Professor Weissberg seems to claim that the BHF’s relationship with Unilever does not compromise them. In fact, Unilever is helping them raise awareness about the risk of cardiovascular disease in women! I wonder how many of these women will be concerned enough to put their faith in utterly bogus food products enriched with sterols?
This an edited version of a feature posted on Dr John Briffa’s blog on 9th August 2013.
Dr John Briffa
Dr John Briffa practices integrated medicine at two London hospitals and has written a number of books on nutrition, self-help health and diet including the best-selling Waist Disposal and Escape the Diet Trap. He also posts a widely read weekly blog that challenges medical orthodoxy on topics such as statins and the low fat diet. drbriffa.com
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Very interesting. Thank you for this John. We deserve better from the British Heart Association. I am shocked. Professor Weissberg needs to consider his position. Oliver Gillie BSc PhD
Oliver
I’d tend to agree with you.
I am totally convinced by all the evidence you and others put forward
But am confused why so many other professors and medical experts argue the complete opposite !
The official story is that the treatments we get are all science based and as such deliver sound information about what works and what doesn’t. Unfortunately the assumption that the system delivers some sort of absolute truth of the sort you get in, say, aircraft engineering is not correct.
It’s a field with formulae that tell you about load and thrust and speed that give you certain absolutes about designing a plane. Biology is rather more messy. Just as in economics the same data can lead to different conclusions depending on which side of the ‘political’ spectrum you are on, the same is increasingly happening in health.
Next week we are publishing a post about studies that claim to show that vitamins are ineffective and possibly dangerous. The post points out a number of ways in which these studies are unreliable. I and others do not believe they tell us anything useful about vitamins even though many doctors accept them as accurate. Certain studies about statins, say, are accepted by doctors as showing effectiveness, I find more convincing other ones that show statins are far less effective. So who to believe?
Tricky. However what we do know is that commercial interests undoubtedly distort the evidence for the safety and effectiveness of many drugs – see the latests post on the long running problem of companies hiding unfavourable data.
In the end I guess that taking responsibility for your health means dealing with this kind of uncertainty. We face it in many other walks of life – what is the best pension, the best life insurance, the best way to organise an educational system. The way round it is to follow some one you trust or inform yourself. I’d like to think you are moving towards trusting us.
That’s not just the best anrwse. It’s the bestest answer!
Interesting to read Zoe Harcombe’s findings regarding the BHF and their endorsement of Flora – it’s unbleieveabe that this is not contested more and that the BHF get away with this misinformation about our health. Well done Dr Brifa and Zoe Harcombe for teling us what we really need to know and to avoid Flora margarine like the plague.