During the last week I have had two friends share articles on Facebook because they thought they were so interesting that others needed to read them. The first related to a cardiac surgeon who was challenging the current explanation of heart disease, and the second was the 'Hand of Hope' picture complete with the original viral email text from around 1999.
In the first article a 'world renown heart surgeon' of 25 years experience was claiming that the current view that cholesterol causes heart disease is wrong, and actually it is inflammation. Further more, he claimed that the dietary advice to stop eating naturally fatty foods and start eating low-fat processed alternatives was causing the inflammation. What evidence did he give? Well he claimed that in every one of the 5000 people he has operated on over the last 25 years has had inflamed arteries. He also pointed out that more people in the US will die of heart disease this year than in any previous year. Finally it was stated that he was so passionate about replacing these misconceptions with fact that he 'recently left surgery to focus on the nutritional treatment of heart disease.'
I was immediately suspicious for three main reasons. The first was that he stated that his theory was 100% correct, it is medical fact! Scientist don't like to come out and make such bold statements, especially not when an idea is still new, consider the announcement from CERN that they have seen an intensity peak at about the correct mass for a Higgs boson, but will need to continue testing for at least a year to be able to make a definite claim that something is there. The second problem I had was that his evidence was anecdotal, based entirely off his own observations. Personal observations are fine for forming a hypothesis but they are not sufficient to make a conclusion from, for that he would need to do an epidemiological study and present it for peer review. The final problem is that the one non-anecdotal statistic (more heart disease in the US today) is meaningless because it doesn't take into account the increase in population size nor the increase in the obesity rate.
So having these concerns I decided to dig a little deeper, thanks Google! And it turns out that in 2008 this doctor had his medical license revoked following several years of reprimands, probationary periods, and cautions due to failure to maintain proper notes, surgical errors, and mismanagement of several patients; so the statement about him choosing to stop surgery was a lie. Also he has not published a peer reviewed article or made a presentation to the medical community since 2003, choosing instead to publish books designed for sale direct to the general public. This doesn't mean that he is wrong, but it does mean that he is not credible and I would strongly suggest against making life decisions based on his advice.
The second article was a picture of a foetus 'holding the finger' of a surgeon. The text claimed that the child 'thrust it's hand out of the uterus and squeezed the finger of the surgeon as if thanking him for the gift of life.' Unfortunately the doctor has officially stated that the child was anesthetized and couldn't move and that the picture is of 'me pulling his hand out of the uterus.' So while the picture is still very cool it is not the 'miracle' some claim it to be.
In both cases these articles gain popularity because they tell a certain group of people what they want to hear. The first article, amongst other things, says to eat natural unrefined foods (not actually a bad suggestion), and most of its supporters are people who oppose GM crops and were already adopting this style of diet. While the second article resonated with pro-life groups who took it to show that the child wanted to live. Personally I like the photo in second article because it shows how clever we are and what we are able to achieve with modern medicine.
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