The China Study by Thomas Campbell

198 THE CHINA STUDY

but changing their diets and their environment? The answer is the same

as it was for cancer, heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. People acquire

the risk of the population to which they move, especially if they move

before their adolescent years. 57. 58 This tells us that this disease is more

strongly related to environmental factors than it is to genes. 59

Specific genes have been identified as possible candidates for causing

MS but, according to a recent report,3 there may be as many as twenty-

five genes playing such a role. Therefore, it will undoubtedly be a long

time before we determine with any precision which genes or combina-

tions of genes predispose someone to MS. Genetic predisposition may

make a difference as to who gets MS, but even at best, genes can only

account for about one-fourth of the total disease risk.^60

Although MS and Type 1 diabetes share some of the same unanswered

questions on the exact roles of viruses and genes and the immune sys-

tem, they also share the same alarming evidence regarding diet. For

both diseases, a "Western" diet is strongly associated with disease in-

cidence. Despite the efforts of those who would rather dismiss or mire

these observational studies in controversy, they paint a consistent pic-

ture. Intervention studies conducted on people already suffering from

these diseases only reinforce the findings of the observational studies.

Dr. Swank did brilliant work on MS, and you may recall from chapter

seven that Dr. James Anderson successfully reduced the medication re-

quirements for Type 1 diabetics using diet alone. It's important to note

that both of these doctors used a diet that was significantly more mod-

erate than a total whole foods, plant-based diet. I wonder what would

happen to these autoimmune patients if the ideal diet were followed. I

would bet on even greater success.

THE COMMONALITY OF AUTOIMMUNE DISEASES
What about other autoimmune diseases? There are dozens of autoim-
mune diseases and I have mentioned only two of the more prominent
ones. Can we say anything about autoimmune diseases as a whole?
To answer this question, we need to identify how much these dis-
eases have in common. The more they have in common, the greater the
probability that they also will share a common cause (or causes). This
is like seeing two people you don't know, both of whom have a similar
body type, hair color, eye color, facial features, physical and vocal man-
nerisms and age, and concluding that they come from the same parents.
Just as we hypothesized that diseases of affluence such as cancer and