Public health policies misled for generations
July, 2016 in Issue 2 - 2016, Cover Story
I hold that orthodoxy is the death of knowledge, since the growth of knowledge depends entirely on the existence of disagreement.,
Karl Popper, The Myth of the Framework, in Defence of Science and Rationality, 1994, Routledge ed, p224
American scientist Ancel Keys is responsible, almost more than any other individual, for the public health misconception around fats that exists today. Through published work that was vaunted across the world, he had a far-reaching impact on how we think about the role of fats.
‘Many factors are probably involved in the atherosclerotic development and in the clinical appearance of coronary heart disease, but there is no longer any doubt that one central item is the concentration, over time, of cholesterol and related lipids and lipoproteins in the blood serum. No other etiological influence of comparable importance is as yet identified.’
(Keys, American Journal of Public Health, Nov 1953, Vol 43, pp1,399-1,407)
