Dr Fleming's story, Part II - It is a no-no to know - and spill the knowledge - that a ragingly popular diet may be a fraud and a public health hazard

In the beginning was a Freedom of Information request, about the "wrong" person, on the "wrong" subject.  

I have been writing on this blog about efforts of the government - and simply of politically and financially powerful people - to use occupational licensing not as a tool of protection of the public, but as a tool extermination, political death, destroying reputation, bankrupting and impoverishing people who are competent and good specialists, but whose competence, intelligence, education and credibility are a thorn in the side of somebody's money-making business. 

Whistleblowers regarding lies and misconduct in the government and/or big business are routinely ostracized, fired, "disciplined", some criminally charged and some even killed - as it happened to two people in New York who exposed governmental misconduct, Sunny Sheu and Adam Rupeka, and one person in California, and that is just recently.

People are assaulted, their houses are burnt, they are grabbed and arrested, as it happened to 

• John Walker - a State Representative (!) in Arkansas;
• Omavi Kushukuru - John Walker's attorney, Arkansas;
• Maurice "Mo" Crawley - New York;
• Barbara O'Sullivan - New York.

Those in power organize campaigns to malign whistleblowers names - with some such campaigns ending in an eerie way, like did the one to malign Adam Rupeka, where people bashing him while he was still alive claimed that he was not "some kind of Manhattan project" to be afraid of being murdered - just a couple of days before he WAS actually hunted down and murdered, with his girlfriend, in the country opposite to the one he claimed he was running away to (to put his persecutors, obviously, on a false track and save their lives).

I wrote on this blog how an attorney in Louisiana, #ChristineMire, was suspended for PROVING, with testimony of witnesses, and with documentary and material evidence that powerful people engaged in misconduct.

I wrote on this blog about people who were thrown in prison and charged with felonies for the simple act of seeking governmental records that would have produced evidence of racism of one judge and of corruption of another, or, possibly, of a group of high-ranking judges in the State of Georgia.

I myself lost my law license because the judge whose financial disclosures I sought (and still did not get, after many-many years), was notified of my FOIL requests of his disclosures, retaliated against me and had my license pulled without a hearing, based on his sanctions alone.

The persecution against Dr Richard Maximus Fleming - a brilliant physician, nuclear cardiologist, an inventor and patent holder, an ardent public health advocate, a holder of a law degree, an actor - started with his Freedom of Information Request, against the "wrong" person, on the "wrong" subject - as powerful people later decided.

But first, about Dr Fleming's FOIL request.

Dr Fleming, as a cardiologist, was adamantly against the so-called Atkins diet - which still advertised.

Not only was Dr Fleming adamantly against the Atkins diet that reduced carbohydrates and sugar, but allowed fats - because of his concern that such "diet" will aggravate heart conditions by clogging heart arteries - but he was reportedly the only physician who actually dared to have a study comparing a vegetarian diet with an Atkins diet.

In fact, as it was reported, the opportunity to compare arteries of volunteers enrolled in the study after a year of a vegetarian diet and after some time on Atkins diet presented itself inadvertently - because 16 volunteers out of initial 26 in the vegetarian diet study actually switched to the Atkins diet.

Surprise, surprise! - the clogging in the arteries of those on vegetarian diet reversed by 20%, and the clogging in the arteries of those on the Atkins diet - for less than a year! - was increased by 40 to 50%.  

Yet, Dr. Atkins advertised that it is ok to eat fat as part of a "healthy" diet and for your own health - and many people followed it as Gospel, because, look - isn't it attractive to eat fat to diet?  That's a piece of cake, isn't it - no pun intended.

Dr Fleming may have been the only one physician who actually conducted a comparative study of effects of a vegetarian diet and an Atkins diet, but he was definitely not the only one to openly state that the diet is not just bogus, but dangerous.

From medical associations of physicians, to state and federal legislators and health executive officers, the consensus was that the diet was dangerous.

And still, it persevered - to this day.  Of course, it does not openly advertise any more that you can eat unlimited fats and still "diet", but it does the same by omission - it does not say that you DO reduce fats as part of the diet.

One can only imagine the amount of money that was necessary to, literally, grease the way of the diet into the hearts (pun intended) of its followers, and to make those who were supposed to force removal of that diet from the stream of commerce as dangerous to public health.

One can have a glimpse as to what kind of money was involved simply by the amount of money the widow of Dr. Atkins received (and the new husband and Mrs. Atkins' attorneys fought over) after Dr. Atkins' death, not just from his medical practice, but from his "diet" empire - and, by the way, Dr. Atkins was a cardiologist who had to recognize that what he was advertising to people as a lazy "diet" will actually be killing the "diet"'s followers - hence accusations of malpractice by the Chair of the Harvard nutrition department that fell on deaf ears.

Despite the consensus of the medical community that Dr Atkins' "diet" is dangerous and constitutes medical malpractice, Dr Atkins was, nevertheless, adamant that any claims that his "diet" was dangerous were libelous, and even sued his rival, Nathan Pritykin, who had his own diet and claimed in television debates that the Atkins diet is unhealthy and causes death.

And then came two moments of truth.

First, Nathan Pritykin died, long before Dr. Atkins, in 1984.

Autopsy was performed on his body, and the autopsy was published in order to show his followers that he practiced what he preached, that he did not die from clogged arteries.

Second, Dr Atkins died on April 18, 2003, as, reportedly, one of the 10 most influential people in the world in the previous 20 years.

His obituary quoted Dr Atkins' beliefs that one should not deprive oneself of fatty foods in order to lose weight and be healthy:

"One of the key things about the Atkins diet, he liked to say, was that the dieter did not need to feel hungry. "If you believe that weight loss requires self-deprivation," he told prospective follow- ers, "I'm going to teach you otherwise."

Atkins's dieting method was fairly simple. He believed that if you cut down radically on carbohydrates, you would lose weight, even if you ate steaks, chops, fried eggs and bacon. Fat was not a problem.  Carbohydrates, particularly refined carbohydrates, were. Calorie intake, Atkins said, was relatively unimportant."

Reports of his death at the time included information that he supposedly slipped on ice, fell, hit his head, had a "blood clot", underwent surgery, went into coma and then died.  Reports also had information that Dr Atkins had a heart surgery a year prior, but it was due to an "infection", ostensibly, and not to his "diet" of fatty steaks and eggs over pasta.

And, when a person dies unexpectedly, and when that person is alone when he dies, and when that person is the head of a thriving wealthy empire and there are heirs to the millions of dollars left in the person's estate after his death, an autopsy is expected, if not required.

And that would especially be true when the person who died has been the promoter of a healthy diet - because it provides to his empire a unique opportunity to show that he practiced what he preached and died with a healthy (or at least, an unclogged) heart, and that his DIET is not the cause of his death.

The then-mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg, the rich and powerful person that he was who did not give a fig about what people would think about what he says, reportedly put it bluntly that he did not believe that the cause of Dr Atkins death was his fall, but instead it was his weight and his eating too much fatty steaks.

Under these circumstances, the Atkins empire - if the widow believed, as she claimed, that her husband was maligned, and to preserve the good name of the Atkins diet empire - would have pushed for an autopsy, like Pritykin's next of kin did in 1984.

Yet, the Dr Atkins' widow pushed in exactly the opposite direction - to NOT make the autopsy.

And still, under the circumstances, when the issue was danger to public health not just within the scope of one city, or one state, but the whole country and the world where the Atkins diet (being the diet ideal for lazy people who liked fatty foods) gained wild popularity, autopsy of Dr Atkins had to be performed.

Well, it wasn't.

Dr Atkins' widow made sure of it.

And then Dr Richard Maximus Fleming, the hero of this story,

did the unthinkable - he filed a request with the New York County Association of Medical Examiners for at least the external medical examination report of the body of Dr Atkins.

Being a doctor and a scientist, he preferred seeing a document to participating in speculation.

While asking for these documents, Dr. Fleming made it known to NYC Medical Examiner's office that he was not and never has been Dr. Atkins' physician, so it was clearly a Freedom of Information request by a member of the public, even if Dr. Atkins, not having a law degree at that time, did not put it this way in so many words.

Moreover, Dr. Fleming was a well-known and prominent critic of Dr. Atkins, which was readily verifiable by the NYC Medical Examiners' office while working on the request for documents.

Yet, the NYC Office of Medical Examiners did release the report to Dr. Fleming, making it a public document.

And, Dr. Fleming, a member of the public, having received that document that was issued to him NOT as to Dr. Atkins' physician or member of the family, but simply as to a member of the public, had every right in the world to reveal that document to the public.

Moreover, for revealing that document, Dr. Fleming deserved a medal the size of the State of New York for CONFIRMING what multiple medical professionals and medical associations were claiming for years and decades - that the Atkins diet is dangerous, and may have killed its own creator.

Here is that document.

And the hell broke loose.  The widow was enraged.  The NYC Office of Medical Examiners had nothing better to say than that Dr. Fleming supposedly violated some ethical rules because he asked for documents from NYC Office of Medical Examiners - and they SATISFIED the request, and RELEASED the requested documents, unconditionally.

The report was a bombshell.

It stated that, supposedly, the 72-year-old Dr. Atkins, the creator and promoter of "eat-fat-as-diet" diet, had:

• congestive heart failure;
• suffered a heart attack in the past;
• had a horizontal scar on his abdomen - which, as some medical professionals concluded, could have been the result of a surgery for fat extraction;
• weighed at 258 lbs (117 kilos) at death, which qualified him, according to the body mass index tables, as obese, and
• did not have defensive wounds on him that would have shown that he was conscious when he "slipped on ice and fell" - while there were witnesses asserting that there was no ice at that time at the place of the fall.

In other words, the document could create in a reasonable medical practitioner a belief that Dr. Atkins FIRST lost consciousness because of a heart attack, and only THEN dropped like a log without trying to put out his hands to protect himself - since there are NO wounds on his elbows, while, if a person is falling backwards, a conscious person would have been hedging himself with his elbows to break the fall or mitigate the damage from the fall.

In other words, the document was a condemnation of Dr. Atkins' lifestyle and diet and could strike a death blow to Dr. Atkins' thriving diet empire.

And that is - without the autopsy being done.  And, the document explained very well why the widow "chose" not to perform that autopsy.

The widow, in addition to being enraged, immediately started to push defensive theories.

One of them was that the 6' tall Dr. Atkins actually weighed 195 lbs at the time of the fall and gained over 60 pounds during his last 9 days in the hospital, when he was laying in a coma.

Of course, such theories were rejected by medical professionals.

A prominent physician, Dr. John McDougall, described Dr. Atkins as "grossly overweighed, ... and I'm being kind".

Another physician whom I consulted before running this story, provided some more reasons why such a theory is highly implausible: if that was true, Dr. Atkins widow would have sued the living hell out of the hospital for malpractice - as it IS malpractice to let a patient in a coma gain over 60 pounds (an increase of nearly 1/3 of his body weight) over 9 days.

But, let's return to the FOIL request of Dr. Richard Fleming, and the release by Dr. Fleming of documents that the New York City Office of Medical Examiner voluntarily released to the public.

Did Dr. Fleming do anything illegal in releasing the supposedly "confidential" report?

No.

First, the report should not have been "confidential" in the first place, as it was made on an issue of GRAVE public concern, as we don't know how many lives the Atkins diets has cost the Earth's population.

As I said above, Dr. Fleming deserved a public recognition and award for his effort to expose what surely appeared to be at the very least a gross inconsistency between the claims of Dr. Atkins, as the creator of the Atkins diet, with the reality of his own health and the nature of his death.

And, second, once the document was officially and unconditionally released by the government, on request, to a member of the public, it stopped being confidential and became a public document.

But, the widow of Dr. Atkins was still enraged.

And, supporters of the Atkins diet lashed against Dr. Fleming claimed that Dr. Fleming had a "financial motive" to reveal the documents - his own book where he criticizes Dr. Atkins diet.

And, Dr. Fleming does have such a book trading on Amazon.com,

I will enlarge the font of the Amazon's Publishers Weekly and the Editorial description of the author and will break it infor reading comfort, here:

==

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The author, a nuclear cardiologist and founder of the Fleming Heart and Health Institute in Omaha, Neb., builds on his earlier work (How to Bypass Your Bypass: What Your Doctor Doesn't Tell You About Cholesterol and Your Diet) to identify in this reader-friendly guide 12 risk factors for heart disease. According to Fleming, these factors-which include high blood cholesterol level (over 150), excess weight, elevated homocysteine (resulting from eating too much animal protein) and oxidants in the blood stream-trigger an inflammatory reaction that causes heart disease and may also be responsible for diabetes, arthritis and other serious conditions.

Dismissing bypass surgery and angioplasty as short-term solutions, Fleming claims that his suggested diet, combined with regular exercise such as daily walking, will reverse heart disease without medication or surgery.

He recommends that his diet be adopted in two phases: phase one is composed solely of fruit and vegetables; after consistent improvement in cardiac health has been accomplished, phase two, which adds whole grains, low-fat dairy and moderate servings of protein, may be undertaken.

A variety of sample recipes and menus are provided.

Fleming is opposed to the currently popular high-protein diets for losing weight.

Although his exercise and eating plan certainly promotes health, the diet, which also eliminates caffeine, may discourage those who find it too restrictive.

Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Read more

About the Author

Richard M. Fleming, M.D. is the founder and director of the Fleming Heart and Health Institute, located in Omaha, Nebraska. Thousands of people from around the world come to the Fleming Institute for treatment of heart disease, cancer, and nutrition-related disorders.

===

So, we have three competing diets here:

1.  Nathan Pritykin's - who died, whose family allowed his autopsy and published it to prove that he did not die from following his diet;

2. Dr. Atkins' - who died in a way suspiciously hinting that he died from following his own diet, but his widow blocked any way of verifying it, prohibited the autopsy, prohibited the release of the external medical examination, lashed out when it was "inadvertently" leaked anyway on a FOIL request, and spawn wild and scientifically bizarre theories to offset the damage done by the external examination report, even without an autopsy; and

3. Dr. Richard Maximus Fleming's - who is very much alive, but who, since the release of the document that has made him a hero of public health advocacy, has been stripped of his medical license and livelihood and was pushed, after a trial, into a nolo contendere (not admitting guilt) plea for meticulously following in his billing the Medicare manual - and only after the presiding judge, Richard Kopf, legendary for his misconduct and his outrageous blogs (I have written about Judge Kopf on this blog already and will describe his shenanigans in this case in a separate blog) made it perfectly clear, through the judge's outrageous conduct, that Dr. Fleming will not have a fair trial before the jury. 

How he did it? 

As I will explain in detail in the next blog about Dr. Fleming's story, Judge Kopf blocked exculpatory evidence, using cowardice of Dr. Fleming's assigned counsel to play into the hands of the prosecution (and, I am sure, to the delight of the Atkins crowd).

Even then, the prosecution's case was non-existent, so, instead of awaiting the verdict after a trial, they threatened Dr. Fleming that IF he is convicted (which was possible only if Judge Kopf would thoroughly screw with the jury instruction, and block all available exculpatory evidence, which Judge Kopf was obviously ready to do), he will go to prison AND his three children will end up with his ex-wife AND that the ex-wife will be abusing the children.

So, Dr. Fleming was given a "choice", as I wrote before - prison or children. 

He chose his children and pled nolo contendere, to what was not even a crime - his billing practices to Medicare which were charged against him as Medicare fraud, were not only lawful and allowed, but were preferred practices to be used, according the Medicare manual.

But - is it the way for this country to treat its PUBLIC HEALTH ADVOCATES, who risked EVERYTHING to let the public know what danger it is put in by certain people who, for personal financial gain, deliberately put their health at risk?


As to blaming Dr. Fleming for having financial interests, selling a book, at the time when he sought and released Dr. Atkins' external examination report - there is a problem in blaming Dr. Fleming for that.  In fact, two problems.

1. First, Dr. Fleming was ACTUALLY CORRECT in claiming that Dr. Atkins' diet was dangerous - because he, unlike Dr. Atkins' family, backed up his claims with a SCIENTIFIC STUDY, measuring the results of Dr. Atkins' diet, as compared to a vegetarian diet, on actual volunteers - which Dr. Atkins did not do, instead, Dr. Atkins' widow refused to do the autopsy, refused to publish the external medical examination, tried to "explain away" the obvious signs of obesity and heart disease in her late husband by wildly incongruous theories and lashed out against the person whose only fault was that he honestly and openly sought and distributed a TRUE public document - because Mrs. Atkins never claimed that the document that Dr. Fleming distributed and published was forged or contained false information.
2. Second, Dr. Fleming was ACTUALLY CORRECT that this document, and the implications that information in that document contained should trigger an alarm about public health on the highest level - which he tried to do by making the document public and calling attention to it.

So, seeking and revealing a TRUE public document that raised SERIOUS issues of public health, was a POSITIVE and LAUDATORY thing to do, regardless whether Dr. Fleming did or did not have a financial motive to reveal that document.

And, apparently, in order to appease Veronica Atkins and supporters of the Atkins diet, as well to compensate for their own faux pas, the New York City Office of Medical Examiners made a cowardly maneuver: the Medical Examiner retaliated against Dr. Fleming by filing a complaint against him with the Nebraska Board of Medical Examiners.

Which resulted, over time, in an avalanche of sanctions, finding fault, nit-picking, discrediting his business - and finally, a fabricated criminal prosecution, stripping of a medical license and depriving a BRILLIANT and HONEST and BRAVE physician who can SERVE PATIENTS WELL of an opportunity to either serve patients, or earn a living.

While occupational licensing laws exist (and for medical professionals, too) to protect THE PUBLIC from BAD, INCOMPETENT, DISHONEST professionals.

While Dr. Fleming was stripped of his right to serve the public and earn his living for being the opposite - GOOD, BRAVE, HONEST, COMPETENT, and not only a creator of innovative diet, but also a creator of innovative diagnostic methods for heart disease and breast cancer.

Had he been allowed to practice, I wonder, how many lives he could have saved.

Yet, he is not allowed to do that specifically because he tried to pointed out how an unscrupulous doctor, a very rich and influential one, was trying to have people die, but follow his bogus diet.

I will continue publishing Dr. Fleming's story - his court ordeal and the essence of his innovative inventions.

Stay tuned.