The China Study (40 page)

THE CHINA STUDY
262
learned that it was possible to raise, through mailing campaigns, large
sums of money for cancer research. It seemed that many people were
interested in learning something new about cancer beyond the usual
model of surgery, radiation and cytotoxic drugs.
This budding organization was well aware of our 1982 NAS report4
that focused on diet and cancer, and so invited me to join them as their
senior science advisor. I encouraged them to focus on diet because the
nutrition connection with cancer was becoming an important area of
research, yet was receiving very little, if any, support from the major
funding agencies. I especially encouraged them to emphasize whole
foods as a source of nutrition, not nutrient supplements, partly because
this was the message of the NAS report.
As I began to work with the AICR, two challenges Simultaneously
arose. First, the AICR needed to get established as a credible organization
to promote the message and to support research. Second, the NAS recom-
mendations needed to be publiCized. Therefore, I thought it made sense
for the AICR to help publicize the NAS recommendations. Dr. Sushma
Palmer, executive director of the NAS project,4 and Harvard professor
Mark Hegsted, who was the key advisor to the McGovern Committee,
agreed to join me in endorsing this AICR project. Simultaneously, the
AICR preSident, Marilyn Gentry, suggested that the AICR could publish
the NAS report and send free copies to 50,000 physicians in the u.s.
These projects, which seemed to me to be logical, useful and socially
responsible, were also highly successful. The associations we were mak-
ing and the exposure we were generating were aimed at increasing the
public's health. As I was qUick to find out, however, creating an organiza-
tion focused on diet as a central link in cancer causation was seen as a
threat to a great many people. It was clear that the AICR's projects were
beginning to hit the mark because of the hostile feedback coming from
the food, medical and drug industries. It seemed that every effort was be-
ing made to discredit them.
I was surprised that government interference was particularly harsh.
National and state attorney general offices questioned the AICR's status
and its fund-raising procedures. The U.s. Post Office joined in the fray,
questioning whether the AICR could use the mail to spread "junk" in-
formation. We all had our suspicions as to who were encouraging these
government offices to quash the dissemination of this diet and cancer
information. Collectively, these public agencies were making life very
difficult. Why were they attacking a nonprofit organization promoting

SCIENCE-THE DARK SIDE                            263
cancer research? It all came down to the fact that the AICR, like the
NAS, was pushing an agenda that connected diet and cancer.
The American Cancer Society became an especially vigorous detrac-
tor. In its eyes, the AICR had two strikes against it: it might compete for
the same funding donors, and it was trying to shift the cancer discus-
s i o n toward diet. The American Cancer Society had not yet acknowl-
edged that diet and nutrition were connected to cancer. (It wasn't until
many years later in the early 1990s that it developed dietary recom-
m e n d a t i o n s to control cancer when the idea was receiving considerable
currency with the public.) It was very much a medically-based organi-
z a t i o n invested in the conventional use of drugs, radiation and surgery.
A short while before, the American Cancer Society had contacted our
NAS committee about the possibility of our joining them to produce
dietary recommendations to prevent cancer. As a committee, we de-
clined, although a couple of the people on our committee did offer their
individual services. The American Cancer Society seemed to sense a big
story on the horizon and didn't like the idea that another organization,
the AICR, might get the credit.
MISINFORMATION
It may seem that I am coming down a tad harshly on an organization
that most people regard as purely benevolent, but the American Cancer
Society acted differently behind the scenes than it did in public.
On one occasion, I traveled to an upstate New York town where I
had been invited to give a lecture to the local chapter of the American
Cancer Society, as I had done elsewhere. During my lecture, I showed a
slide that made reference to the new AICR organization. I did not men-
t i o n my personal association, so the audience was not aware that I was
their senior science advisor.
After the lecture, I took questions and my host asked me, "Do you
know that AICR is an organization of quacks?"
"No," 1 said, "I don't." I'm afraid 1 didn't do such a good job of hid-
i n g my skepticism of her comment, because she felt obliged to explain,
"That organization is being run by a group of quacks and discredited
doctors. Some of them have even served time in prison."
Prison time? This was news to me!
Again, without revealing my association with the AICR, 1 asked,
"How do you know that?" She said she saw a memo that had been cir-
c u l a t e d to local American Cancer SOciety offices around the country.

264                         THE CHINA STUDY
Before leaving, I arranged for her to send me a copy of the memo she
was referring to, and, in a day or so, she did.
The memo had been sent from the office of the national president of
the American Cancer Society, who also was a senior executive of the pres-
tigious Roswell Park Memorial Institute for Cancer Research in Buffalo.
This memo alleged that the scientific "chair" of the organization, without
naming me, was heading up a group of "eight or nine" discredited physi-
cians, several of whom had spent time in prison. It was total fabrication.
I didn't even recognize the names of these discredited physicians and had
no idea how something so vicious could have gotten started.
After snooping around a little more, I discovered the person in the
American Cancer Society office in Buffalo who was responsible for the
memo. I phoned him. Not surprisingly, he was evasive and only said
that he had gotten this information from an unnamed reporter. It was
impossible to trace the original source. The one thing I do know for
sure was that this memo was distributed by the office of the American
Cancer Society's president.
I also learned that the National Dairy Council, a powerful industry
lobbying group, had obtained a copy of the same memo and proceeded
to distribute a notice of its own to its local offices around the country.
The smear campaign against the AICR was widespread. The food, phar-
maceutical and medical industries through and/or parallel to the Ameri-
can Cancer Society and the National Dairy Council were showing their
true colors. Prevention of cancer with low-cost, low-profit plant foods
was not welcomed by the food and pharmaco-medical industries. With
support from a trusting media, their combined power to influence the
public was overwhelming.
PERSONAL CONSEQUENCES
The ending of this story, however, is a happy one. Although the AICR's
first couple of years were turbulent and difficult for me both personally
and profeSSionally, the smear campaigns finally started to wane. No lon-
ger considered "on the fringe," the AICR has now expanded to England
(the World Cancer Research Fund, WCRF, in London) and elsewhere.
For over twenty years now, the AICR has run a program that funds
research and education projects on the link between diet and cancer. I
initially organized and chaired that grant program, and then continued
as the AICR's senior science advisor for several years, in a few different
stints, after its initial founding.

265
SCIENCE-THE DARK SIDE
One more unfortunate affair, however, bears mention. I was informed
by my nutrition society's Board of Directors that two society members
(Bob Olson and Alf Harper) had proposed to have me expelled from the
society, supposedly because of my association with the AI CR. It would
have been the first expulsion in the history of the society. I had to go to
Washington to be "interviewed" by the president of the society and the
director of nutrition at the FDA. Most of their questions concerned the
AICR.
The whole ordeal proved stranger than fiction. Expel a prominent
society member-shortly after I was nominated to be the organization's
president-for being involved with a cancer research organization? Lat-
er, I found myself reflecting on the whole ordeal with a colleague who
knew the inner workings of our society, Professor Sam Tove of North
Carolina State University. He, of course, knew all about the investiga-
tion, as well as other shenanigans. In our discussion, I told him about
AICR being a worthy organization with good intentions. His response
has resonated with me ever since. "It's not about AICR," he said. "It's
about what you did on the National Academy of Sciences report on diet,
nutrition and cancer. "
When the NAS's report concluded in June 1982 that a lower intake
of fat and a higher intake of fruits, vegetables and whole grain products
would make for a healthier diet, I had betrayed, in the eyes of some, the
nutrition research community. Supposedly, as one of the two diet and
cancer experimental researchers on the panel, it was my job to protect
the reputation of the American diet as it was. After my failure to do so,
my subsequent involvement with the AICR and its promotion of the
NAS report only made matters worse.
Luckily, reason prevailed in this whole farcical encounter. A board
meeting was held to vote on whether I should be expelled from my so-
ciety, and I handily survived the vote (6-0, with two abstentions).
It was hard not to take all of this personally, but there's a larger point
here, and it's not personal. In the world of nutrition and health, scien-
tists are not free to pursue their research wherever it leads. Coming to
the "wrong" conclusions, even through first-rate science, can damage
your career. Trying to disseminate these "wrong" conclusions to the
public, for the sake of public health, can destroy your career. Mine was
not destroyed-I was lucky, and some good people stood up for me. But
it could have gone much worse.
After all of these numerous ordeals, I have a better understanding of

266                          THE CHINA STUDY
why my society did the things it did. The awards funded by Mead John-
s o n Nutritionals, Lederle Laboratories, BioServe Biotechnologies and
previously Procter and Gamble and the Dannon Institute-all food and
drug outfits-represented a strange marriage between industry and my
sOciety.8 Do you believe that these "friends" of the society are interested
in pursuing scientific investigation, no matter what the conclusions
maybe?
CONSEQUENCES FOR THE PUBLIC
Ultimately, the lessons I learned in my career had little to do with
specific names or specific institutions. These lessons have more to do
with what goes on behind the scenes of any large institution. What
happens behind the scenes during national policy discussions, wheth-
e r it happens in scientific societies, the government or in industry
boardrooms, is supremely important for our health as a nation. The
personal experiences I have talked about in this chapter-only a sam-
ple of such experiences-have consequences far greater than personal
aggravation and damage to my career. These experiences illustrate the
dark side of science, the side that harms not just individual research-
ers who get in the way, but all of society. It does this by systematically
attempting to conceal, defeat and destroy viewpoints that oppose the
status quo.
There are some people in very influential government and university
positions who operate under the guise of being scientific "experts,"
whose real jobs are to stifle open and honest scientific debate. Perhaps
they receive significant personal compensation for attending to the in-
terests of powerful food and drug companies, or perhaps they merely
have an honest personal bias toward a company-friendly viewpoint.
Personal bias is stronger than you may think. I know scientists with
family members who died from cancer and it angers them to entertain
the possibility that personal choices, like diet, could have played a role
in the death of their loved ones. Likewise, there are scientists for whom
the high-fat, high animal-based food diet they eat every day is simply
what they learned was healthy at a young age; they love the habit, and
they don't want to change.
The vast majority of scientists are honorable, intelligent and dedicated
to the search for the common good rather than personal gain. However,
there are a few scientists who are willing to sell their souls to the high-
est bidder. They may not be many in number, but their influence can be

267
SCIENCE-THE DARK SIDE
vast. They can corrupt the good name of institutions of which they are
a part and, most importantly, they can create vast confusion among the
public, which often cannot know who is who. You might turn on the
TV one day to see an expert praising McDonald's hamburgers, and then
read a magazine the same day that you should eat less high-fat red meat
to protect yourself against cancer. Who is to be believed?
Institutions also are part of the dark side of science. Committees like
the Public Nutrition Information Committee and the American Council
on Science and Health generate lopsided panels and committees and
institutions that are far more interested in promoting their point of
view than debating scientific research with an open mind. If a Public
Nutrition Information Committee report says that low-fat diets are
fraudulent scams, and a National Academy of Sciences report says the
opposite, which one is right?
In addition, this closed-mindedness in science spreads across entire
systems. The American Cancer SOCiety was not the only health insti-
t u t i o n that worked to make life difficult for the AICR. The National
Cancer Institute public information office, Harvard Medical School
and a few other universities with medical schools were highly skepti-
cal of the AICR and, in some cases, outright hostile. The hostility of
medical schools first surprised me, but when the American Cancer
Society, a very traditional medical institution, also joined the fray,
it became obvious that there really was a "Medical Establishment."
The behemoth did not take kindly to the idea of a serious connec-
t i o n between diet and cancer or, for that matter, virtually any other
disease. Big Medicine in America is in the business of treating disease
with drugs and surgery after symptoms appear. This means that you
might have turned on the TV to see that the American Cancer Society
gives almost no credence to the idea that diet is linked to cancer, and
then opened the paper to see that the American Institute for Cancer
Research says what you eat impacts your risk of getting cancer. Who
do you trust?
Only someone familiar with the inside of the system can distinguish
between sincere positions based in science and insincere, self-serving
positions. I was on the inside of the system for many years, working
at the very top levels, and saw enough to be able to say that science
is not always the honest search for truth that so many believe it to be.
It far too often involves money, power, ego and protection of personal
interests above the common good. Very few, if any, illegal acts need to
,.
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