The China Study by Thomas Campbell

326 THE CHINA STUDY

coli." The doctor's response is, "WHAT? I learned all this crap, I'm

making a freakin' fortune, and you want to take it all away?"

Then when that person comes along and actually cures patients with

brussels sprouts and broccoli, as Esselstyn did, and gets better results

than any other pill or procedure known, you've suddenly announced

that something works, hands down, better than what 99% of the profes-

sion is doing. Summarizing his point, Ess says:

Cardiologists are supposed to be expert in diseases of the heart-

and yet they have no expertise in treating heart disease, and when

that awareness strikes them, they get very defensive. They can

treat the symptoms, they can take care of arrythmias, they can get

you interventions, but they don't know how to treat the disease,

which is a nutritional treatment .... Imagine a dietitian training a

heart surgeon!

Esselstyn has found that merely saying that patients can have control

over their own health is a challenge to many. These experts, after all,

are built up to be the dispensers of health and healing. "Intellectually

it's very challenging to think that the patient can do this with greater

alacrity, dispatch, safety, and it's something that's going to endure." With

all of the doctor's gadgets, technologies, training and knowledge, noth-

ing is more effective than gUiding the patient to make the right lifestyle

choices.

But Ess is qUick to point out that doctors are not malicious people

engaged in a conspiracy:

The only person that likes change is a newborn, and it's natural,
it's human nature. Anywhere you go, 99% of the people are eating
incorrectly. The numbers are against you, and it's very hard for
those 99% to look at you in the 1% and say, "Yes, he's right, we are
all wrong."
Another obstacle: lack of nutrition knowledge amongst physicians.
Ess has had his share of interaction with ignorant doctors, and his im-
pression is that "it's absolutely daunting, the lack of physician knowl-
edge that there is about the fact that disease can be reversed. You won-
der, what is the literature that these guys read?"
Physician knowledge often involves only the standard treatments:
pills and procedures. "What does the twentieth century of medicine