In 1976 the classic film Network starred Peter Finch as crazed anchorman Howard Beale who launched into his now-famous rant “I’m mad as hell…” on air and galvanized movie goers everywhere.  Even though Howard Beale is fictional, I often share his sentiments.

I got a call yesterday from an acquaintance who wanted to get together and talk to me “face to face.”  I’ve played golf and had a few drinks with this guy over the last couple of years, but that’s about it.  I agreed to meet him at a local coffee shop.

When we had our coffees in front of us – I, a full-strength, scalding hot Americano; he, a non-fat, decaf, double shot latte, just in case you’re wondering – we made small talk for a few minutes then he cut to the chase.  A look of despair came over him, and he confided to me that he was a type II diabetic and was in real trouble.  His doctor had been monitoring his HgbA1c levels for a couple of years, and lately they had been inexorably on the rise to the point at which drastic action was required.  What drastic action?  His doctor told him he was going to have to start insulin injections.

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..man, proud man,
Dress’d in a little brief authority,
Most ignorant of what he’s most assur’d…

From Measure for Measure by Wm Shakespeare

The web has been alive with commentary the past few weeks since Denise Minger lobbed her first cannonball of a critique across the bow of The China Study, the vessel T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D. rode to fame and bestsellerdom.  Seems like everyone is now jumping into the fray and gunning for poor Dr. Campbell, who early on in the fracas made a few halfhearted attempts to fight back but has now fled the scene.  I’ve been laying low watching it all play out, and so now figured it’s about time I add my two cents worth to the debate. But first a little history.

I met Dr. Campbell about ten years ago (five or so years before the publication of the popular book The China Study) when we both spoke at the same conference.  He was a nice enough man who spoke about the work he and his team had done in China gathering the data published in the massive 894 page monograph Diet, Life-style and Mortality in China (pictured above left).  As Dr. Campbell presented his data ‘demonstrating’ the superiority of a plant-based diet and demonizing protein of animal origin, I didn’t think much about it because the data was all in the form of observational studies, which, as all readers of this blog should know by now, despite often showing correlation don’t prove causation.  My lecture, which followed Dr. Campbell’s, was, as you might imagine, a lecture of a different sort.  Then we both sat on a panel after our talks and fielded questions.  And were both cordial to one another.

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As I was thumbing through the weekend edition of the Financial Times (my favorite newspaper) on a lazy Sunday morning, my eye fell on a little boxed off squib titled Dr Mehmet Oz on the January Detox (scroll to bottom to see the piece).  If I ran across something like this in a local daily newspaper, I wouldn’t think much about it, but in the venerable Financial Times?  Since we all know how much good the wonderful Dr. Oz has done Oprah (as evidenced by the photo to the left – were I she, I certainly wouldn’t be toasting him), I decided to read it to see what he had to recommend on detoxing.  I wasn’t disappointed.  He lives up to his billing.

How does Dr. Oz recommend we detoxify our livers?  Let’s read and see.

I like a simple cleansing fast as an easy, inexpensive means of flushing out toxins and rebooting the system (a juice detox, say, which involves a short-term diet of raw vegetables, fruit juices and water). But it is important to remember that detoxifying the liver, the organ responsible for detoxing our bodies, would take a month of healthy living.

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Ethisphere Magazine, a “national publication dedicated to illuminating the important correlation between ethics and profit,” recently named the Kellogg Company as one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies, making Kellogg one of

the elite list of companies [that] were recognized for their strong leadership in ethics and compliance, advancement of industry discourse on social and ethical issues, and positive engagement in the communities in which they operate.

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