The China Study by Thomas Campbell

BIG MEDICINE: WHOSE HEALTH ARE THEY PROTECTING? 329

and extra milk for patients who have osteoporosis. The health damage

that results from doctors' ignorance of nutrition is astounding.

Apparently, there aren't enough "nutrition-oriented physician role

models" in medical education. A recent survey found "a shortage of nu-

trition-oriented physician role models is probably the major constraint in

teaching nutrition to residents." 12 I suspect that these medical programs

lack nutrition-oriented physicians simply because they do not make it a

priority to hire them. Nobody knows this better than Dr. John McDou-

gall.

DR. MCDOUGALL'S CHALLENGE

Dr. John McDougall has been advocating a whole foods, plant-based ap-
proach to health longer than any practitioner I know. He has written ten
books, including several that have sold over a half a million copies each.
His nutrition and health knowledge is phenomenal, greater than any oth-
er doctor I've met and greater than any of my nutrition colleagues in aca-
demia. We met recently in his Northern California home, and one of the
first things he showed me was his bank of four or five full- size metal file
cabinets lined up along the back of his study. There can't be many people
in the country with a collection of scientific literature on diet and disease
that could rivalJohn McDougall's, and, most importantly, John maintains
a high level of familiarity with all of it. It is not unusual for him to spend a
couple of hours a day on the Internet reviewing the latest journal articles.
If anybody would be a perfect "nutrition-oriented phYSician role model"
in an educational setting, it would be Dr. John McDougall.
Growing up, John ate a rich, Western diet. As he says, he had four
feasts a day: Easter during breakfast, Thanksgiving at lunch, Christmas
at dinner and a birthday party for dessert. It caught up to him, and at the
age of eighteen, a few months into college, John had a stroke. After re-
covering with a new appreciation for life, he became a straight A student
as an undergraduate and then completed medical school in Michigan
and an internship in Hawaii. He chose to practice on the Big Island of
Hawaii, where he cared for thousands of patients, some of whom had
recently migrated from China or the Philippines, and some who were
fourth generation Chinese or Filipino Americans.
It was there that John became an unhappy doctor. Many of his pa-
tients' health problems were a result of chronic illnesses, such as obesity,
diabetes, cancer, heart disease and arthritis. John would treat them as
he was taught, with the standard sets of pills and procedures, but very