what is their agenda?
Dr K referred to this person as MCE. No idea who this person is, but there seem to be a good few Sherlock Holmeses (plural for Sherlock Holmes?!) who are stripping his anonymity from him. He can run but he can’t hide – for ever.
Michael C. Ellis – vegetarian fanatic who claims to live in Manchester as of 2018, but there is virtually nothing about him on the internet apart from some old photographs on Instagram. Let’s hope he goes public about all this! If he studies biology like he claims, then he is editing at a university… I wonder what the university is he at thinks about this (!) Editing Wikipedia on their servers?
I am a GP, the ‘diabetic lead’ for our practice – I can think of many patients that have cured their diabetes with low (not ‘no’) carbohydrate diets, sometimes with spectacular weight loss. The best is a woman who has moved her hba1c from 108 to 36 in nine months – she hasn’t lost much weight, but she wasn’t very fat to start with. She was being pressurised by some (not me) to go on to insulin – good for her digging her heels in – and look where she is in less than a year!
She is one of very, very, many. All dismissed by those who are happy to tell you that black is white.
I hope there’s a special place in Hell, if there is a Hell, who advertise the benefits of carbs for diabetics, accelerating complications such that diabetics lose 6-8 years of life. If GSK paid a three billion dollar fine for knowingly killing 100,000 people with Avandia, what fine might be appropriate for the ADA?
Yes all those “just anecdotes” way way outnumber all the subjects in all the studies that are considered “evidence”.
Dr K, I knew something like this would come when you criticized the P.C.R.M (Phycisian’s Committee for Responsible medicine). I have warned sane people about these plant-eating bullies for years.
All one can do is warn, as Wilfred Owen once said.
And there is, with them, also a massive elephant in the room which we can’t address (because of accusations of of ‘anti-semitism’) but it is a fact none the less and it helps explain to ordinary people how these folk have insane influence and have persuaded otherwise normal people to adopt a diet made up of imported, out of season plant-fodder that costs a fortune and feeds little more than the ego (water, fiber, a few poxy antioxidants and some pesticide residues…great), whilst lining the pockets of the food importers.
The first thing i do with a client is to tell them to stop eating imported fruits and veg and teach them how to cure bacon at home. I am proud to say that i have absolutely nothing to do with the whole ‘nutritional science’ thing. It is ALL bogus. You are spot on my friend. I left it once and for all time and now have total peace of mind. For your own health Dr K, I strongly recommend you do something similar, at least for a time.
Dr K, since you have come this far down the rabbit hole, please, please look into German New Medicine of Dr Ryke Geerd Hamer. He suffered in a way that nobody else ever has and his discovery is greater than all of them put together (big words, yes? But when you look into him you will see why). He did genuine science and what he found is absolutely shocking. If the penny drops, you will be both shocked and very weak at the knees ( I did mention this before in another post)…
I just took a look at the PCRM website, here is what they say about cholesterol:
“The ideal blood cholesterol level is below 150 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL), based on the results of the Framingham Heart Study and other research. At that level, heart disease is very unlikely. Unfortunately, nearly 107 million Americans have cholesterol levels that are greater than 200 mg/dL, which is dangerously close to 225 mg/dL—the average cholesterol level of coronary artery disease victims.”
Where did they get those crazy numbers from?
They found them floating about in thin air, sprayed them with fairy dust, and caught them on the horn of a pink unicorn a.k.a. Harvard nutritionists.
Dr. John H: They simply invented them. From Kausik, et al., ARCH INTERN Med/Vol 170 (NO. 12), June 28, 2010: “Conclusion: This literature-based meta-analysis did not find evidence for the benefit of statin therapy on all-cause mortality in a high-risk primary prevention set-up. Also, in his Ten Contradictions talk, Dr. Kendrick discusses the measured cholesterol levels of a very large number men admitted to hospitals with MI. An immense flock of black swans for the lipid hypothesis. I have the paper, but cannot find it among the growing stack of research worth printing.
Click to access Get_With_The_Guidelines_2009.pdf
Dr. Kendrick: Thanks. Very important paper everyone should read.
Obviously they are unaware of all the unnecessary suffering and death their beliefs will cause, as they only believe fat is bad because it fits into their narrative. Even vegans will need statins to get their cholesterol below 150.
Possibly from this 🎩 just needs turning over.
UCLA study: 75% hospitalized heart disease patients had LDL below 130 mg/dl
Reblogged this on Taking Sides.
I do not use twitter but Dana Carpender needs to be informed that her Wikipedia article was deleted because of this biased MCE/skeptic from Britain vegetarian activist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Dana_Carpender
https://twitter.com/danacarpender?lang=en
How many more will be deleted?! This is not big pharma, this is vegan and vegetarian nutters trying to remove any low-carb high-fat authors from Wikipedia. As Jimmy Moore said this is war! Someone create a low-carb wiki? We must fight back.
Here is a variant of Wiki that is much less censorious.
https://infogalactic.com
Enjoy
Malcolm, I don’t think it’s just your Wikipedia entry being attacked. I put “Malcolm Kendrick” in to google (on my iPhone) in order to find your blog, and this is what came up…
“3 Dec 2018 · Malcolm Kendrick is a fringe figure who agues(sic) against the lipid hypothesis. He denies that blood cholesterol levels are …
I’m pretty sure that’s not how you’d describe yourself on the basis that you’d be able to spell the word “argue”.
I predict that one day Dr K will quote another Roman: “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
As Nobel laureate Richard Feynman said: “Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts”
Martin
I also believe Feynman said something like “If you can’t explain science to an 8 year old you don’t understand it yourself”.
My belief is that education is a privilege and those with it are duty bound to advocate on behalf of those that don’t.
Authority is the same, although judging by contemporary politics, the principle has been lost long ago.
Whilst the devil is, of course in the detail, educated people should be capable of explaining complicated concepts to the less well educated in terms they understand.
Martin Back: Correct is Vēnī, Vīdī, Vīcī.
I’m a system architect and I use the top down method of design. If you agree that evolution is the process where by organisms adapt to their environment. Then you must agree that saturated fat and cholesterol (that we have been eating for at least 500,000 years) must be good for you. Or else evolution isn’t a thing.
One thing that some people have begun to notice is that these new, powerful agenda-groups aren’t very into science. The facts don’t go their way. For example, the idea that there isn’t really much difference between the genders and it’s all a social construct has not held up under scientific scrutiny, so the science will have to go.
Yes – this is today the destructive effects of Postmodernism philosophy developed after WW2 – now a philosophical mess which originated in the ‘ontology’ introduced by Platon two thousand years ago and lately exaggerated by Heidegger, the Nazi collaborator in Germany, and also by Sartre who took Heidegger out of the closet after the war and brushed him off.
All this is today up my throat but we see it materialized in what is going on here and elsewhere where science is put on the stake and in medicine there are obviously today numerous stakes put on fire.
Harry graham, sorry to say MCE (MatthewManchester1994 nee’ Septic from Britain (RIP)) , Veggie, Vegan person et al must be right, and evolution made a 500,000 year mistake. Fortunately we have the veggies who are able to think and have a far more authoritative view to enlighten us.
harry graham: If cholesterol is bad for us, then our liver is our worst enemy, since it produces somewhere around 80% of our bodily needs, and I suppose 100% if we don’t eat any.
I once read an article where the author was quite sarcastic. (Wish I can find the article again!!) The author stated that as per our food guidelines, we should encourage our children to eat fat in the beginning of their lives because this is very important for brain development, but as soon as the kids turn two, then fat is bad and is trying to kill you and you should then get your children onto a low fat diet
Dr Kendrick, I don’t think it is science’s fault that so many papers are false or unreliable, and so many people seem determined to bury the truth.
It’s a culture that is sweeping the world, originating in the USA. Americans began as a self-selected group with very specific characteristics: many of them were highly motivated, energetic, inventive, and ambitious. And not over-burdened with moral scruples.
The result was a culture that worships two things: money, and success (as measured mainly by money). That accounts very neatly for everything from the falsification of scientific papers and the massive deceit embodied by the advertising, marketing, sales and PR industries to the wall-to-wall lying done by politicians and their supporters.
I know it will annoy some and perhaps lessen my credibility, but nevertheless: read this. https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2018/02/Groupthink.pdf
The similarity to Ancel Keys’ campaign of disinformation is stunning (IMHO).
“As the sociologist Georg Simmel wrote over a century ago, if you make money the center of your value system, then finally you have no value system, because money is not a value”.
– Morris Berman, “The Moral Order”, Counterpunch 8-10 February 2013. http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/02/08/the-moral-order/
‘“Achievement is irrelevant if you’re not famous; if you are famous, no additional achievement is required.”’
– Philip Greenspun, commenting on the movie “Hugo” (blog, 7 December 2011)
“The task of advertising is to undermine the free markets we are taught to admire: mythical entities in which informed consumers make rational choices. In such systems, businesses would simply provide information about their products: cheap, easy, simple. But it is hardly a secret that they do nothing of the sort. On the contrary, business spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year projecting imagery to delude customers. Uncontroversially, that is the goal of advertising – not providing information. The automobile industry does not simply make public the characteristics of next year’s models. Rather, it devotes huge efforts to deception, featuring sex objects, cars climbing sheer cliffs to a heavenly future, and so on. Furthermore, as Veblen pointed out long ago, one of the primary tasks of business propaganda is the “fabrication of consumers”, a device that helps induce “all the classic symptoms of state-based totalitarianism: atomization, political apathy and irrationality, the hollowing and banalization of purportedly democratic political processes, mounting popular frustration, and so forth””.
– Noam Chomsky, “Failed States”
Tom,
Basically this relates to the fundamental shift which took place in our “official philosophy” about 50 years ago when the so called Postmodernism took over and in which our “reality” is not one item for alternative analysis but a “relative”- “not one but several” – subjects. Under this rug true science is today swept.
Here’s my view of this.
Science is just a process for sorting theory, hypothesis, opinion, bias, rumor etc.. into categories ranging from “likely true” to “likely untrue.” The facts I’ve encountered in science are usually supportive of a theory which isn’t a fact, but a repeatable principle that may have a different mechanism than we assume today.
Humans however, need to think and so we need to assume some of the theory in order to make the next leap in probability that may lead to a testable hypothesis, and then, advance knowledge. This tendency can cause a loss of focus on the fact that we’re still just making assumptions when we go beyond simple mechanisms like “salty water dehydrates celery.”
There might be a better way to do science, that removes the incentives of money, but science will always need money because of the needs of hypothesis testing. Whether that testing is being done in good faith or not, it will still need money. I think we need to incentivize good faith science that isn’t beholden to large financial interests. Preferably , in a way that doesn’t impoverish science to a level where it can’t function.
Speak to a few refugees, present or former and ask about their attitude toward money. It will probably match my mother’s. She used to say that money = freedom. That is, if you have none, you have no freedom, and if you do, then you can afford to change your situation. Money is indeed valueless in itself, but if you’re a single mom it’s not amoral to value it as a vehicle to freedom, and the betterment of your family.
“Money is bad / the root of all evil” is not detailed enough to include the different ways that money is put to use by different parts of the economy. It’s when large actors with great power to affect social changes use that power in a way that values only the acquisition of money (example GMOs and Monsanto), with no further goal, that’s when we see the greed = harm equation.
Angelica Nelson: It is the love of money which is the root of evil. Money itself is very handy, which is why it is frightening that Sweden is doing away with it, it seems.
Tom Welsh: Thanks. How right you are.
Hang in there. People like me, with no medical training, value your writing. So much of medicine and “science” is just bunk.
On Tue, Dec 18, 2018 at 5:29 AM Dr. Malcolm Kendrick wrote:
> Dr. Malcolm Kendrick posted: “18th December 2019 As readers of this blog > know I was obliterated from Wikipedia recently. Many have expressed support > and told me not to get down about it. To be perfectly frank, the only time > I knew I was on Wikipedia was when someone told me I was g” >
Wikipedia has an agenda and aligns with everything mainstream. Allegedly anybody can edit its articles. But it does not quite work like that. There appear to be guardians of the truth with super-editing powers who make sure the agenda is not threatened. One of them is Philip Cross. He is unlikely to be one person.
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-affair/
Sadly you are just one of many of Wikipedia’s victims. In this Orwellian world we will see more and more of this censorship unless those in control of media and social-networking sites are allowed to continue with the agenda. It’s the same with BBC news. On the face of it news items seem balanced, that is to say conflicting opinions are expressed, but anything that does not fit in does not get aired. For example there are 3,000 qualified architects and engineers who question how on what has become the twin towers and building 7 could have collapsed downwards into themselves when the damage was done near the top and the steel support columns were many times thicker at the bottom than at the top.
Who knew that so many experts in their respective fields of architecture and engineering have a challenging viewpoint to the NIST version of what happened?
“unless those in control of media and social-networking sites are allowed to continue with the agenda.” should be “not allowed”. How those in control can be eased out of such control is problematical.
Sentence should read “For example there are 3,000 qualified architects and engineers who question how on what has become known as 9/11 the twin towers and building 7 could have collapsed downwards into themselves when the damage was done near the top and the steel support columns were many times thicker at the bottom than at the top.”
Being able to edit comments would be useful!
johnplatinumgoss: Yes, it is perfectly clear that the three buildings, especially in the case of building 7, were not brought down by the fires from the planes which hit them. Impossible. These buildings were engineered to withstand the impact of a Boeing 707, smaller than those which hit them, but not that much smaller. Never, before or since, has a steel-framed building collapsed due to fire. Never properly investigated.
I’m surprised Gary more non-engineers are not questioning this since the engineers are. Surprise, surprise, Wikipedia supports the official version. People should take some time to read and hear what more than 3000 architects and engineers have to say.
https://www.ae911truth.org
Malcolm
whilst you almost dismiss the climate ‘debate’ in your email, you are now suffering what a long line of eminent scientists have suffered at the hands of the green blob.
The most recent, Peter Ridd of James Cook University in Australia has been dismissed from his post and is now in a protracted legal battle simply because he expressed concern over the academic merit of many papers published telling us all the Great Barrier Reef is dying because of climate change.
He simply confronted the green blob, took them on as you do, and suffered the consequences of academic bullying.
Irrespective of my disbelief in mankind’s production of an entirely beneficial trace gas being harmful to man, the travesty here is the scientific malfeasance conducted to exclude dissenting scientific voices.
I seem to recall you saying that statins were the most profitable drug ever conceived by man, with profits running into trillions of $’s. Compared to climate change, statins are a gnat on the backside of an elephant. Profits from exploiting climate change over the next 50 years run into tens, if not hundreds of trillions of $’s, all at taxpayer expense.
Meanwhile the WTO tells us that 120,000,000 people in developing countries will die from smoke inhalation related conditions by 2050 (32 years away) because they are forced to heat their homes and cook over open fires fuelled by wood, more often than not sourced from equatorial forests. Ever wonder what they do with Amazonian timber? The locals burn it as fuel!
1,000,000 people a year are dying from the lack of vitamin A in developing countries. This can be almost completely eradicated by allowing genetically modified ‘Golden rice’ to be planted instead of white rice. Golden Rice is basically the simple inclusion of a corn gene, nothing dramatic or threatening, in fact many westerners could probably benefit what might one day happen naturally in nature given time.
500,000 people a year will die from poor sanitation in developing countries. Entirely avoidable were they allowed access to drainage and sewage processing facilities we westerners take for granted.
All of this could be eradicated at a stroke with inward investment to develop fossil fuelled power stations to deliver cheap, reliable electricity to towns and cities across Africa particularly, but not exclusively.
But it can’t be done because the minority green blob blocks everything at every opportunity. You refer to them as vegans, but they don’t all eschew meat, many are wealthy middle and upper class (extremely wealthy celebrities and do gooders) who want to ensure their survival before the survival of others.
But there are two things you and everyone on this blog should be aware of:
1. There is not one single, credible, empirically derived scientific study which demonstrate atmospheric CO2 causes the planet to warm. Not one, ever. An astonishing claim but it is quite true and you are welcome to dig up whatever you can find on the internet and I’ll gladly address it. But don’t bother with the latest Berkeley effort, it has been roundly discredited.
2. The only observable manifestation of increased atmospheric CO2 on the planet is that the whole place has greened by 14% within 35 years of satellite observations, according to NASA. If there was ever a use for the term ‘unprecedented’ this is it. Two continents the size of mainland USA of extra vegetation according to one of the authors. From only a 120 ppm increase in atmospheric CO2. Unprecedented is barely the term, utterly astonishing is more appropriate.
Virtually every other claim as to the negative effects of CO2 on the planet or humanity have been derived from laboratory experiments, computer models, or a combination of the two.
The IPCC has recently terrified the world with claims of apocalypse if we don’t pull back from 1.5C of warming. But their original catastrophic claims were of 3C, then 2.5C, then 2C and as they reach the end of their available temperature resources they screamed louder than ever that ‘the end is nigh’.
Forty years of……well nothing, except The Gadloch, in my home town of Lenzie, where I used to skate in the 1970’s doesn’t freeze over any longer.
So the ice melts in the Arctic and Antarctic (which it’s largely not), it will take more than 1,000 years to melt entirely. By that time we will have probably gone through at least one other mini ice age, which extends the melting for another 1,000 years.
The practicalities are, however, inconsequential. It’s, as you say Malcolm, the distortion and manipulation of science from innumerable sources that’s the problem.
Man has eaten animal fat for thousands of years, we are very well adapted to it. We evolved from salt water oceans, why would salt harm us? We have adapted to every condition thrown at us by the elements, why is there a climate threat now when CO2 does us nothing but good?
And if you are in any way religious, or even not, consider this.
Several thousand years ago the planet was on the brink of extinction with atmospheric CO2 around 180 ppm, all meaningful plant life dies around 150 ppm.
Around the same time man just happened along and discovered fire. We proceeded to burn everything we could find, namely wood, until we ran out of the stuff in the northern hemisphere, then some bright guy discovered buried rock could burn with far more thermal efficiency than wood.
It fuelled (literally, and eventually) the industrial revolution which transformed our dismal agricultural society into an industrial society and, coincidentally, atmospheric levels of CO2 have climbed gradually out the emergency zone.
Now, I’m not religious, but that just strikes me as the most extraordinary coincidence I can ever conceive. Somehow, our entire stock of atmospheric CO2 was buried in the ground and by some miracle, man discovered how to liberate it. Yet that discovery is somehow condemned.
You are right Malcolm. Science is the victim here. It’s the victim of the green blob, and you suffer the consequences of your diligence and honesty. But you are not alone.
My problem, mainly, is that if I start turning over too many rocks, people dismiss you as a generalised conspiracy theorist. I follow the climate change debate, to a degree. I see that same linguist tricks played, the appeals to the knowledge of experts, absolute certainly being expressed, where absolute certainty cannot possibly exist. The shutting down of debate, and suchlike. I don’t need to know the details, I have just come to recognise when a hypothesis is a crock. The specifics change, the game played is always the same.
Fair comment.
Nor do I expect you or anyone else to believe what I say, some might just check the facts for themselves, although I suspect I’m preaching to the mostly converted here.
And my point was that scientific abuse seems common, although I rambled on, as usual.
Although to be fair, you wouldn’t be a conspiracy theorist in agreeing that climate change is being used to promote a new global, political order as the desire to do so has been expressed by, amongst many others, Christina Figueres, the former Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change:
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution.
I’m not sure the intent could be any clearer than that.
However, I take your point. You are far more valuable to everyone when you stick to your expertise and represent people as well as you do.
Thank you for doing so.
I have to admit that I find it extremely difficult to consider what is currently happening on the internet, just as coincidences.
Please note that Google as well is very much involved in this ‘war’ against ‘fake’ medical information since March 2018. Google cleans up in untrustworthy health advice, but nobody knows how Google considers what is credible or what is not. A 2018 ‘Google Medic Update’ of the search engine automatically downgrades what this algorithm considers as untrustworthy pages. A commercial SEO-site offers a reliable description of the situation https://www.telapost.com/google-medic-update-loss-traffic/
I’m so sorry…
You are known by the company you keep. So, while I admire Dr Kendrick’s commitment to free and open debate on a variety of contentious subjects, it is wise not to get too tainted by the ‘conspiracy theorist’ brush.
Having said that, I am grateful for the opportunity I have been given to put my somewhat heretical views, in this community at least, namely that global warming is a clear and present danger, that the twin towers were felled by Al-Qaeda not by the Deep State, that vaccination has been a net benefit to humankind, that HIV causes AIDS and can be sexually transmitted, and probably a few more that I can’t remember now.
But at least I eat saturated fat and don’t take statins, and never worry about my cholesterol. ;o)
I agree with what you are saying except for the Golden Rice part.
If you look into the history of temperature changes over a few million years time period (which I did a couple of years ago) you are not getting very convinced that the Homo Sapiens is able to make much of a change compared to what is happening astronomically and on the sun. An optimistic view is instead that our present carbon dioxid indent may slow down the approach of the next ice age which seems to be around “the corner” (100 years?).
My basic assumption is here that the establishment wants to induce fear in common man to make him line up behind the agenda of their ‘big money’ “global world”.
Should more be a thousand or more years.
I think there is another deep human issue with fearing that catastrophe is always just around the corner. Most religions are based on fear. The wrath of God, the end of the World, the book of the dead. Only by being a true believer can you keep your own destruction at bay. I see Global warming as an extension of this catastrophe around the corner view of life. I see mass vaccination as an effort to keep death and destruction at bay. And, of course, statins. Cholesterol is the great evil, statins are kind, and good, and will keep you alive.
Malcolm, how true and how sad that so many humans are like this.
Göran: Right on target. Control of the sheep is their aim. They won’t succeed. Most people are not stupid.
I am totally convinced by the evidence for rapid climate change due to anthropogenic global warming.
As this blog is essentially about CVD and its causes and remediation, I will keep that in my argument.
I see parallels between pharmaceutical businesses and fossil fuel businesses. Both have provided benefits but now profit and share value have become the major drivers of their activities, rather than understanding the downsides.
In both planet science and biological science we now have great detail with ongoing research into the processes and mechanisms of physics, chemistry, physiology and anatomy etc to get beyond correlation of A with B that can suggest to people some study of the workings of human bodies or our planet’s biosphere and atmosphere. There is an avalanche of research that no one person can grasp in detail, we depend on others assembling those details into coherent chunks that we can understand.
For me, these studies with models of the climate lead to the current predictions of catastrophic warming; with the CO2 also reducing ocean pH that hinders the formation of calcium compounds that sea creatures, including coral, need. When we find we have missed a feedbacks they are mostly positive, so the warnings are appropriate.
The detailed research on blood vessel anatomy and lipidology and insulin endocrinology in the same way supports Dr Kendrick in his view of CVD.
Of course, some fraud will be in the system, but I see the bulk of the scientific detailed research as correct; it hangs together, it is not just hand-waving emotive argument.
In both plant science and human biology science, it is not that things cannot change but that the rate of change has to be slow enough for systems to evolve while maintaining stability. The Permian–Triassic extinction event is an example of what rapid change does.
On specific points: a trace of something is not always harmless, think nerve toxins; compared to the lot of people during the industrial revolution I think the agrarian economy was benign, see Marx; a lot of CO2 is in mineral compounds, oil & coal are not the only carbon stores; there have been attempts to get AGW proponents such as George Mann out of a job; experiments show that although some increase in CO2 can benefit plants, as the concentration increases further plants die. The other downside of burning fossil fuels is simple air pollution: particulates, carcinogenic organics, reactive nitrogen compounds etc.
On Peter Ridd: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/07/academic-peter-ridd-not-sacked-for-his-climate-views-university-says
And, all that money is going into developing new technologies, giving new understanding on which further new innovations will emerge. It can keep people happily employed for another hundred years.
robertddyson,
Here is one way to start you on the path to doubt about climate change – listen to what a Nobel prizewinning physicist has to say on this subject!
http://www.mediatheque.lindau-nobel.org/videos/34729/ivar-giaever-global-warming-revisited/laureate-giaever
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. I am in agreement with your views on these subjects, which is why I’m concerned that some frequently expressed comments under this blog that relate to subjects other than those of CVD and the lipid hypothesis could, devalue our legitimate health concerns in the eyes of mainstream medicine.
David, please note Ivor Giaever’s words: “”I am not really terribly interested in global warming. Like most physicists I don’t think much about it. But in 2008 I was in a panel here about global warming and I had to learn something about it. And I spent a day or so – half a day maybe on Google, and I was horrified by what I learned.”
Do you really believe that someone who has spent half a day on the internet on a subject is better informed than someone who has spent his entire career on the subject?
“For me, these studies with models of the climate lead to the current predictions of catastrophic warming; with the CO2 also reducing ocean pH that hinders the formation of calcium compounds that sea creatures, including coral, need. When we find we have missed a feedbacks they are mostly positive, so the warnings are appropriate.”
If the above is true, how did the creatures mentioned manage to exist through periods where the CO2 level in the atmosphere was far higher than iit is now? The problem is probably answered by the first sentence “…..these studies with models of the climate. How representative are the models. I am far from convinced by arguments on either side, but I am less convinced by the side that quotes consensus as being an definition of scientific fact, rather like the vegan high carb lovers.
Martin Back
“Do you really believe that someone who has spent half a day on the internet on a subject is better informed than someone who has spent his entire career on the subject?
Ah!…..The old “I’ve been driving for 60 years and never been involved in an accident” ploy.
“I memorised the Highway Code when I was 17 and have it all locked away in my head so no need to re-read it.” Despite it changing every year for the last 60 years!
“Those whippersnapper ‘Highly Qualified’ – ‘Advanced Drivers’ haven’t the years of experience I have. Mavis and I get along quite nicely thank you, observing the 50 MPH national speed limit they introduced in the 1970’s” Despite it being raised again shortly thereafter.
Science is no different.
And these are recitals of actual conversations I’ve had with drivers during my time spent as a police officer.
Time spent practising something does not necessarily mean one is good at it. If it were the case I would have blown Tiger Woods into the weeds years ago!
AhNotepad
I believe this is one of Peter Ridd’s arguments. Whilst the Ph of our oceans may fluctuate, deep water Great Barrier Reef corals remain unperturbed. Bleaching of the shallow water corals is a risk run for better returns in terms of nutrition and reproduction opportunities.
But bleached coral reefs are not ‘dead’ far from it. Momentarily dormant perhaps:
‘The Corals That Come Back From The Dead’
http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20140916-the-corals-that-come-back-from-the-dead
Martin Black wrote:
“David, please note Ivor Giaever’s words: “”I am not really terribly interested in global warming. Like most physicists I don’t think much about it. But in 2008 I was in a panel here about global warming and I had to learn something about it. And I spent a day or so – half a day maybe on Google, and I was horrified by what I learned.”
I understood that as meaning that he spent a day or two on GOOGLE understanding the main arguments. Plainly that video was not put together in two days, and represents considerable research. Clearly any CAGW researcher could have contacted Giaever and contested his video, and I am sure a man of his standing would have retracted the video if he came to believe it was false. It has been on the internet for 3 years now.
In all likelihood, no researcher wanted to oppose Giaever publicly or privately – just as people do not try to argue technically with Dr Kendrick because Kendrick’s case is solid.
Giaever may be old, and have started by using GOOGLE, but he stuck to the facts that many others have been trying to point out – he has not gone out on a limb of his own.
As he pointed out at the start of his talk, he resigned from the APS because they claimed on behalf of their members that the evidence for global warming was incontrovertible. Surely such a society, whose members are physicists, should speak for themselves or through a secret ballot.
He points out what should have been obvious from the start – that a 0.8C rise in temperature since 1880 represents an extraordinary level of stability. In truth measuring to this accuracy is impossible because many of the locations where these measurements are made have become urbanised over the years, and computer corrections are needed to the raw data. These corrections can be larger that the whole claimed temperature increase – so any signal is buried by the size of the corrections.
This is not a difficult video to understand, and I would ask that people do not dismiss it without listening to his arguments properly.
David,
First a bit of personal history. I studied civil engineering at university, but being interested in politics, I also did Politics 101. I assumed that coming from a more rigorous, mathematical field of study I would soon put the airy-fairy bullshitters from the Arts faculty in their places. It didn’t work out that way. The top student essays were passed around the class for us all to read, and I had to admit these guys had a depth of insight way beyond what I possessed. The subject might have been more squishy and malleable than engineering, but it was no less difficult to grasp academically.
This is what I think happened with Giaever. He assumed that being a Nobel prize winner in a very difficult subject, he would have no difficulty comprehending in a day or two what the lesser intellects who studied climate science needed years to understand. He was as wrong as I was.
If you’re interested, there’s a detailed critical analysis of the scientific basis of his talk at https://skepticalscience.com/ivar-giaever-nobel-physicist-climate-pseudoscientist.html
One of the commenters writes “Ivar Giaever spent most of his working life at General Electric. In later years he has held a professorship at Oslo University, payed for by StatOil. He seems to belong to Fred Singers vast social network.” (Fred Singer is a global warming denialist.)
I won’t claim that Giaever is deliberately putting out misinformation in support of Big Industry and Big Oil, but as Dr Kendrick frequently points out, a financial association is a caution sign.
Last one
Martin Black,You just referred to someone as a “denialist”, the link you gave me refers to a physics Nobel laureate as a “Climate pseudoscientist” – isn’t that the kind of nonsense we want to get beyond?
If you want to think about science in terms of denialists vs those on message, then I give up. Talk of “big oil” is exactly the same as talk of “big agriculture” – there is always a Big something or other to blame – Big electricity is making an absolute killing out of this scare – they don’t pay the bills – we all do, and some are too poor to afford to heat their homes properly. When the truth gets out, industry will just blame government for instructing them to develop ‘sustainable’ energy ….. and keep their profits.
Posting on this topic have now reached their sell by date
Informed Consumer,
You’re the first person I have seen that has raised the issue of CO2 near the end of the last ice age reaching scary-low levels.
And, of course, when you see that in the ancient past there were incredibly high CO2 levels, during times when life was thriving, it seems terribly unlikely that a slight rise in CO2 is bad for life. For that matter, the fact that plants get happy around 1200 ppm and that this was the norm while plants were evolving is another point that our current levels are low.
I look at CO2 levels as a lab value for the earth organism. I suspect it is a lab value with a wide range that can be considered normal.
AnnaM
The planet is currently at one of two coldest periods in its history without descending into another ice age, and its coincidental that atmospheric CO2 is around the lowest it’s ever been.
PS. I hope it’s worked this time………..My title is usually HotScot but WordPress has a mind of its own!
Hot Scot,
I love that graphic and have found it on the web before. The reason we are in a cold period is because we ARE in an ice age! Presently an interglacial of an ice age which began some 1.2 million years ago. And yes, I note that only one time before, also during an ice age, was the CO2 level similarly low.
Why do proponents of Golden Rice never mention that during safety testing, it was given to the poorest people without their consent or even without informing them? Why not ensure that they have adequate carrots or butternut squash seeds? Aren’t we forever being told that we should have a varied diet and that vitamins are “bad” if you rely on them and we should rely on a varied diet to get vitamins? So why are the poor told to eat one food and get phama-vitamins put into it with GMOs? There’s a contradiction in the narrative. https://www.nature.com/news/china-sacks-officials-over-golden-rice-controversy-1.11998
Angelica Nelson
The three Chinese officials were sacked for “breaching Chinese laws and ethical regulations”. Nothing to do with the rice itself. This was also 6 years ago and you will note, Greenpeace had it’s grubby little digits in there as well.
Yes why not “ensure that they have adequate carrots or butternut squash seeds?”. Possibly because that’s been thought of and discarded as a long term solution?
Wikapedia has yet again gone to the dark side – I have supported them in the past but no more as this is happening way too often on too many topics/people. Thank you Malcolm for sticking your neck out and staying true to data not bias.
Best regards Sally
Thank you. I am a slave to the truth. Even if it turns out not to be true in the end. It is the journey, not the destination.
Malcolm
From the (virtual) conversations I have had with numerous scientists on both sides of the climate debate, I gather there is no ‘truth’ in science. Just the momentary suspension of doubt.
Jacques Derrida was into seeing as relative truth. The best rejection of that is “In Defence of History” by Richard Evans. I have bought several copies of this book to give to people. I think there is value in trying to get to the ‘truth’. I see it as an endless series of tweaks, with some wrong turns now and again, and sometimes a totally revised understanding that also understands the context of previous explanations.
I think ‘The Corals That Come Back From The Dead’ are the dead skeletons being repopulated with coral polyps that can withstand higher temperatures.
To the question, “how did the creatures mentioned manage to exist through periods where the CO2 level in the atmosphere was far higher than it is now?” – The answer is they did not, which is why I mentioned the Permian–Triassic extinction event.
I would suggest James Hansen as an antidote to Ivar Giaever. Hansen has been harassed a lot for banging on about global warming for decades. Here is his “Climate Change in a Nutshell: The Gathering Storm”: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2018/20181206_Nutshell.pdf
By a quirk of fate, I first worried about the effect burning coal on atmospheric composition when I was in school 6th form in the 1950s. I don’t claim any special expertise from this but I have studied it a lot on the side. I will leave off this topic now so that we can refocus on CVD.
robertddyson
“I think”
Isn’t good enough chum. “I think” is an unsubstantiated opinion. “I think” is an undeveloped hypothesis. “I think” is a personal belief with no foundation in reality.
“I think” if you stick a feather in the ground it’ll grow into a chicken.
Whilst this site is ostensibly about CVD, it’s also about scientific integrity where “I think” has no place without evidence.
What “I know” is that you ignore scientific fact. “I know” you have no access to genuine reason or logic. “I know” you are entrenched in a belief system you won’t question.
“I know” that Hansons ‘Nutshel’ begins, and ends with one single concept. That atmospheric CO2 causes the planet to warm. But “you and I know” that isn’t true as no one has ever conducted a credible, reliable, scientific field study that demonstrates it.
So read Hansons ‘Nutshell’ again, and every time he refers to CO2 in negative terms, substitute “I know” with all the implications that carries as noted above.
‘Nutshell’ isn’t a scientific document. It’s the final throes of a desperate man now predating on children and parading them in front of courts and the media to recite his indoctrination.
In 1981 Hansen predicted a global warming of “almost unprecedented magnitude” in the next century that might even be sufficient to melt and dislodge the ice cover of West Antarctica, eventually leading to a worldwide rise of 15 to 20 feet in the sea level.
Nothing so far, sea level rise continues at a steady rate of less than 3mm per year.
In 2006 Hansen said the world has a 10-year window of opportunity to take decisive action on global warming and avert catastrophe.
Nothing so far and observed warming is barely happening, and certainly not even close to IPCC predictions.
Hansen argued that atmospheric concentrations [of CO2] must be brought back to 350 ppm or lower—quickly. “Two degrees Celsius [of warming] is a guaranteed disaster,” he says, noting the accelerating impacts that have manifested in recent years. “If you want some of these things to stop changing—for example, the melting of Arctic sea ice—what you would need to do is restore the planet’s energy balance.”
So far, extreme weather events are, at worst, no worse than they have ever been in reliable recorded history with the East coast of America enjoying 12 years without a major hurricane strike. Arctic summer sea ice has increased over the last few years, not decreased.
You need to reconsider the innumerable failed climate predictions made over the last 40 years by hysterical alarmists many of whom, like Al Gore (who was advised by James Hanson on his roundly discredited movie “An inconvenient Truth”) are making fortunes from peddling climate alarmism.
You might recall that Gores movie could not be shown in British schools without a ‘public health warning’ of six clear scientific irregularities being pointed out to the children. Remember, Hanson advised Gore on these irregularities.
Hanson is hardly the man to cite as some sort of AGW guru. He is a self promoting scientific pied piper and is happy to mislead children to support his selfish ends.
The Informed Consumer: Thanks. Right you are. A look at the evidence (from actual climate science) shows the alarmist position to be unwarranted. Nor has anyone ever successfully predicted the future. Second Coming anyone?
“atmospheric CO2 causes the planet to warm… no one has ever conducted a credible, reliable, scientific field study that demonstrates it.”
The first studies were done by John Tyndall in the 1850s, and there have been many more since then. If the theory did rest on such shaky untested ground, there would be plenty of scientists rushing to make their reputations by exposing it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tyndall
https://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/papers-on-laboratory-measurements-of-co2-absorption-properties/ (laboratory measurements)
https://agwobserver.wordpress.com/2009/10/08/papers-on-carbon-dioxide-absorption-properties-in-atmosphere/ (satellite measurements)
Martin Back
(From The Informed Consumer – I managed to change my title back to HotScot despite WordPress).
A “field” study is one undertaken in the environment we live in, not one conducted in a laboratory.
Laboratory studies can’t possibly replicate the conditions in the earth’s atmosphere, on its land, nor its oceans.
John Tyndall also observed that “water vapour is the strongest absorber of radiant heat in the atmosphere and is the principal gas controlling air temperature. Absorption by the other gases is not negligible but relatively small.”
But I have posted all this before for you to consider, the problem is, you just won’t accept scientific fact.
NASA even states “but the understanding of clouds is so rudimentary that no one knows whether climate feedbacks involving clouds will dampen or amplify a warming trend.” whilst acknowledging clouds are one of the most important elements of climate change.
https://isccp.giss.nasa.gov/role.html (CLOUD CLIMATOLOGY: GREENHOUSE EFFECT AND CLIMATE CHANGE)
So we know:
1. No one has credibly demonstrated, by empirically derived field studies, that CO2 affects the temperature of the planet.
2. The only observed effect of atmospheric CO2 on the planet is that it has greened by 14% in 35 years of satellite observations. https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
3. Clouds are acknowledged as being one of the biggest influence on the earth’s overall temperature, yet no one understands how they work. (See earlier link).
4. You will notice from the link you provided to John Tyndall, that he tells us that water vapour is the dominant greenhouse gas being that it forms 95% of all greenhouse gases and CO2 3%. (My emphasis).
5. The planet is around the coldest it has ever been in it’s entire history without actually being in an ice age. http://www.biocab.org/Geological_Timescale.jpg
6. CO2 is, coincidentally, at it’s lowest ever in the earth’s history having come dangerously close to the minimum level of 150 ppm required to sustain meaningful plant life. (See link at 5.).
7. Green activists and climate alarmists would have humanity make every effort, including seeding clouds we know nothing about and capturing atmospheric CO2 for permanent sequestration (a technology barely available and so incredibly inefficient and energy intensive it would entirely defeat the purpose) sending us back towards that extinction level of 150 ppm atmospheric CO2.
8. We know from simple arithmetic that renewable energy is; a) incredibly environmentally destructive b) Incredibly expensive c) does nothing to reduce atmospheric CO2 d) affects the poor far more than the wealthy e) cannot exist unless other forms of energy are available (i.e. fossil fuel or nuclear) on desperately expensive standby to provide reliable energy for when the sun doesn’t shine (50% of the day on average) and the wind doesn’t blow (wind turbines operate about 30% of their nameplate maximum)…….I could go on! However I’ll provide two links (again) for your information. https://www.ted.com/talks/david_mackay_a_reality_check_on_renewables and http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/wind-still-making-zero-energy/
9. Global temperatures as measured by satellites and balloon radiosonds (observed temperatures) contradict IPCC predictions of temperatures (computer models) by a considerable margin. https://drinkingwateradvisor.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/pages-from-christyjr_epa_2014_publiccomment.jpg
10. Global temperature measurements are presented as anomolies (the difference between temperatures roughly speaking) invariably plotted on graphs with disproportionate X & Y axis.
11. Actual temperature measurements from ~1880 look like this: https://suyts.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/image266.png
Please try to read and understand all of this instead of providing your usual misinterpreted, knee jerk, alarmist response to selected passages.
Sorry to have got involved in this on your blog Malcolm, but as with medical science, if climate science (or the lack thereof) slaps one around the face and tells one to wake up, it’s time to take notice.
I may draw a line under global warming stuff shortly. I do find it fascinating, but I think I have to keep things from getting too far from base.
malcolm
Please do draw a line, although the subject is interesting, I don’t join in because we are getting far from our roots.
I thought that was the idea, since roots are generally high carb.
Malcolm
Entirely fair, you have been very patient.
HotScot,
“A “field” study is one undertaken in the environment we live in, not one conducted in a laboratory.”
“The Earth’s daily weather and climate is controlled by the balance between the amount of sunlight received by the Earth (both its surface and atmosphere) and the amount of energy emitted by the Earth into space. Scientists have been trying for decades to understand this critical balance – to understand the budget of incoming and outgoing energy, called the radiation budget.
The instruments aboard the ERBE satellites measure the amount of solar energy received by the Earth, the energy emitted by the Earth into space, and the amount of solar radiation which is reflected into space.” — https://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/news/factsheets/ERBE.html
The original ERBE satellite was launched in 1984 and is now retired. But many others have been launched since. Currently, there are 162 “climate satellites” that are either active or semi-operational. [https://www.carbonbrief.org/interactive-satellites-used-monitor-climate-change]
I believe that more than adequate effort is going into practical field studies to get the essential data for climate modelling.
Right, that is the last global warming post. The door has closed. Sorry guys. Maybe I should start a Global Warming blog, it would be nice to have somewhere that people with opposing views can came together and have a good battle about the facts. Rather than hurl insults at each other.
Malcolm
Thank you for closing it off.
There are enough climate blogs out there to debate it on without intruding on yours. I’m sorry I engaged in the topic here.
If Martin Back cares to debate the subject I’ll happily meet him on WUWT https://wattsupwiththat.com and continue our discussion.
He can identify me as HotScot.
Martin Back
Malcolm, if I could be allowed one final response in this discussion I would be grateful.
Beginning: “The Earth’s daily weather and climate is controlled by the balance between the amount of sunlight received by the Earth (both its surface and atmosphere) and the amount of energy emitted by the Earth into space.”
Martin has responded to my 11 points re AGW by selecting the single comment from that post I expected him to. No surprise there. He simply ignored every one of the other 11 points I made as I predicted.
He cites my claim of no evidence of CO2 affecting climate change, but goes off into a discussion about the suns effect on the planet, which has nothing whatsoever to do with human induced CO2 levels, and says “Scientists have been trying for decades to understand this critical balance“.
In other words, they don’t know.
Then: “Currently, there are 162 “climate satellites” that are either active or semi-operational.
And with 162 climate satellites, we still don’t know how the sun affects the planets climate so how can we possibly understand the effect of infra red radiation on an atmospheric trace gas? Not that more than a handful of those 162 satellites are studying the sun, most are ‘climate’ satellites.
It’s like saying to someone “we’re going to give you the biggest drug science has ever conceived, to cure your pimple. We don’t know how it’s going to cure it, but it will”.
“Oh, and by the way, don’t worry about covering your pimple with a plaster (clouds) when we shine this miracle drug on you, we don’t understand how those work either, so we’ll just make it up as we go along. We do know for a fact it’ll cure your baldness but we’re ignoring that”.
How on earth can anyone claim this as “settled science”? Or even science?!!!!
Last one
Malcolm,
Much obliged.
That’s it from me.
You may not have all the right answers but you have all the right questions
When this article came out over a year ago I thought it was meant for you Dr. Kendrick. It’s about the 7th Day Advents and how they live long lives. Call it a hunch. It upset me at the time but not for the traditional reasons.
“Loma Linda residents live a really, really long time. It’s not because of their health insurance”
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-goldberg-loma-linda-healthcare-20170530-story.html
Sadly, and overall as had been mentioned several times, honesty or being as honest as possible has lost its value, for a good many. It’s not only a problem in the health field but in other areas of society too. It is quite troubling as a society that finds it can not trust a majority of others is lost, in my opinion.
Soul: And now we can place even less trust in the L.A. Times, once a good newspaper, since it was bought by a pharma gazillionaire.
I have personal complaints with journalists, newspaper over several topics. In this case though I wouldn’t take issue with the LA Times. If anything the LA times has been more friendly toward low carb historically. I should mention I’m not a low carb follower myself, more paleo I suppose, or even Walter Kempner reader, but am not afraid of low carb. If the diet helps some people to become healthier so much the better. The article was written by Jonah Goldberg. I hope I spelled his name correctly. His articles can be seen in many papers in the US. I don’t believe he was being all that critical of the low carb diet, just putting some information out there more than anything else.
I can hardly believe my eyes reading some of the comments and views attributed to vegans, and in particular Vegan Person, who sounds utterly ludicrous. They seem to have no real argument at all, just a desire to destroy anything or anyone who doesn’t agree with them. I used to think that it was just another diet – and fair enough – each to his own. After reading what they say about and to, Dr K and others, it’s clear that they have another agenda. Surely it cannot be just about a diet for goodness sake. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were not even vegans (after all they put forth no sensible argument), and are just hiding behind the label. Whoever they are, they aren’t doing much to endear the vegan diet to anyone, if it makes them so vindictive. (I do know some very nice vegans, so the ‘other agenda’ is probably nearer the mark). If it wasn’t for all the unpleasantness coming from the vegan brigade it would be laughable that people are getting worked up about the choice of food we eat. But when you think that there are people all over the world who have no choice, and often no food to feed their children with, it isn’t laughable at all, it is just self indulgent claptrap, and it makes me angry.
I don’t see the Life Extension website listed either, this is the closest to it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Extension_Institute
When I tried to find “Doctor’s Own” which is another brand of supplements that backs its wares with science, there was nothing (it may have been absent).
The part that threw me is, when it came back with nothing, it told me I could “ask for it to be created” instead of the traditional “create it?” invitation. So much for Wiki, not that it ever worked well.
Someone elsewhere brought up that the advent of Siri and Alexa’s q/a may be the real driving force here. Why don’t they just pay for Brittanica or other sources? They’re among the richest corporations in the world.
Guys/girls just boycott Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales is not being honest. He says there is no bias against low-carb or high fat promoters on Wikipedia yet MCE submitted loads for deletion and is STILL doing it. This is a cover up operation! Why else would Jimmy be personally getting involved in this??! Have a look at Jimmy’s comments, is he lying!
Jimmy Wales is just trying to protect his creation. Understandable.
I don’t think that’s the case … another person had created Wikipedia, and that’s probably why Jimmy Wales does not feel in his heart for the idea of decency.
“Jimmy Wales did not create Wikipedia, though he has edited his biographical article more than half a dozen times to give the impression that he did. Larry Sanger, whom Wales attempted to airbrush out of history, left Wikipedia in disgust soon after its launch” – writes Helen Buyniski, investigative journalist on her website http://helenofdestroy.com/index.php/58-wikipedia-j-accuse and and in an interview ‘RT ON CONTACT: Wikipedia – A Tool Of The Ruling Elite’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDPrpKDjQ5U
‘Wikipedia’s Co-Founder Is Wikipedia’s Most Outspoken Critic’ – “People that I would say are trolls sort of took over. The inmates started running the asylum.” https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bnppw4/wikipedias-co-founder-is-wikipedias-biggest-critic-511
Anina: Thank you for those links. An exceedingly dangerous propaganda platform, Wikipedia. Fortunately, there are enough non-stupid people in this world to see through it. Unfortunately, our educational system churns out vast numbers of sheep.
Truth will out Malcolm. Stay strong.
Although you are caught in the crosshairs, this wikivegan conspiracy will do more to bring the nonsense around SFA and Cholesterol to the general public, than years of considered contributions from THINCS.
Enjoy Christmas and reread The Merchant of Venice.
I think read, rather than reread, may be a more accurate description. The good thing about the truth is that it is immortal. Nonsense has a ‘best-before’ stamp on the side.
The ‘carrot and the stick’ of incentive operates a tragi-comic reiteration of short-term – temporal/mortal replacement for truth. As it becomes clear that ‘truth’ is whatever those holding the carrots and sticks SAY it is – OR ELSE! – then it behoves us to invest in a different or renewed sense of values.
The ‘vegan identity’ gets its mainstream carrot of ‘support’ as a stick or lever to use on selected targets and as a social meme of ‘moral credibility’ along with putting the right kind of rubbish in the right kind of bin. Support your global rubbishcare system!
So indeed – no rest or ‘peace for the wicked’ of a mask of false presentation – so let peace be the sign that truth is not being denied its due appreciation by the use of such a mask – unawares.
The most important thing about a lie is that it isn’t true, or has no status as true outside of being given it by the fooled and the fearful. And believed in folly or under the dictate of fear.
Your article has been saved over on http://deletionpedia.org/en/Malcolm_Kendrick . Interesting site. I’m spreading the word, and have told Wikipedia they have lost me as a contributor. Unfortunately, I have never been an editor over there, so I couldn’t join the discussion. Sorry about all this, Malcolm. I love your work.
Well this is only the first time I have ever been sorry that I have never signed up to any of these platforms because now I cannot protest by picking up my ball and leaving. Malcolm I am glad that you are not unhappy with this outcome and as others have said you have now joined an illustrious group.
As a lay person I had always believed that all scientific study was a discovery process however it is sad to see that during my life-time a mere 73 years that we are now being told that this is now a closed shop. Apparently everything is now settled however we are still overwhelmed by type 11 Diabetes, various cancers, dementia, heart disease, & bowel problems and the so called solutions are not being looked for in what we eat and how we live but in more and more chemical solutions.
When I was young born right after WW2 food was scarce even here in Australia so our diet was simple fare nothing packaged or processed we drank non pasteurized milk, butter, home made jams some meat, vegetables mostly home grown. porridge,some lentils and soup made from bones in the winter and of course Vegemite. There was no soft drinks, commercial cakes, biscuits or ice cream everything was produced at home. The figures for many of the above common diseases were very different than today cancer for example was about 1 in 8 or 9 people and more prevalent in older folk Type !! diabetes was called age onset diabetes and again not all that common now both are galloping along at about 1 in every three folk.
When I became a mother I felt quite strongly the tyranny of poverty when sitting in the Mothers and Babies clinic and all the bottles except mine were filled with purple liquid (black currant juice, more Vit. C than oranges) I could not afford any thing like that, how did that turn out for my son well the company was later exposed for the high sugar content of that product causing massive tooth decay in infants my son however did not need a filling until he was 34 yrs.
We did not have many obese folk either, I went to a school in a rural area with about 500 students and we only had one student with issues with obesity caused I believe by a serious medical condition however I live next to a school and many of the students are overweight; in the hospital (public) where I work we have been funded for some new wings and when we went on the tour prior to the opening the Sister in charge went on at great length about the wonderful new bariatric facilities I watched with a sort of horror as she demonstrated how big and strong the beds were and how the pulleys would hoist these poor unfortunate folk into the air and propel them at some speed to the bathrooms or hold them on high while their beds were changed etc. She went on and on about how lucky we were to have been given this extra funding as we never have enough of these beds to accommodate the influx of obese patients. Now to the veggie folk my feeling is this we all eat, drink and breath so these massive changes in public health must have been caused by one of those and my bet is our diet while we are being polluted in some areas by the air which may have a place it is clearly what we are eating and drinking that has caused these changes.
How are we dealing with this well apparently we are busy trying to shut down any reasonable discussion to focus on more chemical solutions, and just recently we have bariatric surgical solutions where we cut away most of the stomach this mutilation is clearly better than education, counselling and change to diet and lifestyle and anyone who disagrees must be banned, & vilified it is the hand-washing all over again.
Thank you for you’re contribution.
Amen! (said in a Christmassy voice).
The joke is that dieticians will tell you that low fat diets work, only no-one follows them. The corollary of course is that we all secretly ate low fat diets from when we evolved until when they were invented, when we all suddenly stopped eating them. Ummm . . .
Meanwhile the baritricians (there are also bariatric ambulances) are convinced that we actually evolved wrong, but this can be corrected with a scalpel. What other explanation could there possibly be?
Absolutely spot on summary of the stupidity of human beings. We are as sheep. When the shepherd is in wolves clothing and controlling the heard well any nonsense can be made to be truth. It has been happening since the dawn of time and will continue to be so as long as there’s money to be made and power to be acquired. I guess we need to do our own research and to not accept things on face value or cannon fodder we will become. Malcolm you’ve showed yourself a man of character through this debacle so that by itself tells us more about you and less about them. Keep doing your work sir and to hell with the naysayers.
Absolutely brilliant, you give me hope and faith in human nature that someone is not afraid to let us know what is really going on out there. RESPECT xxxx
When this business finally gets settled, and it will, and we emerge from the darkness, this is going to make one hell of a block buster movie.
I wonder who will play Dr Malcolm Kendrick?
It’s already a Movie – Malcolm got the part. Perspectives within the light are not waiting on ‘everyone else’ to get it first – so as to arrive the condition in which you can also change.
When the lifeless is settled to be without life it is no longer employed as a means to induce people to eat margarine or statins or etc and etc. Darkness dispelled allows light to rise of itself. This is a VERY different expectation or premise than waiting IN the dark for a change of conditions to allow a ‘dark-adaptation’ to come out and make blockbuster movies of itself…
The very notion of the camera obscura, the movie theatre or Plato’s Cave, is a dark place into which moving shadows can seem to live on the ‘wall’ or screen of consciousness.
Reading this gives me hope and at the same time let’s me despair.
So much easier to go with the mainstream rather than disagree. Then where is our voice.
You could have had an easier life Dr Kendrick but you chose to point out areas of concern which made them madder than hell. The force be with you.
Every good wish tou you all for Christmas and New year, wherever you are.
WordPress.com who host this site may start taking exception to people who don’t follow the party line and removing their accounts, as they have other people who question the official government line on certain events in the USA.
For what it’s worth, Everipedia has articles on:
Malcolm Kendrick, Maryanne Demasi, Aseem Malhotra, Uffe Ravnskov, Robert Atkins, Gary Taubes.
Thank you
Long time reader, first time poster from the US…
Thank you Dr K, not just for the information you provide but for teaching us how to think critically and understand what is below the headline (and in between the lines). I am not a doctor but I do have a vested interest in my own health so read a lot about heart disease, cancer screening, nutrition, etc. I believe reading your blogs has helped me to better understand what I read, how to critically think about it, and what questions to ask.
Doctoring Data was a great read and full of eye opening information, thank you.
Thank you
With thanks to David Bailey from his post above I have now looked at infogalactic. What a refreshing difference from Wikipedia!
The introduction says:
‘ Infogalactic is written collaboratively by volunteers who contribute and edit without compensation. Anyone with Internet access can create and make changes to Infogalactic articles, except in limited cases where editing is restricted to prevent disruption or vandalism. Users can contribute anonymously, under a pseudonym, or with their real identity.
The foundational principles by which Infogalactic operates are very different from the Five Pillars of Wikipedia. These principles are known as the Seven Canons of Infogalactic.
Infogalactic does not share the highly centralized structure of Wikipedia or the ideological dogma of the Wikimedia Foundation. The primary requirements are for the information contributed to be true, relevant, and verifiable, rather than cited from a so-called “published reliable source”, since experience has proven how reliance upon the latter can be easily gamed by editors and administrators alike.
etc etc’
Go and take a look if you haven’t already:
https://infogalactic.com
Brilliant write up on our Malcolm too https://infogalactic.com/info/Malcolm_Kendrick
Jonathon Christie: Yes, a very good piece; however, it needs a bit of editing. It says, “. . .higher total cholesterol is associated with lower cancer mortality, but lower rates of death from heart disease. . . .” “But” is the incorrect conjunction, and renders the sentence unintelligible.
To All here : I have deleted my Wikipedia bookmark. Using Inforgalactic instaed along with others.
Sorry Jimmy Wales. Your creation has been corrupted and so I shall not use or fund it from hereon.
That’s the article as it appeared on Wikipedia a year or so ago.
Infogalactic is a fork of Wikipedia – it contains almost exactly the same content, but without the contributors needed to maintain the number of articles. The result is that it is rapidly falling out of date and has its own problems, from the alt-right focus through to the ability for vested interests (such as – potentially – big pharma) to purchase control over articles.
Reblogged this on Worldtruth.
This discussion has touched on a whole range of issues, and I think most here are in agreement about at least some of them:
The gradual loss of freedom of speech.
Treatment of cholesterol.
Treatment of T2 diabetes.
The whole idea that gender is a social construct. This can rapidly become horribly medical when we hear of children being prescribed puberty blockers.
The supposed dangers of CO2 and Climate Change
etc.
I am a member of UKIP, because I decided that it is the only party that seems to stand firm against this wave of pressure with the exception of the issue of CVD/diabetes, where it expresses no opinion. Even on the issues of cholesterol and carbs vs fats, I think that fact that UKIP is hugely aware that science is being distorted, means that it could easily take these issues on at some time in the future.
We need a political party that faces up squarely to the fact that we are losing our freedom of speech.
Apologies for the political rant!
Gender is a social construct, Sex is not. The problem is that both sides confuse one with the other.
Dr Kendrick what evidence do you have that this is a Vegan conspiracy and not say a medical establishment assault trying to neutralise the opposition to cholesterol/sat fat theory
Read anonymous vegan.
As a vegan I can say that I am enjoying this. Jimmy Moore’s article was deleted today. I hope MCE gets more of you meat-eaters and low-carbers deleted from Wikipedia! Whoever he is, he has my support! Maybe I will sign up and delete some of you guys myself?
I see Fat Head on Wikipedia will get deleted next, a shocking documentary filled with inaccurate claims. This is a war and we are winning. LCHF is losing! Folks why not wake up and join our side. We have more power. The vegetarians and vegans are the good guys 🙂
Aseem Malhotra will never be deleted, too many references criticizing his fad diet, but that is OK. As long as you guys are criticized I am OK with it, would rather you guys were deleted though. But criticism is good. A top Google search for your name and criticism on Wikipedia. =)
LCHF writers get deleted whilst plant-based diet writers rarely never get deleted. We have the science on our side. If you want to know about nutrition check out Michael Greger’s website for the FACTS 🙂
Yet another vegan celebrating the demolition of free speech. Nice.
@Anonymous Vegan
I’m sure you’re very smug about revealing yourself as a nasty fascist thug. Typical leftist, suppress all debate.
And you’ll notice, as I pointed out a few days ago, there is no genuine sincerity. They do not answer questions, which I an others have posed.
Historically, fascists are on the extreme right of the political spectrum.
Helen: Those lines have blurred now, though, at least in the U.S., as both political parties are now beholden to the wealthy class.
Helen
fascism was developed by Mussolini. He was the son of a left wing father and joined his local socialist group before being kicked out. He joined the right wing and was kicked out in short order before forming his own ideology which Adolph Hitler, the leader of the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party (NAZI for short in German) admired. Pleas note the term “socialist workers party”.
The only enduring right wing fascist I am aware of was Spain’s Franco. Other than that, fascism appeals to left wing principles of command and control.
Those swastika brandishing skinheads you may see causing trouble on any street are left wing fascist’s and nothing to do with peaceful right wing politics which encourages free trade, free expression, small governments and low taxes.
Kindly be careful who you brand extreme right wing or alt right wing because I am as far right wing as one can get and I do not condone fascist activities. Those are manifestations of ideological left wing politics.
Recently found out that Nazi used to be the familiar short form of the boy’s name Ignaz, the German form of Ignatius. This was a relatively common name in Bavaria and the Rhineland, the majority Roman Catholic parts of Germany, after St Ignatius Loyala, the founder of the Jesuits. The Jesuits remain influential in these parts of Germany, where they founded many schools and Universities.
It always was an insult to call the NSDAP, in full, die Nationalsocialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the Nazis. I now wonder whether there wasn’t an anti-clerical element in this too. After all, Loyala was a former soldier, who organised his religious order on military lines, just like the Nazis were a paramilitary organisation. He also commanded absolute obedience to one’s superiors within the order, both in action and in belief.
What about the science of ecology? Wolves and lions were required to keep down the numbers of herbivores to prevent over-grazing. Now that the wolves and lions are gone, we have to do the job for them. Pity to waste all that meat.
Martin Back
Plant eating animals are prey.
I’d rather not be a vegan.
Ominous veggie, you may consider you have “the power”, but you do not have the wisdom to exercise it responsibly. If you are lucky you may be fortunate enough to grow up one day.
Oh dear, Another Greger Veganist forcing his ill formed views on us.
😦
If you really had the science on your side there would be no need to censor views and evidence you dislike. Those who have the conviction of truth on their side will fight back with better ideas. To silence others is the mark of the propagandist. (And in your case one with a rather smug, childish attitude.) So, no, you aren’t “the good guys,” but rather a bunch of zealots clinging to an ersatz religion cloaked in the mantle of “science.” And the Internet doesn’t begin and end with Wikipedia, however great its popularity.
Well, Mr. Anonymous Vegan. If LCHF were “losing,” why is the Diet Doctor web site getting 10 million hits per month and growing?
If you have better ideas and better evidence that those you disagree with, why not just present your side of it and thereby display the awesome dichotomy between your allegedly unassailable facts and the stated views you see as erroneous?
You don’t, because you can’t.
You are promoting a belief system falsely dressed up as a science-based viewpoint.
Thus the closest you can come to “winning” the debate (or the “war,” as you put it) is to engage in censorship.
In any debate, I immediately distrust the side that tries to silence and censor those they disagree with. It’s a telltale sign of not having a valid argument to begin with. And I dare say I am not unique in this respect.
Deleting Wikipedia pages you dislike isn’t “winning.” It’s childish, and a sign of desperation. People have brains, and if they see that infantile would-be Thought Police such as yourself are attempting to suppress views instead of debate them fairly, they will look elsewhere for information. Unfortunately for you, vegan zealots don’t control the entire Internet.
Jack Sprat could eat no fat,
His wife could eat no lean.
Why he died I’ll never know —
His cholesterol level was really low.
Must’ve been all those beans.
I think Mr. Ellis is about the give up the game. Check the latest edits on his account MatthewManchester1994 . He says he has been outed by the low-carb community so he is closing his Wikipedia account and never returning.
Or maybe changing his account/name, and returning as something else. What a terrible thing to be outed, when you had been able to sit in darkness and hurl insults at anyone you liked. I shall refer to him in future as Diana Moon Glampers. Whatever he chooses to name himself in the future.
Those of you that have attacked the person who nominated the article for deletion and posted his real life details in an attempt to silence him need to take a serious look at themselves. And I’m pretty sure Dr. Kendrick would agree. Reprehensible.
No, I was wrong. Kendrick is as bad as the rest of you.
Thank you for becoming my enemy.
Wicked77: We who love truth are greatly comforted to know the quality of its enemies.
Yes, I am not one for ad-hominem attacks, and although I was told who he was pretty early on, I did not out him – I would rather he had done that himself. However, someone who chooses to attack people personally, whilst hiding behind an anonymous handle cannot really complain too much when the boot is on the other foot. Can they? I am out there for anyone to kick, always have been. One of my life motto’s is simple. If you can’t take it, then don’t hand it out.
Currently many of those who I admire are being deleted from Wikipedia, and attacked in many other ways. By people who simply will not reveal themselves to public gaze, or debate, or criticism. It is all a bit one-sided is it not?
As you may gather, I am not easily insulted or wounded. I have been told who those who know me personally that ‘you really don’t care what other people say about you?’ This is not actually true. There are a number of people who’s opinions of me matter a great deal. What I don’t care about is being attacked by certain people. In fact, I welcome it. As Oscar Wilde said. ‘You can always judge a man by the quality of his enemies.’ Currently, I am very happy with my enemies. Thank you.
It brings to mind the Khmer Rouge who thought that by eliminating all disenting thought they would create the perfect society (or so they said). See how that ended. Anyway, Dr M K is my hero.
You are supporting an anonymous individual who, without any oversight or credentials, seeks to suppress the opinions of others.
You might be next. How would you feel about that?
MCE (Skeptic from Britain) is a vegan HERO for debunking low-carb and meat-eating quacks on Wikipedia. The LCHF community have outed his real life identity and are trying to destroy his life. Shame on you all!
This war is not over, this is just phase 1! We are going to use Google to debunk all mainstream low-carb high-fat writers. We are working on another website as I type this. By next month have a look on Google for Malcolm Kendrick, Zoe Harcombe, Aseem Malhotra etc There will be MORE criticism on wikis that are indexed high by Google trafficking. Wikipedia is NOT the only website we control. We will CRUSH LCHF.
If you want to join some of our comrades in UK
https://www.instagram.com/vegancommunity/?hl=en
🙂
Ah Vegan 1992, you too are a hero, for sure.
LCHF is not really a community, just some concerned folk with an interest in CVD causes and associated research. This talk of war is very silly and childlike .
I think maybe, more of a community needs to be created.
Vegan 1992
Even your language is revealing, “vegan HERO”, “This war is not over”, “We will crush”, “If you want to join some of our comrades”.
Bunch of commies by the sound of it.
Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
“I think maybe, more of a community needs to be created.”
A vegan community?
Call it a crèche.
I meant a high fat low carb community. Although the moment you create a community you can be beset by all the problems that beset tribes.
The problem with Vegan 1992’s comment is that many of us now low carb or keto people WERE vegans or vegetarians. Myself, I ate very low fat for years, not vegetarian but close. It caused major depression, radical mood and blood swings, and the like. Low carb/keto has corrected all of that.
If you look at many of the low carb people (Ted Naiman, Dr. Georgia Ede, Zoe Harcombe, Lierre Keith, etc.) they were vegans or vegetarians and saw their health (including their mental health) decline. That’s WHY they are now low carb/keto.
You will not “crush LCHF”, as you cannot. For me, for instance, you could not pay me enough to eat vegan or vegetarian. I know what it does to you.
Also, does no one else find it strange that vegans are outspoken militants? Not all, not even most, probably, but the ones that are, are slightly to a lot crazy. Why are there no LCHF people who are trying to remove vegans from Wikipedia? Maybe there’s something in the vegan diet that causes them to be mentally unstable?
Wicked77, two sayings come to mind
“What goes around comes around”.
“Do unto others as you have them do unto you”.
If Septec from Britain had not used the tactics he did, he would not be suffering the reactions he is. The same goes for all the others who think the posters on this blog are demented half-wits. Coperatively there is a wealth of abilities and intelligence here. Ok, I accept I may be some way towards the demented and half wit category, but many others aren’t. 🎃
Wicked77,
I suppose that you are saying that it is better to conceal medical science that is inconsistent with veganism – i.e. that it is better to condemn some T2 diabetics to progressive deterioration and an early death for the sake of veganism! Dr Kendrick doesn’t tell people what to eat, he presents the data that indicates (for example) that eating saturated fat is beneficial, rather than harmful. A vegan could interpret that by eating more peanuts, or other nuts that are rich in saturated fats.
Dr Kendrick does more than weigh in on diet questions. He also helps to point out the dangers of taking statins – something I encountered myself before I ever discovered this blog. To the extent that Dr Kendrick’s message is covered up by your friends, you are condemning many, many people to a life of pain and mental deterioration. You are also helping to maintain the profits of Big Pharma.
I hope you feel really proud to be part of that movement.
Wickerd 77 : So making anonymous attacks on an individual is fair go, but anyone who works out who the anonymous attacker is and publishes their name is ‘reprehensible’ ? What utter crap you utter.
I agree entirely with Malcolm here. Indeed I can assess the quality of Dr Kendrick by the lack of any quality of you hiis enemy. You have shown yourself lacking in quality in your own comments. Best to slink off quietly to anonymousness in ignorance.
This is interesting!
The world of medicine has no turned into “we and them”! How long can it survive in this shape?
Just now a new book arrived in my mailbox, “PLAGUE” by Kent Heckenlively and Judy Mikovits, and already the introduction is a scary reading of what “them” are capable of in terms of attacking people who are defending true “science”.
This whole business is getting surreal – worse than being taken over by zombies, we’re going to be taken over by vegans…will be interesting to see what things are like in a decade or so…(not that I’ll care much by then)
anglosvizzera
Don’t award them any more credit that they are due. vegan converts are like religious zealots. Genuine vegans, many of whom live in the developing world, would never judge anyone else by what they eat.
Is anyone beginning to wonder if the various vegans leaving comments on this blog are perhaps two strawberries short of a punnet? Maybe they are lacking something in their diet?
Undoubtedly the Vegans Various are short of something – I doubt if it is strawberries, but more likely they are two rashers and an egg short of a decent breakfast.. (And the bread fried in beef dripping)
Sue Richardson
Each other.
Dr Kendrick I Love You! Who needs Wickitosh anyway.
I think the Wikipedia thing is like that old saying. First they came for you on Wikipedia… You must try to kill these things at the start, because if you do not, things can rapidly go sour.
It is tempting to ignore these people as cranks, but I agree we can’t let it pass because the truth is worth fighting for. The quotation you had in mind from Martin Niemollor is apt.
‘First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak because I was not a socialist.
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me.
And there was no one left to speak for me’
I find a lot of the ‘pro’ comments on here deeply depressing because they just seem to be joining in the general sniping bigotry exhibited by Skeptic From Britain. Yes, these alleged ‘skeptics’ are making a lot of noise about being militant vegans, but for every one of them there are hundreds, possibly thousands, of vegans who don’t give a damn what you eat. Yes, some of them probably disapprove on moral grounds and would argue their case for a meat-free life if they met you face to face, but they wouldn’t dream of stalking people on Wikipedia or trying to have them censored. Some, because they would think it morally wrong but many more because, to repeat, they don’t give a damn what you eat.
What we saw on Wikipedia was one little twerp manipulating the bureaucratic hierarchy built into the site for his own agenda. That is so common on Wikipedia it’s institutionalised. They censor the most random things, and most of it is done not because the content is controversial or challenging but because another almost identical little twerp decides to manipulate the system into supporting HIS own bigotry. There’s virtually a template for them, and they all have the same M.O.
I don’t believe this is a war of vegans versus meat-eaters, not truly; it’s a war of bigots versus anyone who disagrees with them. I know it is difficult and the temptation is strong when lots of these alleged militant vegans are over here sticking jibes in, but frankly this is classic trolling and it is how ‘flame wars’ are operated. People are having battles like these all over the internet and about things like Lord of the Rings or Taylor Swift. In short, it’s a lot more to do with the idiocy of the internet than veganism.
All that said, it is distinctly possible that pharmaceutical companies or food companies pay for a lot of this trolling, precisely because it is so easy to do and is a standard M.O. so they will not be suspected of doing it. Again though, not so much an evil conspiracy as standard business practice.
I really feel that if you are aiming to fight for the side of science and rationality then you have to get a bit Gandhi on its ass and turn the other cheek. I DON’T mean not fight back – that you should do with every inch of your being, and I paid quite a heavy personal cost for fighting Dr Kendrick’s corner, with some equally sly shenanigans that led to sanctions against me on Wikipedia, and which went on long after the battle was lost. This time I was ‘lucky’ (I had to fight long and hard for that ‘luck’) and I got reinstated, but I haven’t always been so fortunate (I have a lifetime ban on Amazon, for example). I’m mentioning this to show that I paid a price for speaking up but I still won’t yell abuse at vegans or blanket-blame them for this situation. And I’m not saying this to show moral superiority either, but to explain why I think it’s a bad idea to sink to their level – because if we act like them and talk like them people will think we are them and we’re not. We’re smarter than that, and better read.
Let them yell and gloat and stick their tongues out but don’t blame all vegans or vegetarians because of what was basically one ignorant little buffoon who thought he could just waltz in and delete things he didn’t like and no-one would say boo to him. This absolutely may be ‘Big Pharma’ or some food giant manipulating the situation for their own gain, and yes it is galling beyond all measure that Wikipedia and other institutions embrace these little trolls as if they were competing with them for stupidity awards, but it is NOT a revolution of vegans coming to persecute meat eaters; it’s just two or three sad little boys playing on their computers, pretending they are warriors leading armies and, as such, we should ignore them and stick to the point – what the science does or does not prove about health & nutrition.
This is an excellent comment, putting the matter into perspective. You are right, it is easy to get wound up by a few comments. The majority of us are for open discussion, which is what impresses me about this Dr M K blog.
Chancery Stone, I think I should out myself here at this point. I was when young for various reasons a vegetarian. No one had heard of being vegan in the 1970’s. But by around 1986 I came to the conclusion that the vegetarian group of people with whom I mixed were so ‘precious; in their attitude to non vegetarians, that it frankly stank. So I started eating meat again and was no longer part of that precious mob.
Later on in the noughties I was again a vegetarian despite the same widespread ‘aren’t we precious’ attitude towards others. In more recent years I have again not been vegetarian or vegan for health reasons. My health is better on a lower carn high saturated fat diet with a good serves of protein.
And I no longer am infected by the ‘precious’ temperament… Thankfully !
Just my personal experience but I suspect a wide spread one.
Chancery Stone: Thank you. Excellent analysis.
Thank you for this comment, Chancery. I was trying to frame something similar, but you’ve made a better job of it than I could.
How I wish that some of the avowed right-wing regular commenters here could acknowledge that people across the political spectrum are capable of informed critical thinking, and that they may all share concerns about the dogmas of mainstream medicine and the activities of the pharmaceutical industry. Such attributes and concerns are not the preserve of the right.
I am an ex-vegetarian, as is my husband. We’ve both ditched that way of eating after 30-plus years because we developed serious health problems which were exacerbated by the poor nutrition available from the diet. Neither of us saw ourselves as being morally superior to meat-eaters, and our reasons were not party-political. We were, and are, concerned about animal welfare in industrial agricultural systems, but we live now in a rural area that makes it easy for us to choose meat and dairy products that come from humanely reared animals.
MatthewManchester1994 (the editor formerly known as Skeptic from Britain) apparently wasn’t happy with my December 13th blog post in which I predicted (correctly) that he wasn’t a shill for Big Food, but instead a vegetarian activist. Fat Head was marked for deletion on December 17th because it’s a “a non-notable fringe conspiracy theory documentary that doubts scientific evidence for the lipid hypothesis.” Odd thing for an objective Wikipedia editor to finally notice more than nine years after the release.
As opposed to What The Health? obviously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Health
I do not expect any of the doctors listed therein to be deleted, ever.
Actually I think the vegans/SDA are backed with a LOT of money, after all cereals are extremely profitable – a few years back some of the farmers I know were being paid £30 – £50/tonne LESS than the cost of production of their wheat, and the markup is immense. Same for “vegetable” oils and sugar. Can’t make anything like the same profit on quality foods like meat
Vegan 1992 et al – have you any idea how stupid you sound, I think you have spent too long playing computer games. Your time maybe better spent in a real war, try Syria, but whatever you do just try to grow up and come to terms with the fact that no-one gives a fig about your dietary choices – you sound like the self-appointed “diet police” – good luck with the other 7 billion plus on the planet.
I’m a long time Wikipedia editor, so take this as you will. However, Wikipedia is in a difficult position. Because the contributors are anonymous, there is no means by which people’s credentials can be verified. As a result it cannot work like a traditional encyclopedia.
The solution they went for is “verifiability” – if you can’t trust the expertise of the contributor, you need to be able to trust the source the contributors used to make the content. Which is why they use the term “editor” – editors don’t write new material, but collate existing material. When I’m editing Wikipedia, I’m mostly looking for sources and checking to see if they are valid, rather than writing what I know. It is the only way that Wikipedia can function while still being crowdsourced and semi-anonymous. (There have been other projects which have tried to remove the anonymity, but with very limited success).
What this means for articles such as these is that Wikipedia has to reflect what is in mainstream sources. If the existing interests are ignoring an issue, there won’t be any sources. If there aren’t any sources that are reliable enough, Wikipedia can’t have an article. That’s what the deletion discussions are supposed to be about – not if the views presented are correct, or if they’ve been accepted, or even if the subject is important and influential, but if the subject has been written about in sufficient depth to create a fair and neutral article.
If the article is to be returned (and it can be) Wikipedia needs to be shown that there is enough coverage of Malcolm Kendrick in independent reliable sources that are not self-published so that a fair and balanced article can be created. The decision of the admin who closed the deletion discussion was that no one had convincingly demonstrated that this level of coverage existed. Demonstrate that this is incorrect, and perhaps this can be reversed.
While it is frustrating and means that important topics are often ignored by Wikipedia, Wikipedia has to reflect the mainstream coverage. Wikipedia can’t be used to lead and bring about change, all it can do is follow as change occurs.
I don’t understand what would constitute an “independent and reliable source” covering Dr Kendrick’s work that would satisfy Wiki’s requirements for inclusion? If Dr Kendrick is interviewed by Nourish Balance Thrive podcast, for example, but not by The Guardian, is the first source more independent and reliable? Or less independent and reliable? And what criteria is used to reach either conclusion?
Interviews are always complex – fundamentally they are primary sources, as they are the subject talking about themselves. This is fine and both could potentially be used, but as you would understand, a biography based solely on the subject’s statements about themselves is likely to be biased. Thus you can’t build an article only around interviews – you need something more independent.
If they weren’t interviews, then only The Guardian could be used. There is a strong concern about libel on Wikipedia. The Guardian has editorial control and fact checking, so generally it is assumed that it would not publish libel. But a podcast is presumably self published and does not have the same level of fact checking. Thus it couldn’t be used for statements about a living person, because of the greater risk of those statements being false.
Thank you
On food matters, the Guardian is becoming hopelessly biased. I’ve bought the paper for nearly 50 years but there are limits. Its food sections these days contain practically nothing that I, on a LCHF diet, can eat! It’s gone all vegan. Help!
shirley3349: I read my local paper for fifty years, too. Three and a half years ago I cancelled it out of disgust with the pharma propaganda, but I dearly miss the comics and puzzles, especially the Saturday crossword, a real treat for the brain. They were never terrible on food, though.
Thank you for your post, and it raises valid points. However, is suggests that, all of a sudden, someone has noted that I am not being written about in sufficient depth to be worthy of inclusion in Wikipedia. Now this may be true, although I have not seen any objective definition of what constitutes ‘sufficient depth of coverage’ Perhaps Wikipedia has posted guidelines on this?
However, the main issue at present is that, all of a sudden, a number of people who support the view that a high fat low carbohydrate diet may not be damaging to health – and may in fact be beneficial – are all being targeted for deletion – all at the same time. Jimmy Moore has gone, Uffe Ravnskov under attack, Assem Malhotra is being snipped away etc. etc.. Two day ago Tom Naughton was wiped out. As he wrote, as a comment in this blog:
‘MatthewManchester1994 (the editor formerly known as Skeptic from Britain) apparently wasn’t happy with my December 13th blog post in which I predicted (correctly) that he wasn’t a shill for Big Food, but instead a vegetarian activist. Fat Head was marked for deletion on December 17th because it’s a “a non-notable fringe conspiracy theory documentary that doubts scientific evidence for the lipid hypothesis.” Odd thing for an objective Wikipedia editor to finally notice more than nine years after the release.’
Yes, it is an odd thing that Tom Naughton is marked for deletion, a day or so, after having supported me.
The reality here is that there is a conspiracy going on to wipe out those who support the High Fat Low Carb (HFLC) position. Of course, they hide behind the WIki ‘rules’ because if they revealed their true intent, this may be frowned upon (or maybe not, who knows). They are, at least so it was claimed on this blog, going to move onto Google to attack us there. At which point our ‘depth of coverage’ will fall further, and we will enter death cycle.
Frankly I don’t care, and never did, if I was on Wikipedia. What I am trying to highlight here is the fact that Wiki is being used, and all editors and everyone involved with Wikipedia needs to take this seriously. To mangle a well known saying. First they came from those on Wikipedia, and I did not speak out, because I was not on Wikipedia….
Wake up, this journey will have a very bad ending.
The guidelines you are looking for are the general notability guidelines at:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability
And the more specific guidelines concerning people:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(people)
The general rule for people is: “People are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject.”
In addition, the bar for living people is set a bit higher to avoid libel, so the sources need to have editorial control. There are some shortcuts, where it is assumed that coverage must exist, but generally the coverage needs to be demonstrated.
What tends to happen is that some articles only exist by dint of being ignored for many years. Wikipedia has close to 6 million articles, and a lot were created before these policies came into being. At some point someone – either because they have a personal axe to grind or because they just stumbled across them – finds a cluster of articles and starts nominating them for deletion on mass.
Ultimately, in the discussions why an article was nominated isn’t considered. What matters is how it fits in the existing guidelines. In this case, for example, Uffe Ravnskov won’t be deleted, but Fat Head will be unless a couple more reviews can be found.
You appear determined to avoid the issue that I have been raising. I realise that using (self-created) guidelines can be used as a way to deflect discussion of complex subjects – we were only following guidelines. What, for example, is the definition of ‘significant’, or reliable. On reliability, it may be best to quote Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet: ‘The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue…science has taken a turn towards darkness.’
Or John Ioannadis, in the most widely read article in the last ten years. ‘Why most published research findings are false.’ “Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. It is more likely for a research claim to be false than true.’ Reliable?
We currently face a crisis with the entire medical research system. Wikipedia, by taking the conventional stance of supporting/believing only conventional sources is simply compounding the problem. It is like peer-review, the perfect way of stifling innovation and dissent from the mainstream view.
Reliable? ‘The poor quality of medical research is widely acknowledged, yet disturbingly the leaders of the medical profession seen only minimally concerned about the problems and make no apparent efforts to find a solution.’ Richard Smith – Long time editor of the BMJ.
Wikipedia can follow the mainstream down its current path, or it can help to lead the research world out of the place it finds itself in.
“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” – Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (1996).
Wikipedia, a candle in the dark? I hope so.
I think the way Wiki is set up, it can only follow and report on an established trend, not help lead it. Wiki rules would have probably prevented write ups on Semmelweis, Lind or Flemming at the time they did their work. Maybe, a solution is to look at a hypothethis rather than its advocates. I searched for LCHF on Wiki and there is a write up. I would be very surprised if someone managed to delete it.
@Dr Malcolm kendrick
> What, for example, is the definition of ‘significant’, or reliable.
Generally anything with sufficient editorial control or written by someone with sufficient expertise in the topic. The general guideline on reliability is at:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources
It is difficult to give a solid answer on what is regarded as reliable source, as context is important. A source that is considered reliable for information about a computer game may not be sufficiently reliable for information about a living person; one that is good enough to make a claim about whether or not a celebrity was married might not be reliable for medical facts. But there are guidelines to cover most of this, at least to give people a starting point for discussion.
> “Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. It is more likely for a research claim to be false than true.’ Reliable?
It is a good point. In the case of medical articles the standard is particularly high, only accepting peer reviewed meta studies as opposed to individual studies without broader context. The MEDRS guideline covers this.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)
I certainly agree that there are issues with the peer review process, but in terms of Wikipedia it is currently the best model available.
> Wikipedia, by taking the conventional stance of supporting/believing only conventional sources is simply compounding the problem. It is like peer-review, the perfect way of stifling innovation and dissent from the mainstream view.
Yes, Wikipedia is forced to take the conventional stance. As it must rely on published sources to generate content, it will always take a position reflected in those sources. It cannot be used to lead change, as it employs the wrong model for this to happen. Unfortunately, because it is crowdsourced, it cannot use a different model without fundamental change, and these changes would turn it from being Wikipedia into something else. It might make more sense for a new project to be built than for Wikipedia to be changed – my personal favourite is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which is a good example of a more traditional model made free online. Because it relies on confirming the expertise of contributors, it can trust their judgement instead of needing every claim to be supported by existing references.
> Wikipedia can follow the mainstream down its current path, or it can help to lead the research world out of the place it finds itself in.
It can only follow the mainstream down the current path. It is inherent in the design of Wikipedia. The one plus is size – a typical print encyclopedia would be unable to publish content about every theory, while Wikipedia has the potential to do so. It has to follow the coverage that exists, but it isn’t limited to only mentioning the dominate views. Thus the Low-carbohydrate diet can be (and is) covered, as there are sufficient sources to allow coverage. This is also why Andreas Eenfeldt and Uffe Ravnskov remain on Wikipedia.
In essence, therefore, Wikipedia is designed to act as a barrier to innovation, or criticism of any current ideas/hypotheses. ‘Yes, Wikipedia is forced to take the conventional stance.’ I am not certain that Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger would have thought this was the inevitable consequence of their model. However the law of unintended consequences usually applies to human activities. Relying on experts, or expertise, is the number one way to prevent any progress. “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts” — Richard Feynman.
We have a world becoming more obese and more diabetic with every passing day. The experts have been telling us for the last forty years to eat a high carb low fat diet. There are many who believe that this advice from the ‘experts’ has been the underlying cause of these massive health problems. Unintentionally, or not, Wikipedia supports the status quo, and removes many/most of those – like myself – who question the current guidelines. Wikipedia is not, and cannot be, the solution. It is therefore part of the problem.
If Wikipedia cannot help to promote debate and discussion what, then, is the point of it? it might as well accept that it is simply an out of date, on-line encyclopedia.
Bilby Longears: Thanks for your perspective.
Bilburgh, thank you for your input. The deletion of Malcolm Kendrick seems silly as it more or less said he was a doctor and wrote a couple of books. For MCE to take his bigoted view and heap scorn, with the assistance of some other bigots, on someone of Malcolm Kendrick’s standing (and others of similar standing, puts Wikipedia in a very poor light.
I strongly oppose anyone heaping scorn on a subject on Wikipedia. Ultimately, the decision about keeping or removing and article will be based on policies and guidelines, but this should be managed in a professional manner, and should never involve attacks on individuals.
Bilby, sorry your name was altered by the predictive text in my last message. No doubt, when editing inside wikipedia, MCE did use (or misuse) the policies to effect deletion. It was the subsequent messages posted on this blog which contained the scorn and gloating. Those posters have indicated an agenda where they wil misuse the rusel and policies to silence people whose views differ from theirs. This is not helpful as it is merely the act of a censor attempting to grab power in order to then allow only possibly misleading information to be available.
I have posted references to “MCE” as I understood this was the name of Septic from Britain. I apologise for the error. All references should be “Skeptic from Britain”, or whatever his current identity hiding alias is.
Bilby Longears,
I appreciate your honesty. You say that Wikipedia reflects the mainstream views. Much of the mainstream narrative is controlled by big monied interests (no big surprise there). Whether your intention or not, this essentially makes Wikipedia a corporate propaganda machine. Wouldn’t it be better to allow a variety of views, giving people a chance to explore them? In this way you help teach people how to think, rather than telling them what to think.
It would always be better to provide a variety of views – I fully agree with you. The problem is that Wikipedia can’t do this itself, because of the risks entailed in allowing anonymous people to post content as if they were experts and without any process of verifying their claims. That said, Wikipedia is not limited to a single view – the limitation is what is published in reliable sources. Wikipedia can talk about low carb diets where it has been published by people such as Dr Kendrick so that Wikipedia can verify the content. How much weight to give it will remain a concern, but at least some coverage is possible.
”The problem is that Wikipedia can’t do this itself, because of the risks entailed in allowing anonymous people to post content as if they were experts and without any process of verifying their claims.”
Bilby Longears, that should apply to the editors as well. They are editing as if they were experts and without verifying their claims, whether or not there is a proces to do so.
@AhNotepad, in regard to:
> Bilby Longears, that should apply to the editors as well. They are editing as if they were experts and without verifying their claims, whether or not there is a proces to do so.
The key issue is that Wikipedia can’t regard editors as experts. Because we can’t assume that they are, we can’t also assume that what they say is correct. So Wikipedia has to insist that they provide sources for everything they add. In addition, we can’t trust their interpretation either, so Wikipedia insists that they can only say exactly what the sources say.
If they are not verifying their claims – which in Wikipedia means providing a reference to a reliable source that makes they claim they are adding – then those claims can be flagged or removed.
The limitations of Wikipedia creates the two problems we are seeing here. Where there is a lack of mainstream, in-depth coverage, as with the case of Dr Kendrick, Wikipedia can’t have an article. And where the mainstream coverage shows a particular bias, Wikipedia has to reflect that. Neither can be overcome with Wikipedia the way that it is, and if this was to be changed, Wikipedia would become something different that would simply have a different set of flaws.
Bily — I gave up editing wikipedia because of the arbitrary nature of “independent reliable sources.” In particular I gave such sources when editing Gray Null’s page (one of the most unfairly maligned people on Wikipedia in my opinion). They were removed. And if you include not self published, then you’re ignoring what the person says for themselves, which is part of the known facts. Not that what they say is fact, but it’s a fact hat they claim to do or think X. That’s already a problem with neutral point of view.
A few years later, I tried to add independent sources to show the malicious behavior of Steven Barrett (the founder of Quackwatch). I’m not part of some meat conspiracy, but I’m annoyed by someone who claims all alternative health is a scam. He is an extremist whose views are colored by his elderly age. Elderly people are in fact scammed all the time, but that doesn’t mean all alt health care is a scam. and I tried to show that so people could make up their own minds. His page virtually sings his praises, and is therefore also not a neutral point of view, and in my opinion misinforms people.
A more pedestrian example:
When I bought my home some years ago, I encountered a pricing mechanism that wasn’t included in wikipedia, and tried to add such a page. The page wasn’t perfect, but it communicated important information. A bot deleted my page within seconds, despite references. I can’t remember the reason it gave. It doesn’t matter. The point is, your immune system is way too strong. You need to tone it down and let people share what they know… What I Know Is = WIKI, right? Well not right now.
I am by no means alone in such experiences. Wikipedia has failed to support the everyday voices it claims to support. It has used the letter of its rules to defeat the spirit of the rules.
You can’t have a neutral point of view while you bow to authority. Wikipedia knew that once, long ago, but was quickly co-opted. It’s sad but I don’t see how it can be fixed now. They’re too entrenched.
They made a decision long ago to be more accurate, but they went way too far, and now they’re stuck because official websites like the FDA are using its content so now, instead of having a people’s encyclopedia which is understood to be inaccurate in places and contains rumor as well as fact… it’s attempting to adjudicate what is fact, and only present that.
Such an effort will necessarily put it into a conventional box. I miss the old Wikipedia. You know, the one where you could find out all the dirt as well as some of the facts, and you knew that half of it was horse plotz, but the fun of it was that you got the lowdown really quickly.
Wikipedia lost its way when it tried to become a resource that was accurate enough to use on government websites and as a reference in school homework. It was better when we all knew to take it with a grain of salt and as a springboard for more research. It should never have tried to become the “buck stops here” of subject research. That’s what Brittanica is for.
But vegan people have unverifiable web pages on Wikipedia, yet aren’t being removed. Why?
It’s also possible that this fight has nothing to do with vegans… They call themselves that on here but who really knows their identity?
It doesn’t really matter. The idea is that Dr. Kendrick’s information is not verifiable. But there are many vegan pages with non-verifiable information.
Plus, the argument that his information is not verifiable is specious. He’s been published in peer reviewed journals (and I think peer review is useless, but apparently Wikipedia does not).
See,eg:
https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/6/6/e010401
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306987718304729
And if you’re attacking Dr. Kendrick because of his purported LCHF views, here are some books that verify this information:
All of these are well researched and include plenty of references. And I could include many, many, many more. These are just a sampling.
Want some studies?
https://www.virtahealth.com/research
https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/23-studies-on-low-carb-and-low-fat-diets
Again, these are just a sampling.
What more does one need?
“I’m a long time Wikipedia editor, so take this as you will. However, Wikipedia is in a difficult position. Because the contributors are anonymous, there is no means by which people’s credentials can be verified. As a result it cannot work like a traditional encyclopedia.”
So people who are anonymous and in this and many other cases have a stated agenda and actively prevent other people editing the pages they defend get to decide who is and is not “notable”
Yet they are not notable themselves. Maybe notorious.
Regarding the persistent theme of human fear of catastrophe, I believe that is because it happened in the past. There is much evidence for it having happened, sometimes severely, sometimes less so, during a period of instability some thousands of years ago. Humans seem to want to remain in a state of amnesia about it, which only means our subconscious drives our emotions.
I love reading books, the serious ones.
I don’t know if I am making myself a favor through my habit since these books often turns out to tell me about injustices of different sorts committed to mankind by the evil “forces”.
Just now I am in the middle of a such a book written by a Jewish doctor (psychologist) who against all odds survived his years in the German concentration camps during WW2. The book is “MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING”, now sold in 12 million copies, by VIKTOR E. FRANKL.
What I now learn is that to “survive” the hardships you have to believe (as evidently Dr. K. does) that changes to the better is possible.
I.e, ‘Don’t give up’
I too would recommend reading Viktor Frankl’s books as well of those by Primo Levi. I think that Frankl’s background in neurology & psychiatry gave him insights that we all can benefit from understanding. I know I am getting off topic, but another strange story you can read is “The Mascot” by Mark Kurzem about his father. It was recommended to me by an ophthalmologist who treated the author: I would never have come across it otherwise.
I’m a huge fan of Primo Levi. His short story “Excellent is the Water” from the collection, “The Sixth Day” is one of my favourites.
What brilliant writing; what an imagination! But I won’t spoil for anyone by revealing the details.
May I ask why the ability to reply to certain comments here has been turned off?
You can ask. I have no idea.
Tech, just like people can go wrong. That’s the trouble with AI (doesn’t really exist, should be called machine learning) – its workings can be impenetrable to people developing it, so when it goes wrong you don’t always know it (except when its the wonderful Babylon Health App that makes a speciality of misdiagnosis).
It’s your blog, Dr Kendrick.
I know. I presume you know, in depth, all of the software on your computer right now. Or perhaps not
I don’t have anything using wordpress.com, but on self setup wordpress sites there is:
Settings > Discussion in which there is “Enable threaded (nested) comments” with a dropbox for choosing depth of comment – probably yours is set to 1, the default is usually 5.
Right. I might have a look at it. I think this happened before? If you default to 5 the threads can end up very thin?
Yes, 2 would be enough for you.
I’ll look it up on wikipeeidea later. 🤭 In the meantime a fix is to copy the post, and quote it in a new post. WordPress is a bit strange at times.
Helen: The comments sometimes appear in a form which cannot be replied to. I simply go back to the original post (always at the bottom of the comment string) to make my reply. A slight bit of trouble, but not much.
@Helen From what I can tell, it’s the depth. Once it has gotten to two levels deep, it won’t let you reply anymore, probably due to formatting limits.
Angelica is correct. This is a configuration option for WordPress. In the admin panel, go to Settings/Discussions. I have set the value on my blog for Enable threaded (nested) comments [ ] levels deep to 10 levels. The only problem is when one gets really many comments and they become very short in display. That’s unusual. If someone else is admin, ask them!
I suspect it’s the thread design. Once a post has been first made it can be responded to but the responses don’t seem to have the facility to respond directly to them, only the initial post. Although it doesn’t seem entirely consistent, for example, I’m responding directly to Malcolm after he responded to Helen.
If that makes sense.
The subject of reliable, peer reviewed scientific sources has been breached. So I thought it was important to give an example of a non peer reviewed scientific source: https://arxiv.org/ That’s not what we usually think of, we usually think of PLOS. Counter to what most people think, PLOS is not a non-peer-reviewed source. It’s just open published.
There is also a dangerous mechanism of retraction in peer reviewed science that rejects some studies if they were merely talked about in a book previously. Example: https://retractionwatch.com/2018/04/17/youth-guru-loses-turkey-neck-paper-that-overlapped-with-book-chapter/
We need to improve peer review and properly criticize it, especially when it acts to silence ideas that are not yet part of the official peer reviewed record.
Angelica Nelson
Peer review as such is stuck in an earlier Century.
Some of the best opportunities to peer review an article are to throw it open to blogs which often attract knowledgeable people.
The scientific community are presented with a monumental opportunity to open scientific debate to the wider world, but somehow, the best minds in the world can’t seem to grasp the opportunity staring them in the face.
Interestingly, Malcolm does just that. Every article he posts is an invitation for criticism, a test of his hypothesis.
Cunning blighter 🙂
Well I would never put myself on par with a trained researcher or PhD. First I am neither of those. Second, when I was studying science, I was hopeless at lab work. I’d rather the scientists stopped acting as if truth is a horserace and everyone has to bet on the truth and then defend their bet. It seems bizarre for people who have been trained to think critically.
Yes often the blogs, and Twitter, do the peer reviewing that was inadequate when the paper was originally published.
Different topic but heart related, saw an article today mentioning that some antibiotics, Fluoroquinolone antibiotics, can lead to heart health problems. Hadn’t seen this on the list before of items to be concerned about for heart health so thought to post.
“FDA warns some antibiotics can cause fatal heart damage”
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/21/fda-warns-some-antibiotics-can-cause-fatal-heart-damage.html
excerpt:
…Certain antibiotics can cause painful and sometimes fatal damage to the body’s main artery, the Food and Drug Administration said Thursday.
Fluoroquinolone antibiotics might raise the risk of an aortic dissection, and people who are already at risk should be cautious about taking those antibiotics, the FDA said.
“A U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) review found that fluoroquinolone antibiotics can increase the occurrence of rare but serious events of ruptures or tears in the main artery of the body, called the aorta. These tears, called aortic dissections, or ruptures of an aortic aneurysm can lead to dangerous bleeding or even death,” the FDA said in a statement.
“Fluoroquinolones should not be used in patients at increased risk unless there are no other treatment options available. People at increased risk include those with a history of blockages or aneurysms (abnormal bulges) of the aorta or other blood vessels, high blood pressure, certain genetic disorders that involve blood vessel changes, and the elderly.”….
I’ve seen this. I have also seen ruptured achilles tendons. Not nice.
Just curious, are they used much in the UK? Most people I know who have had antibiotics (self included) mostly get tetracyclines or Augmentin or other penicillins, and cephalosporins in hospital. Most of the “floxed” people I’ve seen have been in the States.
‘On April 17, 1955, Albert Einstein’s abdominal aortic aneurysm burst, creating internal bleeding and severe pain. He went to Princeton Hospital but refused further medical attention. He demanded, “I want to go when I want. It is tasteless to prolong life artificially; I have done my share, it is time to go. I will do it elegantly.” ‘ — https://notevenpast.org/what-killed-albert-einstein/
All of you have bullied MCE he had to close his wikipedia account after he was outed. You should all be ashamed of yourselves bullying a young man. He is out but the vegan war against LCHF will continue. I will make sure of it. Mark Sisson will be next.
I would repeat. If you cannot take it, do not hand it out. Especially do not hand it out if you remain in the shadows.
Warrior, War? Have you considered that many plants have mechanisms to minimize their getting eaten? That suggests you should not eat many plants. Will you wage war on cats that eat birds, or birds that eat worms? Some animals live reproductive lives because of us, though they get eaten. How will you grow enough plants to eat anyway without displacing other creatures by your competition? Radiate kindness & we may get to a less cruel world. Teach by example. All individual lives end.
Ha Mr/Ms Vegan – ha once, ha twice, ha three time. By the way a warrior is one who has both experience and skill in fighting – fighting anonymously and then being a great big cry baby about being outed has made my day.
So ‘you’ are fighting Mark Sisson next, good luck as you are going to need it – better checked how ripped he is. Afraid you have got no chance in your war. Vegan’s are a dying breed (literally). Take your hero Greger – I couldn’t believe that he is only in his mid-40’s. He looks a picture of radiant health ( … not … ) – a little while ago there was a picture of him circulating on twitter in a t-shirt and it hardly looked as though he’d have the strength to pick up a knife and a fork at the same time. Mark Sisson is 20+ years older than Greger – I suggest you tell your Vegan friends to read the Primal Blueprint if and when they want to reclaim their health.
VW Hav u seen what the lions get up to on the Serengeti?
Vegan Warrior
MCE was ‘outed’ because that’s the nature of democracy. If you have an opinion that justifies suppression of another you should be willing to express it openly. That’s why democracies have identifiable politicians, not gestapo operatives. MCE wasn’t ‘outed’, he/she was merely exposed to the cold light of day.
MCE and his ilk are political, intellectual and scientific cowards, and those subscribing to his methods are, without wanting to be rude or confrontational, devotees.
If MCE had the integrity and courage of Malcolm, or many other individuals, across innumerable blogs, he/she would publish their own blog to express constructive opinions rather than adopting destructive methods to suppress the opinions of others.
Not that I expect you to understand any of this.
If Vegan Warrior is launching an attack… it has nothing to do with me! See my comment below. I am not involved in attacking anyone!
I am not a vegan. If you want to know personal about me, I follow ovo-lacto vegetarianism! I will admit though vegans seem to be in best shape =)
Why are the hottest female models in the world vegans? Look up Sophia Miacova! I think even Malcolm Kendrick would agree with me on this!? Take care all. No further input from me.
MCE, No, you are capable of understanding. Which makes you an extremely unreliable person to be involved in editing for Wikoedia.
Sophia Miacova is attractive. Good thing silicone is vegan! 🙂
A whining “Vegan Warrior” who wants to exterminate all LCHF people seems a little weird in my eyes.
Goran, possible explanation of aggressive vegan behaviour:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/articles/200304/the-risks-low-fat-diets
The Risks of Low-Fat Diets
A diet low in fat and cholesterol may put you at risk for depression.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201211/youre-vegetarian-have-you-lost-your-mind
“Compared to the general population, the vegetarians were more likely to have mental disorders, and compared to the sex and education and population and age matched controls, the risk of mental disorders in vegetarians really shot up, with odds ratios hovering around 2 fold increased risk, some as high as 3 fold.”
Andy, I am quite aware of the dangers of avoiding essential fats on your mental health.
(I just devoured some of my homemade delicious Swedish Christmas salmon speciality “gravad lax” made from wild caught Alaskan salmon, high in EPA and DHA while with little contaminants as in all the farmed ones.)
I suppose that you are familiar with Lierre Keith who’s health suffered heavily from 20 years in the “moral vegan warriors community” but she finally escaped and wrote her great book “The Vegetarian Myth” to recover.
VW, You need to get out of your Bat Cave more often! Do something useful….hug a tree. Or play with your nuts. You have nothing of substance to add here.
@Vegan Warrior Why would someone need to close some account for being outed? You know who I am, you know who Dr. K is, and several other people here. We don’t close our accounts as soon as the light falls on us. He could own up to what he said openly, but he doesn’t, he flees instead of standing on his convictions. Why is that?
Elsewhere, this issue is covered…
Mark Sissons, for the second week, has commented in his “Weekly Love Link” dated 21 Dec entitled:
“An extremely important post by Dr Malcolm Kendrick, who was recently removed from Wikipedia for questioning the cholesterol orthodoxy. Is Fathead next?”
Here’s the link:
https://www.marksdailyapple.com/weekly-link-love-edition-8/
Which leads onto Tom Naughton – check out his Twitter and website…he says “I want the t-shirt Mike Eades gave to Dr Kendrick” and
Dr Mike Eades has posted a few more comments on his Twitter too.
Dear Kendrick’s fanbase here I have tried to email Malcolm Kendrick about this privately. I will only say it once publicly!
I have closed my Wikipedia account because I was doxxed and have received abuse from low-carb fanatics. My real life identity is at risk because of being outed, I have received threats. You people want to ruin my life? For what? Submitting a few non-notable authors on Wikipedia for deletion?! Is this how crazy the world has got?! It proves my point that LCHF is a dangerous cult. You guys sit on social media all day attacking people you do not like and before looking at the evidence you promote conspiracy theories.
I have no specific interest in low-carb dieting, like I have no specific interest in the hundreds of other fad diets. I have an interest in debunking fad-diets, no one in particular! LCHF is not the only fad-diet under criticism from the scientific community, many others are… YOU don’t mention those though? You cherry-pick just this one. I have cited criticism of many fad-diets not just low-carb… but fanatics ignore all this.
I am not a vegan. I am not on any crusade to wipe out LCHF people off wikis. I added several positive reviews to Gary Taubes Wikipedia page and two negative. How is that biased editing? I just cite what is in reliable sources. Wikipedia is about reliable sources. That is the policy I followed. I cite mostly scientific journals. Malcolm Kendrick is not notable. I search science journals and no scientist has ever reviewed his work in detail. Maybe he will be notable in 5 years? Submit his article for creation then maybe it will be accepted on Wikipedia!
The vegan people commenting here are not associated with me. There are too many rumors that are untrue going around social media. If there is a future attack on LCHF on public encyclopedias from these vegan people it has nothing to do with me. Please respect my privacy and do not mention my name anymore please.
MCE
You have e-mailed me, and I have kept everything private, as I always attempt to do. I would just say that if you want to have people respect your privacy then remain private. Once you enter the battlefield…. stuff happens, and you cannot control it.
MCE: Deleting factual information from Wikipedia? Is this your day job, or a hobby? When called out for such nonsense, whining that people are ruining your life? What life? I suggest you get one.
If you have received threats, I suggest you take them directly to your local police. I certainly didn’t threaten you and I don’t think anyone supporting Dr. Malcolm Kendrick has. The source of anonymous threats should be investigated by the proper authorities not people on a website. I’m not minimizing it, I don’t know how serious such threats are and that’s why I suggest you talk to authorities. I certainly don’t mean you harm, even though i disagree with you about Dr. K’s ‘notability.’
You say you’re not associated with vegans. It’s very possible you’re just bigoted against people who take their health out of the hands of mainstream authority. And it’s possible the vegans just leaped on it as a public marketing opportunity. At the moment there’s no way for anyone to evaluate such claims. I’ll just believe you at face value because there’s no reason why veganism would be required for you attitude. So therefore, thank you for clearing that up.
My attitude toward vegans is the same: They’re a dream that turned into a nightmare. A nightmare we now share, you and I. It’s a terrible shame. As a person who requires a gluten free diet, and occasionally has to avoid dairy and gums, I appreciate what vegans have done for innovative cooking methods especially for people who are allergic to some foods.
But their benefits are now far outweighed by the radical and cruel behavior that’s on display here and elsewhere.
Now that you are here and talking to us, perhaps you can explain why being un-anonymized means that you must get offline or close accounts? It looks odd to me. It would be better to keep online wouldn’t it? And if authorities feel it’s useful, publish the threats you’ve received. I’ve encountered some insincere trolls on one LCHF website, but it’s certainly not this one.
I do think that your timing is terrible, with Dr. K’s new book in the works (at least I heard some kind of rumor about that).
On the “notable” front, your website says it needs independent news sources. OK how about these?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/21/-sp-statins-for-all-do-the-benefits-outweigh-the-risks
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/no-evidence-high-cholesterol-causes-heart-disease-say-doctors-1.3627093
https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/dr-malcolm-kendrick-side-effects-of-statins-should-not-be-ignored-1-4436485
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/908399/UK-statins-health-news-cholesterol-heart-pills-drug-no-millions-without-benefit
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/06/12/high-cholesterol-does-not-cause-heart-disease-new-research-finds/
If you haven’t seen them offered to Wikipedia before, it might be because people like me have long ago given up trying to edit it. Maybe your arbitrary rules have frustrated people into not bothering to give you good sources. When I had an “edit war” the admins seemed to enjoy it as if such a thing was “fun.” It was monstrous. Your wikipedia’s culture is cruel and who needs that?
MCE, from some of your other supporters commenting on this blog, it seems you are a ‘young man’.
This raises the question of how you would have perceived the change in diet during the 70s and 80s in the UK from a normal diet of ‘real food’, relatively unprocessed, which included high-fat and lower-carb eating, to the sudden advice to change to the opposite (the results of which now speak for themselves) in the wave of obesity, type 2 diabetes etc we have observed growing over the subsequent years. Back then we had no obesity epidemic and type 2 diabetes was called ‘adult-onset diabetes’ (or ‘late-onset diabetes’)…
The ‘fad’ LCHF diet you are referring to is not really a fad at all – it’s more or less the way people used to eat not that long ago and the results that its current followers have speak for themselves. We don’t need research trials to see the benefits and it’s obvious that one of the drivers of its suppression is the big food manufacturers who stand to lose out if people go back to eating real food.
Qualified doctors (who, according to you, are dangerously going against recommended advice) are seeing their patients reversing their diabetes and improving their blood lipid results, losing weight without starving themselves and generally becoming healthier in a sustainable way. If we were to wait until ‘science’ shows this to be the case, we’d be here for eternity, because there is no funding forthcoming from sources that stand to lose out, be it Big Pharma or Big Food (and therefore Big Farmer.)
Yes for people who are old enough the low fat diet is the true fad. However it is hugely profitable and requires the prescription of highly profitable drugs to deal with its side effects.
The militant vegans are about the only people left who still revere Ancel Keys as a hero. Science has moved on, despite all the roadblocks put in its way by the unholy alliance of vegans, Seventh Day Adventists/cereal and margarine manufacturers and sugar and pharma
We didn’t ‘eat healthy’ before the 1970s. Most people just ate different junk food. One of the biggest differences I have read is a 3-4x rise in O-6 PUFA intake in the last 100 years, which may still be continuing, plus a continuing trend to processed food.
Also I don’t remember many winter supplies of cheap salad vegetables from Spain in the 1950s or 60s. Potatoes, carrots, cabbage, parsnips, etc palled after a while.
I agree though that until at least the early 1970s doctors advised any patients who developed T2D to follow a lower-carb diet.
Obviously we did “eat healthy” prior to the seventies because we weren’t ill. Well not in such numbers, there were always a few.
Agree on the omega 6 though, we should have taken note of the Rose Corn Oil trial
Click to access brmedj02398-0041.pdf
that didn’t go so well
Dear MCE,
You make a grave error referring to low-carb as a “fad diet”. For someone who claims to have added positive reviews to Gary Taubes’s web page, you appear to be quite ignorant of the history he provided.
A low-carb diet in some form was the standard approach to obesity up until the 1970’s. The diet has a long pedigree reaching back to William Banting and Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (whose web page you will probably be unable to delete). Robert Atkins did not invent the “Atkins diet”. He adapted a diet based on a 1958 paper by Alfred Pennington and wrote a popular book on the subject. Nothing really faddish about it however much the low-fat faddists managed to mangle it.
In the 1950’s, the low-fat diet was the fad diet. It was developed and promoted largely by Ancel Keys as a prophylactic to the heart-disease epidemic. The diet muscled its way into mainstream acceptance due largely to the efforts of Keys and his allies. Gary Taubes and Nina Teicholz ably describe how low-fat became the prevailing paradigm.
It’s sobering to realize that with low-fat driving dietary dogma, we have a higher rate of obesity today than we had in the 1950’s.
Likewise with the lipid hypothesis, a fringe notion in the 1950’s but somehow the accepted dogma today. It has not held up well under scrutiny. Most of the science seems intent on explaining how it might work, since the dogma demands that it does work.
Malcolm Kendrick has spent a big chunk of his life exploring the causes of human cardiovascular disease. He does not do original research but instead synthesizes the thinking of Rokitansky, Duguid, and others in pursuit of the process of CVD. There was no consensus as to the cause of CVD in the 1950’s. The astonishing success of the lipid hypothesis in the face of contradictory evidence says more about the roles of politics, personality, and persuasion in science than in the power of of evidence.
Here are some references to ponder:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/20513637_Identification_and_distribution_of_fibrinogen_fibrin_and_fibrinogen_degradation_products_in_atherosclerosis_Use_of_monoclonal_antibodies
https://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/2008/02/single-vessel-disease.html
http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/search/label/Cholesterol%3A%20LDL%20in%20Oslo
Renowned heart surgeon Michael DeBakey expressed doubts about the lipid hypothesis in 1987.
There are thousands of others, as well as, of course, Dr Kendrick’s own blog, with which you appear to have at least a passing acquaintance.
That you can “crusade” against the carefully-presented thinking of Dr Kendrick speaks volumes about the smallness of your own thinking, to your worship of lightly-supported dogma and authority. To call Kendrick a “fringe” thinker is to remain ignorant of history and a great deal else. Dr Kendrick may never reach a conclusion about what really causes heart disease. But he will come a lot closer and help more people than you ever will.
MCE may not be MCE. I am going to take down links to him on this blog
Wow, it really has gotten Orwellian, hasn’t it? “War is Peace / Freedom is Slavery / Ignorance is Strength, and MCE is not MCE.”
What a hoot!
You have all be had, the skeptic from Britain account is a guy called Abd ul-Rahman Lomax. Run a Google search on his name and this comes up:
https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Abd_Ul-Rahman_Lomax
He has a history of trolling people. You will see a photograph of Kendrick on it also. It is not a coincidence that Lomax turned up here a few hours ago to blame someone else for the account. This is sad stuff indeed.
Fascinating. The plot thickens. I’ve heard of that website before. Infamous.
Happy solstice everyone! Do vegans recognize solstices and equinoxes? May be too meaty a subject for them. May be the next to be deleted from Wikipedia. What say you, MCE, Vegan Warrior, etc.?
I was appreciative of the comment from Sue Richardson on 18/12/2018 regarding the insanity of all this fury and hatred over diet, others have also made comments my attention was drawn a little while ago to the humanitarian crises in Venezuela most people have lost 24lbs in weight, 300,000 children are at imminent risk a couple of weeks ago there was a video featuring a mother with 6 in her family queuing all day for 2 very small chickens frozen in plastic, 15 eggs, 7 guavas which took her whole money for the week of $5 this little food had to last them for 6 days. She had no luxury of wondering if this food was healthy, or clean and uncontaminated or fit the criteria for vegan, vegetarianism, LCHF, or any other current western interest she just had to keep her family from starving for the next few days.
How ridiculous that anyone of any age would see this discussion as some sort of war and risk theirs and others mental health by raising anxiety levels over something which is a personal choice. Anxiety and stress affects the heart and contributes to diseases like cancer. How fortunate we are that we can have a choice of what we eat; when vast numbers of our human family do not.
I worked with a young lady who had adopted the vegan approach to eating and she did this because she wanted to see the animals roaming free she was genuinely horrified at animal cruelty in farming etc. however she had been fed the really odd notion that if we stopped using them for food etc. they would be free, I asked her the question who would feed them? and if we no longer make money from them then why would we allow them to live at all, I was raised on a small farm so I know how it works if their use is no more neither are they.
The other point which has come up in a few comments is the thought about life, health & longevity some of us and I guess we are the older ones understand that we will all die that is inevitable we hope I guess as Mrs Fawlty said ‘that it is not long drawn out and painful’ (I recently replaced my copy of Fawlty Towers after someone suggested that the wand of political correctness be waved over it) wouldn’t be great if everyone just took a breath and calmed down.
Abd Lomax is a known troll:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Abd_ul-Rahman_Lomax
He was blocked on Wikipedia in 2017 for impersonating people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/abd
I am convinced the MCE claims are real and he is the owner of the skeptic from Britain account. However, nobody here should continue to publish real peoples names in connection with the skeptic from Britain account or any other anonymous account. Kendrick did the correct thing by citing MCE only. There are too many unconfirmed rumors about this account that could lead to trouble in regard to doxing. It seems people like Lomax have their own agenda to push. Blaming people for owning certain accounts without evidence is suspect.
Wikipedia made everyone to know about new things clearly. Good and interesting article. Kindly know Homeopathy doctors hyderabad
Hi Malcolm, I’m sure that you had never entered this completely distracting debate about Wikipedia.
After all this is your blog to help all of us develop a better understanding of CVD. As such it ‘s purpose is extremely worthy and more important ‘achievable’.
But now you find yourself in the position of moderating and being required to comment of the dopey but private processes of an organisation which none of us can change – Wikipedia.
And as a result of the process the number of people commenting has ballooned. But they are not here seeking understanding of CVD. Just to put there two pennies in re W*k*p***a.
Surely it is time to move, or back to what we are here for.
That means closing comments here and doing a re-set.
May all have a happy time during the Xmas & New year break ! And to members of the community in all the Northern hemisphere, “Stay Warm ! “
Bill in Oz
This whole episode shows many signs indicating we have been well and truly trolled
It’s good to remember that “All publicity is good publicity as long as they spell your name right”.
I hope Dr Kendrick’s work only benefits from all this…
Sasha: I think it will. Nothing more than a brief distraction. He’s right, though, that we must take up arms, not literally, as he didn’t mean it in that way, but we must fight truly scary ideas. Through educating and advocating for honest discussion, for looking at mainstream science and medicine with a critical eye, and exposing the crazy political nonsense which is becoming pervasive in the U.S. in academia and the media. Too many people today are easily led, like sheep, so we must be vigilant, and take every opportunity to educate them. The public education system isn’t doing the job.
It’s a perennial question for me: whether more people today are “led like sheep” than before or less.
Sasha: I think it is getting fewer all the time. Look at what is happening in France, what happened in Italy and Poland. Trump is a result of people fed up with the elites. California’s forced vaccination bill in 2015 woke a lot of people up and energized the health-freedom movement nationwide. There no doubt will be ugliness as the rush toward global control is halted in its tracks, but halted it will be. By the way, Trump pulling out of Syria bodes well for U.S./Russian relations, although I think the impetus was more about Turkey.
Gary
How does pulling out of Syria, bode for the Kurds in northern Syria?
Mr Chris: Terribly. Betrayed once again. Doesn’t please me.
Yes, I feel terrible for Kurds too. Betrayed once again by great powers. I really like them, I have no idea why as I don’t know much about them…
Gary, you may find Ray Dalio’s take on this interesting. He looks at the rise of populist movements in Europe and the US from the perspective of the markets and history (and has the track record that makes one listen to him)
Sasha: He understands the problem very well. The wealth gap, and lack of opportunity. We’re off the track. Trump should hire him.
Gary, yes I like him a lot. A very clear, level headed thinker. Must be all that TM he does…
Bill,
I think the fact that a few like “Wicked77” came here to express their extreme views on Veganism, was very revealing.
We are all here hoping to make a difference. I try to encourage people who come here because they or someone they care about is suffering from statin side effects – not yet sure whether to ignore their doctor.
I think that one way to help others, is to expose some of the web of interests that are helping to distort the evidence about diet and heart disease, and bloat the profits of Big Pharma. When some of those people come here to expose their aims themselves – so much the better.
One of the hardest parts of this issue for newcomers, is to understand why they have been told to do A when it worsens their health, and warned off from doing B which is actually beneficial. Explaining that to people helps a lot.
I am sure that Dr Kendrick will move on at some point
It has been interesting. Rather scary in some ways to become more acutely aware of the chaos out there. I have had an e-mail (from the other side) which makes this statement… ‘I am not a vegan activist but I do communicate with these people… They are good people.. they put animals above people! This takes courage and strength =)’
It takes courage and strength to put animals above people. Well, no it doesn’t, it is simply an opinion, but it is a very, very, dangerous opinion to hold. If you believe that animals are, effectively, superior to humans we will enter a very dark era in world history. The greatest evils have always been perpetrated when sections of society, such as the Jews in Nazi Germany, have been condemned as being ‘less than human.’ If your philosophy is that ‘humans are less than animals,’ then you are clearly justified (in your warped and damaged little brain) in killing humans to protect animals.
That does not make you a good person, this makes you a potential perpetrator of great evil.
Whilst I shall be closing down discussions on Wikipedia and suchlike in the not too distant, I think everyone needs to be aware of what is at stake here. We all need to take up arms. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” – Edmund Burke.
What about an opinion that animals’ rights should be as equal to those of people as practically possible?
Equal = the same. You are either equal, or you are not. It is like being almost unique. Personally, I hate cruelty to animals, and I believe that we should should treat them well – if possible. However, if we start giving animals equal rights, we are doomed as a species. You may think that is over dramatic. But if history teaches us one thing it is that ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions.’
The thing about hell and good intentions may also apply to the opposite approach of Homo Sapiens bending Nature to their will (and that may include treatment of animals). There’s a recent article in NY Times “Incect Apocalypse”, it’s worth a read. All arguments about Global warming aside, we may be facing some very uncertain times, as far as our survival as a species.
Sasha: Yes, the state of insect health is truly worrisome. I have lots of plants which attract hummingbirds, pollinators, and other insects. What do my neighbors do? Have “pest control” companies come weekly to spray poison to kill the insects and arthropods. Nothing I can do about it except plant more of the attractive plants. Just ordered seed of Agastache and Bee Balm. Our navel orange used to be so loud with honey bees at bloom I could hear it across the yard. Now it is silent. Bees still come, and we get a good crop, but you really have to hunt to see them at all.
Unfortunately this could get very contentious, and unwarranted accusations are likely to get thrown around in the same way people who think there is an alternative to vaccines are called “baby killers” (when it is just as likely the opposite is true). I expect all of us who drove cars in the 1970s have noticed there are far fewer bugs that are impaled on the front surfaces. Moths are rarely seen in headlights nowadays. This is only one area of animal life that has all but vanished. Because the insects have gone, the birds have gone, and their predators are fewer and so on. To me this indicates a seriously with the way humans are behaving. The MO of agriculture is to kill everything, except the crop you are growing. Nowadays there is use of nematodes and some insects introduced to get rid of another “pest”. Widespread use of slug pellets are possibly part of the reson for the disappearance of hedgehogs in the UK. (Badgers are another reason). Few life forms exist in isolation, they are dependant on something else. Humans are dependant on many different bacteria, but glyphosate is slaughtering bacteria wholesale. Not surprising when it is the most widely misused antibiotic in existence. The point is, it is not possible to invoke every available cure for human ailments, increase their numbers (currently an increase of around 85million a year) without also damaging the wider support mechanisms which involve many other species, both plant and animal, on which humans unknowingly depend.
Yes, that’s exactly how the article starts. There were anectodal observations by many people of less bugs they saw on windshields compared to 30 or so years ago. That was followed up by rigorous studies in Europe and so far the data confirms initial hypothesis: there’s a massive decline across most insect species they looked at. That isn’t confined to insects, other scientists report the same results for amphibians, mammals, etc. There’s even a book on this – “The Sixth Extinction”, well worth a read.
If we for a moment consider malignant cells to be a different class of species as compared to benign cells, there seems to be little difference in how we behave within the biosphere and how malignant cells behave in a biological organism.
Humans aren’t likely to change unless forced to do so by external circumstances so all of this is just blowing hot air but I am mentioning this in the context of “our survival as a species”. Vegans advocating equal rights for animals will probably not get far but we as a species may eventually find out that it’s quite lonely at the top of the food chain.
I absolutely agree 100% with your last comment Dr K. With all that has been said here recently, it takes a very clear mind to see what matters most, and not get caught up in defending or attacking. That is just what you have, and thank goodness for it. That’s why we trust what you say. Have a wonderful and relaxing Christmas and enjoy not only Hogmanay but the whole of next year. I hope you manage to do everything you have set your mind to.
Sasha: I have a problem with the word “rights” in this regard. Humans have, or should have, rights in regard to how they are governed. I think all other living things deserve to be treated with the same dignity and consideration we show each other, but giving any of them rights in a legal sense, it seems to me, opens up a can of worms.
Gary: I think it’s fair to say that we don’t treat other living things the same way we treat ourselves. We are the most successful killers this planet has ever seen and we managed to extricate ourselves from the usual system of checks and balances that governs everything else in nature. Homo Erectus was around for about 2 million years. Homo Sapiens – 200,000 so far. Do you think we gonna last long enough to match Erectus record?
May I say without being over sentimental and straying a little, animals add to our lives, they have a right to live in an environment perfected for them by nature, sadly disappearing.
Children learn to love and nurture, hopefully, when a dog or cat lives with them
Not suggesting animals are better than people, but some are! And I am not suggesting anyone here does not have respect and compassion for them. I just love creatures, and my dear Nina has reached the end. Trying to smile because I had her and not cry because she is gone.
Malcolm,
“The greatest evils have always been perpetrated when sections of society, such as the Jews in Nazi Germany, have been condemned as being ‘less than human.’ If your philosophy is that ‘humans are less than animals,’ then you are clearly justified (in your warped and damaged little brain) in killing humans to protect animals.”
A very apt point!
As I mentioned I just now happened to have read a small but great and influential book, “MAN’S AEARCH FOR MEANING”, written by a Jewish psychiatrist Viktor Frankl who survived, against all odds (1 in 28 in fact), and wrote this book to summarize the evil and occasional goodness he encountered. The book has sold in 12 million (!) copies. The lesson learned here is never to give up hope: Bad people can convert although it seldom happens.
This also reminds of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” which still attracts (especially at this time of the year) people and to inspire hope irrespective of it’s naivety.
In another book, just released and just read by me, the opposite lesson is though taught: ”Money Land – Why Thieves & Crooks Now Rule the World & How to Take it Back” written by the journalist Oliver Bullough.
Sorry Sue Robinson.
I hit your down thumb by mistake.
You make a lot of sense but I can’t reverse it.
Pressing the up thumb has reversed it for me.
@Dr. K (re, animals and people) None of us chose to live in a universe where we need to eat other creatures in order to live. But that’s where we are. I grappled with many of these issues when my health collapsed and it was obvious I could no longer be vegan. Veganism can be a very spiritual act, but I think the leaving of it was also a spiritual act for me. It brought me face to face with one of the reasons why we have ideals such as civilization (distance between us and the ‘beast in the field’) and ‘original sin.” It’s not that we are sinful, it’s that the world we live in has some harsh realities that are inescapable. Therefore I dream of a heaven where these requirements are not present, and a soul that transcends physical reality. I try to see people as more than their circumstances, but instead, as the sum of their values.
Veganism may sound noble, but the highest value of each of us must be our wellbeing, and those of our family, our friends and all humans. Turning the necessary cruelty of our circumstances against each other is not a solution to anything. But we do need to be more mindful of what harms we are doing. It’s a matter of argument whether chemicals in agriculture are necessary. I’m not an expert on it, but in my new frame of reference, I can respect the position that, with 7 billion people to feed, and we’re failing at that already, chemicals may be required. But that doesn’t excuse wanton acts like glyphosate and the forceful marketing behavior of companies promoting GMOs.
We need to respect the honest brilliance of indigenous cultures when we try to improve their lives. Despite conditions that I would feel uncomfortable in, here’s an example of a group of people who learned to eat trees because that’s all that grew near them: https://youtu.be/PF2upGJu1Lo When I see things like this, I’m reminded that every human being is a potential Einstein. We go with our arrogance to places like this and declare “unsanitary” and then teach them to eat something else which just happens to be dependent on chemicals. We are already being cruel to each other. Here’s an example of a non destructive intervention, for comparison: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vG22AUx8FrY there is an image of a hurt child in this video, to illustrate the importance of the intervention, sensitive people should be careful watching it).
When talk of cruelty comes up, the first question in my mind now is, cruelty to who or what? We can have humane farms, we can have low input farming, and the only thing driving the agricultural cruelty is the profit seeking culture that not only puts humans above animals, but debases them to a point where we aren’t even respecting that they give their lives to feed us. We need to be realistic not only about the need to kill in order to live, but the need to respect our food. Otherwise, saying a prayer before meals is a hollow undertaking.
There is no moral free lunch, even for vegans. Every morsel you eat could have been eaten by some other creature who must now go without. Therefore you should live a life that makes the other creature’s sacrifice worth it.
Yes agree about the insects. When I was young, after a long car journey there were loads of them stuck in the radiator. It was my job to pick them out with tweezers.
Even as recently as the eighties and nineties there were far more moths in the headlights at night, and there would be massive flocks of swifts, swallows and martins circling over the fields. I suspect the agrochemicals used to grow all that vegan wheat and rape and sugarbeet and potatoes.
Some of the farmers I know do their bit by leaving the headlands unsown or even sown with wildflowers – they still have a lot more birds as well as the insects. There is far more wildlife surrounding the grazing cows and sheep. Oh and often when the back field is down to rape for all that heart-healthy vegan margarine, the slug pellets do for the hedgehogs, several of which have expired unpleasantly on my lawn. I bin them to avoid them being eaten by predators and having the slaughter carry on down the line.
I regularly eat pheasants and partridges in winter as a reward for the farmers’ ecological awareness.
It’s not all bad news though, we have greatly increased numbers of buzzards, owls and other hawks and predators so they must be finding something to eat.
Yes, some species will thrive in changing times. But overall biodiversity is declining sharply, I think
Sasha
“I think”
Gawd how I despise that expression, and I’m not even a scientist!
Try reading this to dispel your entirely irrational belief that humans are murdering species en mass.
http://www.rationaloptimist.com/blog/invasive-species-are-the-greatest-cause-of-extinction/
Then watch Matt’s TED talk on the development of the human species and just how unbelievably complicated, but optimistic it is.
Those of you who are educated might want to comment on Matt’s observations for my benefit, an ill educated thicko who has to go digging for some positive aspects of the environment we all now live in.
Are things bad in our lives? Well of course they are, but then 100 years ago most of us around 60 years old would probably be dead, so of course they’re bad because medical intervention has allowed us to extend our lives, as a whole.
So let’s do away with medical intervention altogether. Instant solution to the non existent population threat we are all told faces humanity. All the beasties on the planet would be saved were man to be wiped out.
I don’t understand pessimism.
https://www.thegwpf.com/matt-ridley-why-is-it-so-cool-to-be-gloomy/
HotScot, nothing of what Matt Ridley says is new.
Of course, it’s all of those factors: environmental degradation, economic activity, etc. Someone should point out to Mr Ridley that all continents are islands, just big.
Here are my recommendations if you ever want to read what scientists say: “The Sixth Extinction”, “The End of Plenty”. You can also read “Sapiens” to see what paleontologists say about periods that go back much longer than 12,000 years.
Your idea “that 100 years ago people most people would be dead around 60” has no basis in reality. It has been discussed many times, including on this blog, I think.
Hotscot, perhaps Matt Ridley is a bit blinkered, unless you class Africa as an island. The elephant, lion, cheetah, and plenty of other predator animals have decreased significantly since Victorian times. The tiger and other large cats are near extinction in India and Indonesia often through loss of habitat, largely as a result of increase in humans I would suggest. The list goes on, to say that humans have had litttle or no effect is wishful thinking.
Blinkered is a kind word to describe him.
It’s a matter of trying to address the argument rather than the proponent.
Sorry. Screwed up the HTML tags.
In general yes, but it’s interesting to see the increases as well as the decreases. Among the birds seed eaters and insectivores seem to be decreasing but mammal eaters are increasing – someone I know has been researching small mammal populations and so far they seem to be at their highest on sheep fields which will stop happening in the coming veganworld.
Tomorrow there will be one less pheasant and less bacon and Brussels sprouts. Season’s greetings!
Chris, absolutely, once you stop industrial farming, you have local rebound. But I think we are talking about different things: microtrends vs macrotrends.
And yes, Merry Christmas!
“Someone should point out to Mr Ridley that all continents are islands, just big.”
Without wanting to be rude, I think you need a Geography lesson.
“Here are my recommendations if you ever want to read what scientists say”
Are you suggesting Matt Ridley isn’t a scientist? He’s a respected Zoologist as well as a businessman, farmer and coal mine owner. Personally, I believe that elevates him well above full time academics.
“Your idea “that 100 years ago people most people would be dead around 60” has no basis in reality. It has been discussed many times, including on this blog, I think.
Once again, that term “I think”. And you have a pop at Matt Ridley?
My suggestion is to wrap this up. This isn’t the blog for it. I don’t have a problem with “I think”, it actually works in lots of cases. One side effect of it is that someone, once they start thinking, may stop believing Ridley’s drivel but, hey, such is life…
“Chris, absolutely, once you stop industrial farming, you have local rebound. But I think we are talking about different things: microtrends vs macrotrends.”
Yes, I was writing mainly about farmland because it is the most likely to be changed when the vegans ban meat, and because I am surrounded by it.
We also have a lot of wild places, estuaries, reedbeds and marshes etc. and many species from insects to birds and especially deer which are increasing as others decline. It’s a complex picture overall, species I remember from my childhood have gone while others which were then unknown have since become common. Then there are short term variations on top of the long term trends. Some of our birds still migrate across the Sahara for winter, and are replaced by continental populations which have taken to migrating west rather than south, and increasingly small numbers of migrants are choosing to remain over winter. Interestingly last winter’s “Beast From The East” did for the populations of some species but not others but the ensuing hot summer caused many of them to breed well and replace the losses. The current mild winter has meant a LOT of winter migrants haven’t (yet) arrived, they are staying in Europe and Scandinavia.
Like heart disease it’s multifactorial (runs away)
I think veganism will remain a diet for a small subset of population, most people will not adopt it.
Sasha: And I suspect that most who adopt it eventually abandon it. Dr. Price found nobody eating this way, and for good reason: it is a modern invention, and not one of the best and brightest.
Yoo hoo, Alexbrn where are youcould be vegan diets are just a fad. Maybe you should get onto it pronto and delete it from wikipedia.
It’s a strong ideology, they might supplement and keep going.
Wikipedia’s position of prominence is evident whenever you go to google and search for anything. The sidebar on the right is often pulled directly from Wikipedia. And at least four results are also from Wikipedia, that’s four out of ten for people who haven’t changed their default settings. When I turn my filter off, that’s the number of hits I get from wikipedia. It’s really saturating the conversation.
I would argue that it’s a matter of importance whether holders of minority viewpoints are deleted from Wikipedia, in the current digital situation. At first I thought, “well, Wikipedia is like that” in a fatalistic manner, but after giving it much more thought int he past week, it’s not such a minor thing.
Admittedly I did all this “much more thought” because at the same time, the two reports for the US Senate Intelligence Committee were published about Russian influence during the past 5 years. And I can’t help thinking that these two events are somehow related. I have no evidence for it, except that radicalization seems to have taken place in both a political and medical sphere during the past several years.
This might be a minor skirmish, but it’s interesting because it involves censorship of ideas. The ones holding minority opinions are the ones taking all the risks and relying the most on enlightened people in positions of power to give them room to make their points. In Wikipedia’s case, we now know that enlightenment is problematic, at best.
Do vegans not realize that if it wasn’t for hunters killing deer and rabbits there would be no greens to eat? If we didn’t slaughter chickens they would peck up all the grain? The only food left would be potatoes, provided we killed the pigs before they rooted them out. ;o)
When I said Dr K’s ‘last’ comment I meant the one before last. I hadn’t seen the latest. Doesn’t matter really because I agree with that one too!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I have had word that my copy of Statin Nation has beemdespatched, and will arrive just after Christmas.
I collected mine from waterstones yesterday. Now trying hard not to succumb to reading it straightaway!
The only brilliant doctors in this world are the ones that have the courage to think outside the box and who will not be dictated to by the establishment and indeed drug companies.If we do not have doctors of courage how can we find cures – we do not want our illness to be controlled we want cures and the only doctors who will eventually bring this about are the ones of courage like dr malcolm kendrick who has the courage and who is a pioneer.
Skeptic from Britain posted as Jytdog
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Jytdog#That's_all_folks
Skeptic from britain and jytdog are the same Wikipedia account. Jytdog was banned in december 2018 after sending a low-carb diet advocate a harassing phone call.
Thanks Malcolm. I will pass on making comments while the Wiki debate rages.I look forward to your next brilliant & thoughtful post on our health and medicine.
Bill in Oz: Me, too (I hope!). A passing annoyance from the important stuff, which is how to regain and maintain metabolic health as long as possible before our demise.
We’re with you Doc. God bless you and please continue to enlighten us to the truth! You’re doing a good service for all of us.
A provocative article purporting to show “the simple truth” about “fake medical news” delivers a not-so-simple scolding all ’round.
It has its points.
http://www.cardiobrief.org/2018/12/22/the-simple-truth-about-fake-medical-news/
JDPatten: I gave up on this article, and on CardioBrief for good when, early on, he libeled three doctors whom I respect.
I agree. Usually a sign of pseudo-sceptic to call people names… “Telegenic charlatans”? Really?
Gary,
Did Husten give you the opportunity to really reconsider, reevaluate, and conclude again that your respect was warranted, or do you define yourself by your original, comfortable, unchallenged opinion?
Just wonderin’. ‘Cause life can really be challenging if you must puzzle out everything that comes your way.
But… how else do you know where you and the real world stand with respect to each other??
JDPatten: No idea what you mean. I don’t think Larry Husten knows enough to be calling anyone a charlatan; I find his understanding of medical issues underwhelming. I will make no further comment on this matter.
No problem Jerome. I’ve hit the wrong button myself before now. You are a real gentleman to let me know. Thanks.
Dr. Mercola has an interesting post today on nutrients and aging, and Dr. Bruce Ames “triage theory of nutrients.”
I’ve had my head down for the last few weeks working on articles largely based on your book “The Great Cholesterol Con” and had no idea you were being deleted from Wikipedia. I’m thinking this all goes under the heading “troubling but not surprising.” Wikipedia can be a great resource, but I often find evidence of trolls editing articles to read as alarming and cautionary for most anything out of the mainstream. It’s like the article I read years ago about a hydrogen powered car and the first comment was something like “sounds like riding on top of a bomb” which made me think “that’s a good description of a gasoline tank,” but I’m sure the comment succeeding in scaring many readers.
The truth about cholesterol will prevail. I figure it will take another 20 years to be generally accepted. Who knows, a tipping point could happen next year (ok I’m not that optimistic). it starts with the efficacy of LCHF diets and the health benefits therein. LCHF was fringe, but acceptance is growing rapidly and part of that is the fact that LCHF results in weight loss which is easy for people to see, appreciate, and relate to. That cholesterol does not cause heart disease is a harder concept to grasp, but eventually the data will overwhelm to dogma.
If it makes you feel any better, six months ago I firmly believed that cholesterol and CVD were linked. Evidence to the contrary eventually led me to your book and all remaining doubt was removed. Keep up the good work.
I agree with you. I believe with all my heart that one day people will look back at this time when we, the current occupants, were on the earth and shake their heads at our stupidity, Like how people believed the earth was flat many years ago. I am certain that the all of this will become common knowledge in the future but I do not think it will happen in my lifetime. Maybe 40 or 50 years from now… (I hope)
Christelle, I think you might be a bit optimistic. There are people today who believe, word for word, the bible story of creation, and refuse to accept anything about evolution.
Five Atheist miracles
https://creation.com/five-atheist-miracles …
They actually believe in miracles without any reasonable cause for the miracles. Not believing in God they have put themselves into an irrational philosophical corner.
That’s just belief, not fact.
Charlie, my comment has nothing to do with my religion or lack of it, which I am not defending on here. It is rather an observation that the information available will become more and more common knowledge and that everyone will know and understand it. Like “the earth is flat” believe at one stage which no one now believes anymore. I am not saying it will happen by “magic” as your comment suggests, but rather through the hard work of convincing people about the science as Dr. Kendrick is doing here on his blog. There are others fignting the good fight too like Dr. Harcombe, Dr. Malhotra, Prof Naokes, Dr. Fettke and may others. It is not going to “just happen” but by getting the message out, people will start experimenting for themselves and start believing in what was said before because they can see for themselves that it is working
Yes that’s a key point. I spent most of my life eating “low fat”, because you just did. I tried an Ornish style high carb low fat grain based vegan diet and passed my first gallstone and had my first attack of gout. I also ate vegetarian for a long time but that didn’t make me well either.
Eventually a clueful doctor put two and two together and gave me a glucose tolerance test. Well half clueful because the diet she recommended was exactly the same as what I was already eating, which caused me to gain weight for the first time ever, made my lipids and blood pressure worse and caused gum disease so bad two teeth fell out, among other things. But she pointed me in the right direction and against her advice I bought a glucometer.
As a result I ended up eating the exact opposite of what I was told, my symptoms decreased or mostly went away, my weight and all my “health markers” normalised. This is so commonplace as to be unremarkable. It worked because I dug out the RIGHT information and ignored all the dross I had previously been fed.
When a picket insulin meter finally becomes available I have no doubt it will be a game changer – eventually – there are currently dieticians warning against the use of Continuous Glucose Monitors, especially in “nondiabetics” as a fad, and claiming that just because your glucose goes up to diabetic levels after eating cornflakes doesn’t mean they are bad for you.
Many doctors and even more nurses were similarly against glucometers, including one at Joslin
“If you test your blood after eating, of course your glucose will be high because you are diabetic. You should wait until it comes down again before testing!”
WTF??? You’d almost think informed patients and healthy people were a threat to their livelihood. Well they must be a threat to someone, our esteemed Wikipedia editors have deleted reference to Virta Health and diabetes “reversal”
Since it is Christmas time I should perhaps not read books about the evils of the corrupt medical world. I now wonder if it is the “devil” who has enticed me to read the latest one I have just opened.
“PLAGUE” by Kent Heckenlively and Judy Mikovits.
The book tells about how Dr. Judy Mikovits, a well respected middle aged researcher, was “crushed” in an instant by being humiliatingly arrested and put in jail in Reno among petty criminals due to telling what she had found in her research about retroviruses.
Evil forces in action to silence science, indeed!
Please, don’t read this book if you want to keep your peace of mind or do it after Christmas.
Now a hundred pages into the book I find it to be just an unbelievably great book – scientific depth and human commitment. In its darkness it is full of hope as should be in Christmas times.
Wikipedia is not so favourable to her.
(But then Wiki is not always to be trusted unless we want to know the geographical area of a country, population of a city or distance of the moon to the earth given various lunar cycles etc etc.)
Quote “late 2008, a graduate student, who subsequently was hired as her technician, obtained two positive results from a group of twenty samples. He and Mikovits successively altered the experimental conditions until all samples gave a positive signal”
And it goes on in equally non flattering terms. I am not in a position to analyse and investigate these allegations. Presumably the book deals with all.
Well Jerome,
Mikovits certainly challenged the Big Pharma dogma. And as you indicate the book goes into the details and the authors seem to know what they are talking about.
I am half way through the book now and so far it is a thrilling “personal story” which is told but there is a lot of science on retroviruses interspersed – from that point of view it is also a thrilling story. I strongly recommend the book.
I really enjoyed that book too.
I should probably mention that since I suffer from ME/CFS, I can add that not everyone in that community believes that MLV contamination caused the current crisis. But I don’t see how any scientist or doctor can read that book and not feel chilled by the cautionary tale. Another interesting aspect is that one of the doctors mentioned, Dr. Cheney, still practices in my home state, North Carolina, and at one point he developed a theory that it was similar to CVD, the fatigue caused by CVD specifically. He developed heart problems and saw the similarity firsthand.
It’s also the retirement state for Quackwatch’s Steven Barrett, MD. So it’s a fascinating place to live, that’s for sure.
Ian Lipkin also plays an important part now. He chose not to retire and continues to research. I wouldn’t say he’s untouchable, but he’s a very honored researcher and it would take a lot of effort to discredit him. Despite what he did in that book, I still think he’s a “good guy” overall. https://me-pedia.org/wiki/Ian_Lipkin
For clarity, the book takes place in Nevada, which is really far from here.
Angelica Nelson: Ask Mady Hornig what she thinks of Ian Lipkin, or what Kent Heckenlively does, for that matter. Ian Lipkin was the principle “argument from authority.” who, in a long phone call, persuaded Robert DeNiro to pull “Vaxxed” from Tribeca. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise, for who doesn’t want to know what was banned? On a further note, I want to urge everyone here to read “Doctoring Data.” It will destroy all of your fondly held beliefs, while giving you laughter and a tremendous sense of relief, that you were right all along to distrust the bastards who are in charge.
Do you mean this? https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/lawsuit-columbia-university-roils-prominent-chronic-fatigue-syndrome-research-lab As reprehensible as sex discrimination is, it doesn’t make Lipkin wrong in his science.
Angelica Nelson: That is part of it. It speaks to character; alleged bad behavior by a scientist towards an underling, taking credit for for the underling’s work. But there is more. He is part of the cabal of autism epidemic deniers. You can learn more from Kent Heckenlively’s second book, “Inoculated, How Science Lost it’s Soul in Autism.” There are many doctors and scientists who have the courage to speak up about how terribly sick American children are, and who understand the connection to, especially early, vaccination, but they are completely silenced by mainstream media and the public health establishment, which is, and always has been, a military operation.
Do you have a ref for the military op part of it? I missed that part of it so far. Though I’m certainly not happy with the early vaccination schedule. Does Heckenlively go into it? Lots of interesting aspects to this. Such as, what happened in Egypt after Arab Spring with the military finally showing its teeth as the real power behind all thrones. But I think in the US, the real issue is the long predicted alliance between pharmaco and military. On a purely my-opinion level, it might explain why you hear almost nothing about methamphetamines but nearly daily about opioid crisis. Or maybe that’s my Eastern European cynicism genes acting up again. I have to watch that they don’t get out of hand. 🙂
Seriously though, there’s a point at which a person can get too deeply enmeshed in such thoughts. At the end of the day, to be fed, we must kill creatures that love their children (ie. animals). To be safe, we often must kill creatures that love their children (ie. other humans in wars), or lock up human beings who threaten us. To be warm, we must disturb the habitat of billions of creatures to get fuel. To heal sickness, we must torture billions of creatures often with vivisection or inducing illness so we can study it.
This life is a horror show from start to finish and any joy or happiness we get is a shelter we make for ourselves,. It’s temporary and extremely fragile. When looked at in such a light, a job in a retail store, selling clothes to people is a blessing from heaven. Going home to a tiny apartment with a locking door that you can keep clean and safe is a blessing from heaven.
We are so demanding of our lives. And we forget how close horror is every day. One vaccine that destroys a child’s mind makes a whole family helpless and miserable. All the armies of the country will not protect that family from it. That’s why personal choice must be maintained. That’s why, even though I think most of them are probably ok, I still think damages should be awarded when they’re not ok. Damages that actually help the family.
All the silencing of all the people who have dissenting voices in all the Wikipedias in all the places of the internet will not mute this wish for people to feel that their children should be safe. It’s a basic need to protect your kids. It will never go away. It will never be ok to force parents to allow others to do things to their kids. Even if you could prove it for 99.999999% of kids it’s ok. That risk would still need to be respected. It’s like asking people to stop peeing. It can’t be done. It’s inhuman.
Angelica Nelson: Thank you for your thoughtful post. The military connection is this: The U.S. Public Health Service is a branch of the U.S. Navy. They have Naval rank, and sometimes wear uniforms to impress. The PHS is in charge of the vaccine program in the U.S. through the CDC. As early as the Great War experimental vaccines, produced with horse serum and certainly contaminated, were given to the troops, who had been mustered in vast numbers as Wilson decided to send what was then a minuscule army to the front. They lived in overcrowded, hastily constructed barracks, were shipped to port in overcrowded trains, and put aboard overcrowded troop ships. Fort Riley, Kansas was the epicenter of the beginnings of the “Spanish Flu.” Most of its victims died of bacterial pneumonia (not influenza, which could not even be detected at the time), many shipped home not long after arrival since they were too sick to be of any use, and thus spread bacterial infection to the civilian population. These vaccines were also shipped to and widely used on soldiers in other countries. Experimental vaccines are still damaging troops. We lost a number of highly-trained pilots at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, to an experimental anthrax vaccine. You can read the heart-breaking story of this online.
There’s even a movie about military vaccines. I forgot the name. It’s a scary watch…
I know two ex-military guys with some narly autoimmune injuries post vaccine.
Well, here is a short video with Mikovits of a life of a scientist destroyed by Big Pharma worth a quarter of an hour of your life.
My heart calcium score is 0. Tested 2 weeks ago on the latest GE CT scanner. I’m male, 55, autoimmune Hashimoto’s, severe fatigue and muscle fatigue/rapid weakness unrelated to heart rate, Parathyroid levels are 3x higher than normal , blood calcium low normal, high blood pressure, low testosterone, high cholesterol, etc. Great grandfather, grandfather, father all had massive heart attacks in 30’s and 40’s. Father had arteries so calcified at age 47, they could not get the catheter through. Yet here I am, without calcified heart arteries or calcified valves. Are they clogged with fat? I don’t think so. As on the few days I feel well, athletic performance is the same as it’s ever been and 27MPH is possible on the racing bicycle.
Sure, I’m a data point of one. However, the good doctor is, in my opinion, correct in that cholesterol is not the boogie-man. I don’t know why I have a calcium score of 0 but I am sure it’s due to my various illnesses. I’m in the “0th” percentile according to my lab report, with 100% of men in my age group having more heart calcium than me. My cardiologist says “highly unusual”.
My very high cholesterol does not seem to have clogged my arteries, affected my brain or caused me any other form of trouble.
Christopher,
Unfortunately, Dr Kendrick has explained several times that he cannot respond to individual medical queries over the internet.
However, I am sure others will reply, and when you refer to “severe fatigue and muscle fatigue/rapid weakness”, I do wonder if you are taking statins! I encountered statin side effects after 3 years taking the drug, so if you are taking them, my advice (as a non-doctor) would be to stop them, at least for 3 weeks (say) to find out if they are responsible for some of your problems.
Dr Kendrick moderates this blog, and I trust that he would block my comment if statins are required for your other medical problems.
As I understand it, arteries are never clogged with fat – the analogy with sewers in cities was just misleading!
My lipids are high enough that I would be treated, but I just say No! As it happens, Dr Kendrick has a new book coming out tomorrow, “A statin nation”.
The cause of fatigue is a very thorny issue, and it requires a dedicated doctor to figure it out. I’ve had the following reasons in my life alone:
1. Multiple pulmonary embolisms
2. Celiac disease
3. Migraines
4. Asthma
5. ME/CFS that improves with Valtrex and Celebrex combination (treatment, not cure)
6. Arthritis
7. Fibromyalgia
Other sources can also cause it, such as CVD.
For years I never mentioned fatigue to doctors because if I did, it would trigger a useless lecture on stress. Instead I slavishly followed each health issue and while that was slow, it did help me manage these issues. I can’t help thinking that if we focused on finding causes and didn’t dismiss people, we’d have less sickness due to people getting sicker while they wait for help.
David Bailey, my post was a comment, not a question and I did not ask for medical advice. I was simply stating that my various conditions “might” be responsible for my clear arteries.
David, I did previously take Crestor for a couple of years. Upon discontinuing Crestor 4 years ago, my athletic performance increased markedly after about 3 weeks, albeit only for about a year or two. There does seem to be a connection and I’ve been diagnosed with mitochondrial dysfunction.
We would be better off if the memes were changed to “arterycloggingwholegrains” and “hearthealthysaturatedfats”
(have you seen what happens when you put oatmeal down the kitchen sink? It ain’t pretty)
chris c, how did you get oatmeal into your blood vessels?🙀
I asked Michael Greger.
My instinct says check the calibration of the machine!
Dear Malcolm, Best wishes for the feastive season. I hope you are having a good dinner with wine & small portion of xmas pudding followed by a glass of Glenmorangie or equivalent. I look forward to moving back to CVD matters. [you can leave this unposted, it is just a personal message and should not clutter up other discussion].
Indeed. It has been an interesting diversion, but I am not sure what anyone has learnt. Other than, perhaps, you have to make the effort to find out things for yourself.
“…I am not sure what anyone has learnt.”
Well, here’s what I’ve learned:
* There are people who are willing to suppress exposure to alternative viewpoints about diet and health.
* This particular effort to suppress is silly and futile. Too many others express similar views, and there is vigorous debate among alternative thinkers about the alternative viewpoints. Alternative ideas have taken root among the people, both lay and professional, and this progress cannot easily be rooted out.
* This effort was small potatoes. But, we must be vigilant to other, more insidious forms of suppression (for example, the Tim Noakes affair) and be ready to stand for free inquiry and thought.
Happy New Year, Dr Kendrick and All
I think we have learned some things. From time to time, since many heads are better than one, it is good to have this discussion so that we may remain aware of the shenanigans and machinations.
What I have learned is that the Wisdom Of The Crowds brings a massive response, even more so when science goes against the dogma from The Anointed. Profit and religion make happy bedfellows. Facts are irrelevant when people can shout their dogma loudly. See Twitter for details.
A hundred years ago I would have died a least three times by now; probably more. Instead, I am 71 and living quite well with CCF, some 22 years after my first MIs.
What I Know Is = WIKI was supposedly the basis of Wikipedia. Well NOW we know it is NOT. WE now know that the basis f Wikipedia is “What The Fu*k You Are Allowed To Know”.
And so a potentially great dream has died…Ohhhhh Well…
Hope your Christmas was a warm, convivial, happy time Malcolm.
We are ‘all’ animals of course, that is obvious. As we are no doubt a lot brighter than other animals we, perhaps, should be very reflective and question, carefully, how we treat them. If they suffer (does anyone really think they do not?) we should be very careful how we treat them.
Simple, in one way?
Malcolm’s work is based on such a questioning, objective approach, not on looking for evidence of what he already believes. I tend to think he would reverse his hypothesis/beliefs if the evidence pointed this way, however unlikely this looks!
Moral questions, as well as scientific ones, can also be approached in such a way.
I am a very experienced Wikipedia editor. I have edited the low-carbohydrate article on Wikipedia recently. There is NO long-term scientific evidence this fad diet has any health benefits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-carbohydrate_diet
I have had low-carb cranks BANNED if they come anywhere near this article. Amanda ZZ and her sock-puppets were BANNED.
The skeptics will always run Wikipedia. We have science on our side. If any crank defenders of low-carb turn up, I will revert and get them banned. I will not tolerate quackery. Skeptic from Britain and Jytdog may have left Wikipedia temporarily but there are many any of us pro-science skeptics left.
Alexbrn.
Thank you for making my points for me
Fad – basically something that is very popular for a short period of time.
Low-carb – i.e. Palaeolithic period = 2.6 million years. Alexbum, you are right, this is a short period of time.
Yes Alexbum, science is on your side – shame you can’t (won’t, or I think it is daren’t ????? chick, chick, chick, chick, chicken) debate what your science is.
You seem to like to state that people are quacks or cranks or whatever.
You are not the only one who can hold their opinion of who the quacks and cranks are – yes Alexbum you, in my most humble opinion, are the quacky crank. Quack, quack, quack. Come on you chicken, give us a clue of why you daren’t debate Dr K – are you scared?
Anyone who uses terms like quack or crank while providing zero argument loses automatically.
I am a “reasonably” experienced researcher, with a life time experience in the natural sciences, and I must say that I have never during my career come across any serious researcher who has used the type of language you are using here. In my eye it doesn’t increase your credibility.
Besides, what you are saying about LCHF is basically nonsense to me.
And, frankly, I don’t think that you understand what science basically is about.
It’s not an encyclopedia’s role to decide the truth before science has. Whenever I go to my doctor’s office in the US, I see a magazine called “WebMD” which I consider to be the voice of mainstream medicine. Here’s what their website has on Low Carb https://www.webmd.com/search/search_results/default.aspx?query=low%20carb%20diet One of the articles is titled ‘Low Carb doesn’t Up Heart Risk.’ If they have such articles, why doesn’t Wikipedia? Could it be because it has lost it’s neutral point of view?
I have nothing against science but I do against blind prejudice.
Remember, most LCHF dieters are completely off the scientist’s radar. They simply read about it on the web or from books and give it a go. I have been on such a diet for over two years. I have lost around four stone, reduced my blood pressure to normal while still on medication and reduced my Hba1c to normal without medication. I won’t pretend it is all plain sailing, one gets weeks where the weight stays stubbornly put, but it is far more effective than the many other diets I have been on over the last fifty years. As a result, I expect to be on it for the rest of my life.
It works because one is not allowed to get hungry. As a result it is sustainable as a life-style choice. Fats are satiating, which makes it difficult to eat all one’s 70% fat allowance, with the result that one reduces one’s Calorie intake without difficulty. Because the main things one eliminates from one’s diet are starchy carbohydrates, which tend to be the more boring foods, one has plenty of interesting foods left. I cannot imagine eating this diet as a vegetarian, but some do, I believe, For me, there are plenty of cheap cuts of meat around, which are nourishing and easy to prepare, so it works out, after the first few weeks, as no more expensive than before.
The diet does involve a lot of planning, with fixed menus and calculations of the macro-nutrient levels. With experience, one knows the effect of different foods on one’s blood glucose levels. In practice, foods with a high glycaemic index, that is with a rapid effect on blood glucose, are easier to manage that those with a low one, where the peak blood level can be many hours after eating. (This may be the reason why a high carbohydrate diet has been such a disaster in managing both types of diabetes.) One then eats to the meter, keeping one’s blood sugars within the normal range both before and after meals. This monitoring is the core discipline which reduces cheating considerably.
“There is NO long-term scientific evidence this fad diet has any health benefits.”
In this you may well be correct.
But’s it’s only because folks like you stand in the way of gathering the long-term evidence that might support it.
YES! People just like him on Ethics Committees would routinely ban such work and people just like him working as journal editors would routinely refuse to publish the few studies that got through. Finally things are changing so a bunch of people just like him are attacking the journals like BJSM
The ADA could have studied the successes on the forum of which there have been thousands over nearly two decades. Then they would have had two decades of evidence but they chose not to.
Alex
Banned book burning, the whole Arsenal of fascist thinking
You’re an idiot. The low carb diet has given me, a Type I diabetic, normal blood sugars – no prospect of complications, no bar to a normal lifespan. Clowns like you defended the American Diabetes Association’s high-carb diet on the grounds that saturated fat causes heart disease – well, now the conventional wisdom has changed to saturated fats have nothing to do with heart disease, and the American Diabetes Association has adopted the low carb diet to treat high blood sugars in diabetes. Your contribution to this revolution? You delayed it and caused untold nephropathy and dialysis, agonizing neuropathy, peripheral arterial disease and consequent salami amputations, retinopathy and blindness, and 7-year premature death. Had you followed the money, you’d have found food big food and the pharmaceutical companies supported the ADA whose policies supported their sales so not only are you an idiot, you have blood on your hands
My own belief is that the advice to those with diabetes to eat a high carb diet has been monumentally stupid and extremely damaging, and would – in a rational world – lead to convictions against those proposing it. So, whilst I fully agree with the sentiment, I try to keep name calling to a minimum on this blog – in both directions.
No my friend you are the idiot! Hardly any vegetarians or vegans have diabetes. You know who gets diabetes? Yes fat people like yourself who eat junk food, high-fat diets and meat.
I don’t think you do the Vegan cause any favours with your nasty posts. Personal insults backfire very badly. If you wish to bring people over to your cause, the first thing to do is sound reasonable. Engage in reasoned debate, and suchlike.
My BMI is 24.9, even addled as you are, you cannot call me fat!
To Vegan Man: The Poster said that he had Type 1 diabetes. You have confused Type 1 Diabetes with Type 2 Diabetes- (they are 2 different things, go look it up). Oh yeah, and I may as well mention that back when I was a vegan, I started getting very disturbed blood sugars and I’m sure I was well on my way to pre-diabetes (diabetes runs in the family). Luckily, I started eating meat again, and eventually switched to low carb. The idea that vegans don’t get sick is pure nonsense!
Yawwwwnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn……………………….. oh, sorry did you say something you mistakenly thought was based on fact just because it fitted your misguided prejudice. I do feel sorry for you, we will all prey for you. (What spelling mistake?)
Alexbrn,
Have you ever for one moment considered that you may be seeing science corrupted by the billions of profits made by Big Pharma. Statins are enormously profitable for them and they need to suppress evidence that these drugs are unsafe. They also need to bolster the whole confused mess of medical science that supports the use of statins in the first place.
Medical science used to evolve – think for example of the blood letting that was used for so long – but now, with Big Pharma (and you) that evolution has stopped for the sake of money – whatever the price in human suffering.
There are a lot of people here – myself included – betting their lives that Dr Kendrick is correct.
If you intend to censor Wikopedia, why not at least invite those you are about to censor to present their case to you in person. Alternatively, why not leave the pages up with a yellow warning banner at the top, and let your readers make up their own minds.
Dr Kendrick is an NHS doctor. I have no doubt he could call on other NHS doctors to support him. Please stop and think of the harm you are doing.
I don’t know how old you are, but if you are approaching the age when you might be prescribed statins, you have a pretty good chance of experiencing their side effects first hand – as I did. If you do, remember that you have played your part in suppressing the truth about these drugs.
Time to pedal off into the sunset Alex Brown, your neglected blog awaits you! You hate quackery? Me too! However, not as much as I hate Narcissism, and Megalomania.
Alexbrn, you said “There is No long-term scientific evidence this fad diet has any health benefits.”
That’s true, no debate there. Having agreed, it’s just as true for all diets, fad or otherwise. Having said that, low-carb diets (as well as most all other diets for that matter) have been studied extensively, both by experiment and statistical analysis. So the question is, what criteria is pertinent here, aside from WP:x? Is it the long-term nature or the fad nature or the health benefits?
Since there’s no long-term evidence about any diet, that’s an invalid argument either way. According to that Wiki page, there’s ample evidence that low-carb diets in various forms do not fit Wiki’s own definition of fad. That a diet has any health benefit isn’t strictly a criteria for inclusion/exclusion on Wikipedia. But if you wish to make it a criteria, the Wiki article on the Medical Ketogenic Diet (one of the forms of low-carb diets) certainly makes clear and unambiguous statements to its health benefits. Incidentally, the article on Ketogenic Diet is misnamed, it should be titled Medical Ketogenic Diet, because that’s the correct name used in the context of medicine, while the term “Ketogenic Diet” is merely a sub-category of the more general category of diets known as low-carb diets. It’s the correct name, also because the MKD is extremely specific and accepted as a medical treatment as opposed to other diets which are not accepted as medical treatment, and may also be merely ketogenic or merely low-carb.
As a side note, are you aware that no official diet (such as the USDA Official Nutritional Guidelines – MyPlate and previously The Food Pyramid – for example) has ever been tested experimentally _before_ being implemented as official nutritional guidelines? Oh, they’ve been tested experimentally _after_ and never by any of the deciders, but that’s not the point. All official diets have only ever been based on such and such. There’s a world of difference between based on and tested experimentally. To illustrate, medical drugs are not approved based on some related data, but on direct experimental evidence with said drug, i.e. human trials. There is no such protocol for official diets.
Conversely, many non-official diets (such as Atkins, Ornish and Protein Power for example) have been tested experimentally before being published as diet books. Though here the data before-publication comes from on-going medical practice by the authors (who were/are medical practitioners) rather than from outright scientific experiment. Many of those have also been tested experimentally after publication, such as with the A-TO-Z (Atkins, Ornish, Zone, LEARN) study by Christopher Gardner Ph.D et al.
If I were as skeptical and as pro-science as you, my interest would certainly be piqued by this apparent lack of evidence for the official diets, when compared to the apparent abundance of evidence for any other diet (fad or otherwise). So, for example, if I found it valid to edit a Wiki article about a particular diet to include the phrase “There is no long-term evidence…”, I’d have to edit all Wiki articles about all diets – including all official nutritional guidelines diets – to include the same phrase. Of course, I couldn’t support that phrase on any article with any number of reliable secondary sources, because as you often argued in talk pages yourself, you can’t prove a negative. The only thing you and I can prove is how much evidence there actually is, but we’ll probably miss a few cuz neither you nor I know everything.
Copied to Jimmy Wales
Alex, re your low carb editing on Wikipedia reference #4
Your interpretation:
“Carbohydrate-restricted diets can be as effective, or marginally more effective, than low-fat diets in helping achieve weight loss in the short term.[4]”
Actual objective and conclusion of the study:
“Objective
A systematic review and meta-analyses were conducted to compare the effects of very low, low, and moderate carbohydrate, higher fat diets versus high-carbohydrate, low-fat diets on low-density lipoprotein cholesterol and other lipid markers in overweight/obese adults.”
“Conclusions
Large randomized controlled trials of at least 6 months duration with carbohydrate restriction appear superior in improving lipid markers when compared with low-fat diets. Dietary guidelines should consider carbohydrate restriction as an alternative dietary strategy for the prevention/management of dyslipidemia for populations with cardiometabolic risk.”
Thank you, “Alexbrn,” for providing yet another example of why Wikipedia can never be trusted as a reliable source of information.
Actually, there is an abundance of scientific evidence in favor of low carb high fat and ketogenic diets as a healthy and viable way of eating, established over decades. It includes evidence of effectively diminishing childhood epilepsy, fatty liver, and diabetes, and with no cardiovascular risks.
This is simply a fact, and your denial of it is not going to make it go away.
Just as it is a fact that while the absence of either fat or protein in the diet will eventually kill one, it is literally impossible for someone to die from non-consumption of carbohydrate per se. This is the biochemical elephant in the room you and other self-styled “skeptics” ignore, either willfully or because you never bothered to do the research.
So, what would be the best example of this allegedly non-existent evidence?
Perhaps the Tim Noakes trial, which has been commented by Dr. Hedrick and other physicians who advocate LCHF.
Prof. Noakes was accused by South African health authorities of professional misconduct for tweeting that weaning babies onto LCHF is safe and healthy. (It is.)
From the time he was accused to the end of the trial, the prosecution had three years (2014-2017) to prepare for and then prosecute their case. They also had the budgetary resources of the state and a presumably full-time team of professionals – doctors, lawyers, and nutritionists.
If there had been no evidence supporting LCHF – that is, if there really had been no scientific basis for LCHF as a viable diet (which was the scientific and empirical question underlying the prosecution’s entire case), then it should have been ridiculously easy for them to secure a guilty verdict.
But despite these seemingly insurmountable advantages, they failed. Utterly. Noakes was exonerated.
And then, the decision was appealed, and he was exonerated again.
Would you like to know why that happened, “Alexbrn”?
Actually, you wouldn’t, I know. But I’m going to tell you anyway.
It happened because of the consistent, unrelenting presentation of long-term scientific evidence by Noakes’ defense team.
The evidence which you claim does not exist.
(Except that it does.)
E.g.,
47 Randomized control trials
(Which is, by the way, the gold standard of evidence. But you’re the Wikipedia editor “skeptic” scientific dude who has all the science on his side, right? I guess you probably know that.)
28 Intervention trials / laboratory experiments
11 Meta-analyses
77 Observational studies
By comparison, the prosecution submitted one meta-analysis.
So I guess you would need to somehow reconcile the existence of such evidence with your empty, hysterical accusations of “quackery” against medical doctors and scientists – as well as well-informed laypersons – who refuse to toe the line you would have them toe.
You’re not a skeptic, “Alexbrn.”
You’re a willfully ignorant zealot, and a censor to boot. And the very last thing you are is pro-science. Your dismissal of low-carb proponents as “cranks” and “quacks” is a sterling example of unintentional irony.
https://thenoakesfoundation.org/news/blog/a-comparison-of-the-evidence-prof-vs-hpcsa
https://academic.oup.com/jcem/article/88/4/1617/2845298
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29466592
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24075505
http://annals.org/aim/article-abstract/1900694/effects-low-carbohydrate-low-fat-diets-randomized-trial
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19366978
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26768850
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26485706
Well done Rt, if I could put a dozen or two thumbs up on your post I would.
Alexbrn is ruining the Gary Taubes Wikipedia article with negative information. Someone should inform Taubes about this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Taubes
Deja Vu all over again, now another editor is doing this, looks like he is starting where Skeptic from Britain left. These vegans gone a purge spree to attack any low-carb writer on Wikipedia. I am surprised there has been no media coverage about any of this. Get Taubes or Malcolm Kendrick on a podcast to discuss this.
Not Happy, by doing this sort of editing these so called veganists show they are actually in need of medical help, and they are not at all in a healthy mental state. I suspect they may be paid trolls, which means they are automatons under instruction and not thinking for themselves, which makes them just as deserving of suitable treatment.
AhNotepad: Even scarier is that, at least some of them are, no doubt, unpaid sheep. Modern day Bolsheviks? The paid ones are just trying to put food on the table, and may even eat meat.
Someone earlier had an apt quote, “Believe what you are told. Think when supervised”.
AhNotepad, re. vegan aggressiveness. Hypothesis: Vegan warriors express their anger by inflicting pain and suffering on non-vegans. Result of mainstream dietary advice.
https://www.diabetes.co.uk/news/2010/Nov/low-blood-sugar-and-aggression-linked-in-studies-96227932.html
“New research claims that low levels of blood glucose in the body can make people more aggressive, and treating the problem could help people become less likely to show unprovoked hostility towards others. The study has shown that when diabetes patients have trouble metabolising glucose, it may not only have a damaging affect on them, but could also harm society.”