81G MEDICINE: WHOSE HEALTH ARE THEY PROTECTING? 325the establishment looking in. He had threatened the status quo by his
circumvention of standard treatments.
Some of Ess's colleagues have disparaged his treatment as being too
"extreme." Some doctors have dismissed it by saying, "I think the re-
search in this area is pretty soft," which is an absurd comment consider-
ing the breadth and depth of the international studies, the animal stud-
ies and the intervention studies. Some doctors have said to Ess, "Yeah
okay, but nobody is going to eat like that. I can't even get my patients
to stop smoking." Ess's response was, "Well, you really have no training
in this. This requires just as much expertise as doing a bypass. It takes
three hours for me to counsel a patient," not to mention the diligence
required for the constant follow-up and monitoring of the patient's
health. One patient told his cardiologist that he wanted to see Ess and
commit to a dietary program to reverse his heart disease. The cardiolo-
gist responded, "Now you listen to me. There is no way to reverse this
disease." You'd think that doctors would be more excited about healing
their patients!
In talking about doctors and their unwillingness to embrace a whole
foods, plant-based diet, Ess says, "You can't get frustrated. These aren't
evil people. There are sixty cardiologists [at the Cleveland Clinic], any
number of whom are closet believers in what I do, but they're a little
afraid because of the power structure."
For Ess, however, it has been impossible to avoid his share of frustra-
tion. Early on, when he was first suggesting dietary treatment of heart
disease, colleagues greeted the idea with caution. Ess figured that their
attitude was born out of the fact that scientific research showing effec-
tive dietary intervention of heart disease in humans wasn't yet strong
enough. But later, scientific results of unparalleled success, including
Esselstyn's, were published. The data have been strong, consistent and
deep, yet Ess still encountered reluctance to embrace this idea:
You take a cardiologist and he's learned all about beta blockers, he's
learned about calcium antagonists, he's learned about how to run
this catheter up into your heart and blow up balloons or laser it or
stent it without killing you and it's very sophisticated. And there's all
these nurses and there's lights out and there's drama. I mean it's just,
oh my god, the doctor blows up the balloon in his head. The ego of
these people is enormous. And then someone comes along and says,
"You know, I think we can cure this with brussels sprouts and broc-