Re: McDougall's Open Letter to Clinton
From: Martin Braff (mbraffus_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 09/11/04
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Date: 10 Sep 2004 20:33:24 -0700
sbharris@ix.netcom.com (Steve Harris sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com) wrote in message news:<79cf0a8.0409071640.2195919f@posting.google.com>...
> usenet@mantra.com (Dr. Jai Maharaj) wrote in message news:<dhf6P06JLtJ9@qg489N3QGeiJrS>...
> > McDougall's Open Letter to Clinton
> >
> > Forwarded message from fidyl@yahoo.com
> >
> > [ Subject: McDougall & Clinton
> > [ From: fidyl@yahoo.com
> > [ Date: Mon, 6 Sep 2004
> >
> > McDougall Newsletter
> > Late Breaking e-News
> >
> > President Bill Clinton entered the hospital on Friday,
> > September 3, 2004 with chest pains and shortness of
> > breath. Within hours he had an angiogram showing multiple
> > blockages of his coronary (heart) arteries and bypass
> > surgery was recommended for later this week (maybe
> > Tuesday). My guess is that he has been treated similar
> > to most patients confronted with this common disease: he
> > has been frightened unnecessarily, been misinformed about
> > the results of scientific research on his disease and the
> > treatments, not been provided the real risks of this
> > surgery, not been offered realistic alternatives, and
> > been rushed into making a potentially life-threatening
> > decision. Hopefully, other people will learn from his
> > misfortune -- and the personal letter I have written to
> > President Clinton that follows.
> >
> >
> > William Jefferson Clinton
> > The William J. Clinton Foundation
> > 55 West 125th St.
> > New York, NY 10027
> > info@clintonpresidentialcenter.com
> >
> > Dear Bill:
> >
> > The chance you will ask for my opinion on your pending
> > surgery this week for blockages of your heart arteries is
> > about the same as you escaping the heart bypass business.
> > Regardless, for the sake of others and to clear my
> > conscience by at least trying, I will take this
> > opportunity to share ten challenging thoughts with you.
> >
> > 1) Don't be rushed into making a decision - think about
> > it - they gave you several days already - so immediate
> > surgery is obviously not critical - you have time to
> > learn more.
>
>
>
> COMMENT:
>
> The problem is that McDougall, a Seventh-Day Adventist, really doesn't
> have the information he needs to write this. For all McDougall knows,
> Clinton might have a 99% stenosis of the left main coronary, and thus
> be in real danger, with NO time to wait or try any funny diets. In
> fact, the fact that he actually did get a quadruple bypass suggests he
> did have left main disease. We just don't know who bad.
>
> McDougall writes:
>
> > 2) Nearly four decades of scientific research show
> > coronary artery bypass surgery fails to save lives in
> > most cases. This is because the goal of this surgery is
> > to go around very stable (rock hard) blockages; however,
> > these firm, partial obstructions to heart blood flow are
> > not the life-threatening problem - and your doctors know
> > this well-established fact. These big blockages rarely
> > close down the arteries and almost never cause heart
> > attacks. However, most of the attention is focused on
> > these pseudo-villains found on your angiogram because the
> > result of their discovery feeds money into the heart
> > businesses.
>
>
> This is beside the point. Coronary bypass does save lives in some
> cases, and a person with triple vessel and left main coronary high
> grade occlusions is one of them. If McDougall doesn't know this, he
> should. He can give all the theorizing he wants to, but these are
> facts from the randomized studies. If Clinton is in this group, and
> all the evidence points to it (even though his ventricle is good) he
> really has little choice, by now.
>
> Which is not to say Clinton's health care probably hasn't been FUBARed
> from the beginning. What, they let him eat all that junk with his
> undoubtely far from perfect cholesterol, and never did full cardiac
> stress tests on him when he was in office? Or are we to believe he
> developed high grade stenosis in 4 coronaries in 4 short years? The
> odds are good he didn't. At some point, if it was worth putting this
> middle-aged man with 2 risk factors on a statin, it was worth
> stressing him with appropriate echos or scans, long *before* he got
> chest pain. Not letting him do some stupid low-carb diet. Hillary says
> he had a good health plan, but it sure didn't work for him, if he did.
>
> But we'll see, when the entire story comes out. It's possible Clinton
> didn't let his doctors work him up properly. And it's possible he
> thinks a bypass has fixed things all up. In both cases, he would be
> wrong.
>
> SBH
In an interview with this reporter in 1996, Mr. Clinton
said he had asked his doctors in Arkansas to perform
treadmill tests nearly every year - even when he was in
his 30's - because of a history of heart disease on his
mother's side.
Mr. Clinton said he "just wanted to know what kind of
health I was in" and "if any problems were developing."
Mr. Clinton has said that he tried to exercise before
going to bed but at times his duties as president did not
allow him to be as physically active as he would like.
Still, he performed very well on exercise treadmill
tests, reaching an impressive Stage 6 with a normal
electrocardiogram.
But at the time of his exit physical examination as
president in 2001, blood tests showed he was at increased
risk of heart disease. His cholesterol was 233, with a
low-density lipoprotein level, the so-called bad
cholesterol, of 177. That was considerably higher than
the 137 of the previous year's examination.
So White House physicians began prescribing a statin
drug, Zocor, to lower his cholesterol and other lipid
levels.
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