I thought he slipped on ice and fell or something?
Anyway, it is processed carbohydrates that cause heart disease, not good fats or even saturated fats. The government food pyramids are wrong. They are based off diets that were used to fatten cattle. Way too heavy on sugar, grains, and starches.
Just What Killed the Diet Doctor, And What Keeps the Issue Alive?
By N.R. KLEINFIELD
Published: February 11, 2004
So was he fat or svelte or maybe a tad chubby? Was it really a slip on the ice or could it have been something else -- even, dare it be said, something he ate?
Now there are confidential documents passed to the news media, and still more dueling authorities, not to mention the ticklish matter of the mayor and the doctor's widow and the promised steak dinner.
Oh the mess goes on and on like a seven-course meal.
Dr. Robert Atkins, the diet doctor who popularized the notion that dieters could eat fat and lose weight, has been dead for nearly a year, after he fell on some ice and hit his head last April, yet indecorous questions about his health and, yes, his weight persist, and the mayor, who hasn't even been on the diet, can't seem to stay out of it all.
The latest twist is the publication in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday of details from Dr. Atkins's confidential medical report. The report concludes that Dr. Atkins, 72, had a history of heart attack and congestive heart failure and notes that he weighed 258 pounds at death.
The release of the report by New York City officials outraged the Atkins people. It also annoyed Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, already on delicate ground in Atkins matters. ''What happened is we made a mistake,'' said Ellen Borakove, spokeswoman for the city medical examiner's office. Late last year, the office received a request for Dr. Atkins's medical report from Dr. Richard Fleming of the Fleming Heart and Health Institute in Omaha, Neb. On Dec. 22, a member of the records staff mistakenly mailed it out.
While cause and manner of death are public information, medical reports are not. They are to be shared only with the next of kin or anyone authorized by the next of kin, physicians or medical facilities that treated the deceased, or state or federal facilities that legitimately need it.
So it was fine to tell the world that the cause of death was ''blunt impact injury of head with epidural hematoma'' because Dr. Atkins ''fell from upright position,'' but that's it.
Dr. Fleming was not a treating physician, and, according to Ms. Borakove, did not say he was. A critic of the Atkins diet, he passed the report on to a group he was acquainted with, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which promotes a vegetarian diet and denounces the Atkins plan.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/11/n...et-doctor-and-what-keeps-the-issue-alive.html
