124 THE CHINA STUDYpatients who undergo bypass operation do not have fewer heart attacks than
those who do not have surgery. 12
Remember which plaque buildups cause heart attacks? The deadly
buildups are the smaller, less stable plaques that tend to rupture. The by-
pass operation, however, is targeted to the largest, most visible plaques,
which may be responsible for chest pain, but not for heart attacks.
Angioplasty is a similar story. The procedure is expensive and carries
significant risks. After identifying blockages in a coronary artery, a bal-
loon is inserted into the artery and inflated. It pushes the plaque back
against the vessel, thereby allowing more blood to flow. Roughly one
out of sixteen patients will experience an "abrupt vessel closure" during
the procedure, which can lead to death, heart attack or an emergency
bypass operation.^3? Assuming that doesn't happen, there is still a good
chance that the procedure will fail. Within four months after the proce-
dure, 40% of the arteries that were "squished" open will close up again,
effectively nullifying the procedure.^38 Nonetheless, barring these unfa-
vorable outcomes, angioplasty does a good job of providing temporary
relief of chest pain. Of course, angioplasty does little to treat the small
blockages that are most likely to lead to heart attacks.
So, upon closer examination, our seemingly beneficent mechanical
advances in the field of heart disease are severely disappointing. Bypass
surgery and angioplasty do not address the cause of heart disease, prevent
heart attacks or extend the lives of any but the sickest heart disease pa-
tients.
What's going on here? Despite the positive public relations surround-
ing the past fifty years of heart disease research, we must ask ourselves:
are we winning this war? Maybe we should ask ourselves what we might
do differently. For example, whatever happened to the dietary lessons
learned fifty years ago? Whatever happened to the dietary treatments
discovered by Dr. Lester Morrison, as discussed earlier?
Those discoveries largely faded away. I only learned about this
1940s and 1950s research in recent years. I am bewildered because
the profeSSionals I heard during my graduate student days in the late
1950s and early 1960s vigorously denied that any such work was be-
ing done or even being contemplated. In the meanwhile, America's
eating habits have only gotten worse. According to the u.S. Depart-
ment of Agriculture, we consume Significantly more meat and added
fat than we did thirty years ago.^39 Clearly we are not moving in the
right direction.