108 Joel Fuhrman, M.D.can predispose one to certain illnesses, such as heart attacks and
some cancers, but his claims are so ridiculous that it leaves me with
no choice but to be amazed that he could actually make such mind-
boggling claims without supporting documentation or scientific stud-
ies. Furthermore, in reviewing the references mentioned in his book,
he did not include even a small fraction of the hundreds of studies
performed on this subject by scientists in the past thirty years. All the
major studies I found documenting the relationship between blood
type and disease were surprisingly missing.
Since D'Adamo did not supply the scientific references to back
up his claims, I first did a complete Medline search for all articles in
the scientific literature over the past thirty years on the association
between ABO blood type and various diseases, as well as all the
available literature on lectins. I read more than two hundred scien-
tific articles to see if D'Adamo has any scientific support for his
claims. 1 figured this was more research than most readers would do
before evaluating his far-fetched opinions.
What I found was that the scientific literature does support a
slight increased risk of coronary heart disease in blood type A, about
average risk in type B and AB, and a slightly decreased risk of early
cardiac death in type O.^41 One study showed that type AB had the
highest risk of fatal cardiac events, and another larger study that ex-
amined 7,662 men in twenty-four British towns found a slightly
higher incidence of ischemic heart disease in people with type A
blood.^42 Of course, they did find quite a large percentage of heart pa-
tients with type O blood, and many towns with the largest number
of type O people had the most heart disease.
In another study that looked at a consecutive series of 191 patients
undergoing coronary bypass surgery, there was a disproportionately
large number of patients with type O blood undergoing bypass.^45 Theconclusion of these researchers was that ABO-related factors have
had an insignificant impact on the evolution of coronary artery dis-
ease. Obviously, type Os are not immune to the damage from eating
a diet rich in animal products, saturated fat, and cholesterol.
Over 95 percent of Americans develop atherosclerotic heart dis-
ease or cancer, not just the type As. We are all susceptible to the nu-
tritional inadequacy present in our diet. In spite of the fact that those
with type O blood are a touch more resistant to certain cancers and
coronary thrombosis, they still need to eat less animal food and more
fruits and vegetables if they hope to obtain a long, disease-free life.