By T. Colin Campbell, Professor emeritus of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell University and co-author with his son Thomas Campbell, MD, of "The China Study."
Finally, a long overdue scientific correction is happening. The human genome project is failing to advance the cause of human health, as promised. There is a fundamental but frustratingly and long overlooked reason why this is happening.
Working out the details of the human genome was worth doing, on several accounts: monitoring environmental pollutants, evaluating evolutionary lineages, identifying criminal suspects. But initially promising great advances in human health was not and should not have been one of these promises. Hypothesizing that knowledge of the associations of specific genes with serious diseases like cancer, heart disease and related diseases would lead to great health advances (through drug development) was a superficial and costly oversimplification of disease causation.
Although genes and/or their mutated forms are fundamental to the initiation of all disease events, it is not their mere presence or absence that determines disease outcomes. Genes may start the job but they do not finish it. The far more important question we should ask is: what controls the expression of genes (to produce products, mostly enzymes) that lead to health and disease events? Experimental and extensively published research from my laboratory over several decades has long convinced me that nutrition primarily provides this control. We have failed to acknowledge this question or sought its answer for far too long because we have failed to understand the scientific fundamentals of nutrition. Not one medical school in the nation adequately teaches this science, although a few give it lip service.
Still worse is the failure of federal funding agencies to recognize nutrition as a legitimate medical science. The National Institutes of Health, the most prominent biomedical research institution in the world, since its founding has kept nutrition well hidden. Not one of its 27 institutes and related centers is dedicated to nutrition! Some NIH administrators say nutrition is embedded in other programs but do not be fooled. First, dedicated nutrition funding is meager (less than five percent of the heart and cancer institutes--the two largest). Second, this small amount has been used primarily to study single nutrient effects in randomized clinical trials, a seriously flawed hypothesis.
Nutrition should not to be defined by the effects of isolated nutrients. That's pharmacology, a strategy now known not to work, in spite of the $25 billion or so that we annually spend on nutrient supplements. Unequivocal evidence now exists to show that nutrition, when provided by the use of whole, plant-based foods, can control the expression of our mischievous genes that otherwise would lead to serious ailments such as heart disease, diabetes, certain autoimmune diseases and many lesser ailments. For many years, experimental findings from my laboratory have shown that genetic initiation of cancer (by a powerful chemical carcinogen) can be stalled even reversed by a modest nutritional modification that is consistent with this same whole, plant-based food effect. (This research was funded by NIH because of my interest in cancer but, eventually, we learned that it was the tail, nutrition, that wagged the dog -- cancer.) Physician colleagues of mine, including Drs. Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr., Dean Ornish, Roy Swank and Neal Barnard have now published peer-reviewed findings showing this kind of nutrition not only to prevent serious diseases such as heart disease, diabetes and related ailments but to treat them into remission.
There is no other strategy in contemporary health science or medical practice that comes close to the breadth and depth of health benefits achievable by nutrition. We must begin to understand, communicate and apply this knowledge if we ever hope to reduce health care costs by reducing the burden of disease. We will never do this by depending on outmoded notions of what single (or even a few) genes, single nutrients or single chemicals (i.e., drugs) will do to create health. That thinking generates wealth for a few at the expense of health for the many. It is time to recognize the natural and harmonious biological complexity of health processes, and choose the lifestyle strategy that best maintains and restores that harmony. Nature has had eons of time to work this out. It's also time to develop a professional science of nutrition that serves the biological health of the population, not the economic health of commerce.
As for health professionals who claim they cannot convince patients to change their dietary practices, this is not surprising when the professionals themselves are not educated in this field and are vested in a strategy that is the antithesis of good nutrition. It is time we recognize what nutrition can do and a good place to start is to establish an NIH Institute of Nutrition dedicated for this purpose.
-- The writer is professor emeritus of nutritional biochemistry at Cornell
University. He is co-author with his son Thomas Campbell, MD, of "The China
Study."
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And I think we can all agree that people eat way too much chemical junk.
2.) There are BILLIONS of dollars at stake. Dr's Campbell, Esselstyn, McDougall, Furhman, Ornish and more are threats to that income. Industry is going to fight to the death.
Thank you for providing sound science in the face of corporate giants.
How critical is the need for this knowledge? One only needs to look at the success of McDonalds to commence immediately! The earlier such knowledge can be inculcated the better for tomorrow's adults. I think all initiatives should target mothers, with significant interest in young mothers, so that they can in turn pass this to their offspring.
The government in addition to setting up a national nutrition institute can also offer such incentives as scholarships in this area and an encouragement to participate in such activity as community mobilizers. Use of pro athletes and big companies like Nike will certainly generate enough buzz among the young to take it to the next level.
This article to me is spot on.
His next bit is about nutrition via vitamins vs whole foods. Which again is weird we already know many diseases which are solely the result of vitamin deficiencies. There are on occasion some places where vitamins are used therapeutically (High dose Niacin for example). While I agree that much nutritional research looks at food people take and often (more often naturopaths rather than physicians) expressed as 'supplement with X'. Which isn't good science, since it's mistaking correlation ("people who eat foods with X don't get disease Y") with causation ("X prevents Y"). However Colin is going way overboard and suggesting that plants or animals (but given is other research probably only plants) contain some magical and optimal combination of nutrients. This is pure conjecture.
http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/
So perhaps funding a new big government program on whole food nutrients is the answer. Unfortunately there are already many studies out there that don't point in this direction. For example this one showing only modest reduction in cancer for heavy vegetable consumption.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/08/eating-vegetables-doesnt-stop-cancer/
Perhaps ,food is food,not medicine, a sensible way of looking at it.
A critique of the study:
http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/cancer-fruits-and-vegetables-provide-only-modest-protection-from-cancer.html
I am not a fan of randomized control trials for nutritional experimentation.
After conducting experimental diet and health research while using your money (mostly NIH) for more than 40 years and publishing it in the best peer-reviewed journals, our work and that of others overwhelmingly shows that health improvement is dramatic, involving both prevention of future disease and resolving current illnesses using a whole foods, plant-based diet with a natural fat level of about 10-12% of calories, nothing like your impressions of a not-so-low 30% fat diet. For more information, read books by Drs. Neal Barnard, Caldwell Esselstyn, John McDougall, Joel Fuhrman and myself and my son (The China Study).
Based on your obvious misinformation, I suggest that you look at yourself before accusing others of being a charlatan. Those who judge others so carelessly, judge themselves.
I'm always being asked, "but where do you get our protein" and my answer is usually, "where do cows and steer get their protein". I don't get asked about fat though people tell me they couldn't live without butter though if they stopped to think about it they would see that I manage very well without dairy products and meat. People are just too attached to food not realizing the purpose of food..
Grain fed cows are often given protein supplements.
Here is an independent review of his "research":
http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the-china-study-fact-or-fallac/
The OIP would include an anti-revolving-door policy to avoid being compromised by other institutions. All of the research would be posted free to the world community, and there would be open dialog between consumers and the OIP via the web. New professional designations would be created for Illness Prevention Practitioners. Nature-based prevention (as opposed to "preventive medicine," an oxymoron invented by BigPharma to sell drugs) would be part of a mandatory curriculum taught in every medical and nursing school. Ultimately, true illness prevention would become a worldwide initiative, changing the face of health and health care as we know it.
Roy Mankovitz, Director
http://www.MontecitoWellness.com
I agree that NIH needs to seriously re-think their priorities on nutrition but why let the private sector do all the research?
Incidentally, AIDS research was heavily supported by NIH funding--any lack of progress is more political and economic than scientific.