Day fortyeight

Seven weeks tomorrow. Wow!

I had lunch with Ray and Debby today. I think I got across the position of where I am with WFPBD and the medical industry.

Ray stated in his email to me this morning that he does not think that the evidence concerning WFPBD is clear enough to warrant a lawsuit. He believes that in order to sue, one would have to prove that a WFPBD approach would be effective, and that would require a double blind clinical trial. We discussed how that could happen. The cost of an average clinical trial is in the hundreds of millions, so that is unlikely, obviously.

However, I think the evidence is much clearer than required. Simply because Ray is the bar too high. The duty to inform of an alternative treatment does not require that the treatment be a slam dunk. It is required to inform if the treatment is at least as good as the one the doctor did inform of. Thus, WFPBD does not have to be proven to be the cure for all mankind's ills. It is good enough if it is a major thread in the medical literature, and a patient had a condition of which the treatment was a viable alternative. Angioplasty has been shown in many studies to be a temporary fix at best. Most patients' blockage returns within six months. By pass is also of marginal benefit. Yet doctors have no problem recommending these treatments.

So, even assuming there is "dispute", it is still required to inform the patient. After all, the doctor is required to inform the patient concerning side effects which may or may not occur. He or she is also required to inform of alternatives to otherwise dangerous or risky procedures.

Further, there are several references to the issue of malpractice in the literature. Caldwell B. Esselstyne refers to this in his book, and is also quoted in The China Study. Joel Fuhrman as well in the fasting book. So, as I said, the statement I made on Friday night is not as controversial as it sounds.

Eventually, I think this sort of lawsuit is inevitable. All of the doctors in this body of literature refer to a situation in which as patient goes to a conventional practitioner, gets standard care, gets no results, then goes to an alternative practitioner, gets amazing results, and then goes back to the first doctor and asks the WTF question. (Fuhrman is very strong on this set of events, referring to it repeatedly in his books, as well as the newsletters.)

In many of these cases the first doctor throws the patient out rudely. It is inevitable that in so doing, the doctor is going to piss off the wrong patient who happens to be smart, aggressive and wealthy. Then the doctor will end up being sued. I strongly suspect that this set of events has already happened multiple times. These cases are most likely being generously settled, because the malpractice insurers (most of whom are incestuously related to the health insurers) know that they are potential losers.

The bottom line, from what I can see is this: There is a major thread going on in the medical industry involving non-conventional researchers who are willing to try alternatives to standard medical care. They are stumbling around trying various things. The thing they keep coming up with (often independently of each other) is WFPBD. Because it works very well for many issues. The conventional medical industry is resisting this. The question is why?

On Friday night I referred to the issue of cost. That is the medical industry wants to preserve the standard of care as being in favor of relatively expensive procedures like bypass and angioplasty (thereby enriching themselves) and opposed to less expensive procedures like WFPBD. That is obviously a very cynical explanation, and one which got a huge push back Friday night.

Another potential explanation is liability avoidance. This is the reason given by Campbell and Esselstyne. The Cleveland Clinic would not allow Esselstyne to set up a clinic to practice medicine using WFPBD because "the patients who had been given angioplasty and bypass would sue." That's a real obstacle to this becoming mainstream. This is the real reason for my interest in being involved in a lawsuit. David Boise was able to make a huge impact in our society in the area of tobacco. He filed the tobacco lawsuit, and eventually many abusive practices on the part of the tobacco industry were stopped. This is one way in which we change things in America.

Having said that, as I said yesterday, I am prepared to give this a rest for now. I have to take care of myself. I need to heal, rest, avoid stress, and eat healthy food. I am not in any shape to take on the medical industry right now.

Give me six months. Yeah, maybe then. But for now, I will take a break.

My friend Jodi recommended a new book by Michael Pollen. I need to check this out.

More later.