Lierre Keith left a comment on Monday’s post.  Since not everyone reads all the comments, I’ve pasted it below:

Tom, your post made me laugh, and that’s a very good thing right now. And I want to thank all of you for your support and outrage on my behalf. It helps to counterbalance the people who are celebrating that I was assaulted.

The people who assaulted me were definitely vegans–they shouted “Go vegan!” and “Don’t eat meat!” as they hit me. The irony for me was that the attack came at the exact moment in my speech when I was saying, “You shouldn’t eat factory-farmed meat. Anyone with a pulse, let alone a conscience, should agree.”

But they aren’t going to stop me from speaking. I will just be doing it with security from now on. I’ve also been flooded with literally hundreds of emails of support from people all around the world, more than I can answer. That really helps. And the silver lining in the cayenne cloud is that my book went from 4500 on amazon to 1503 yesterday. As one of my friends said, “You know those stupid little f*cks have just sold the entire 4th printing for you?” If they wanted to shut me up, they’ve had the opposite effect on every level.

Thanks, Lierre, and heal up soon — Tom

As you’ve probably heard by now, Lierre Keith, author of the fabulous book The Vegetarian Myth, was attacked by three vegan nut-jobs on Saturday while giving a speech.  They threw a pie laced with cayenne pepper in her face.  If that doesn’t sound like much of an attack, keep in mind that it’s nearly the equivalent of being attacked with pepper spray.  And frankly, I’d be outraged even if the pie was made of whipped cream.  (No wait … that would be a dairy product; the vegans would never stoop to such cruelty just to assault a human being.) 

Fortunately, Keith is recovering.  Jimmy Moore wrote to inquire about her condition, and she replied:

My eyes are still puffy and blurry, but the pain is definitely better. I think the worst part was hearing people cheer my assailants while I was being assaulted. I don’t want to live in a world where people cheer while someone has cayenne rubbed into their eyes.

Yes, people were cheering — while three men in masks attacked a 45-year-old woman who already has a damaged spine.  My, what courage. 

I’d like to say I’m surprised, but I’m not.  The animal-rights wackos have a long and proud history of attacking soft targets.  As my comedian friend Tim Slagle once pointed out, they’ll happily throw blood on women wearing fur — but strangely, they never feel inspired to attempt a similar protest on men wearing leather. 

Nearly as disturbing as the attack was the ability of some vegans to justify it in their fatty-acid-depleted brains.  Here are few quotes from a “news” site, with my comments:

Some will undoubtedly argue that the pieing was an attack on free speech, but Keith has been afforded more speech than most people on the planet will ever be, courtesy of PM Press.

Well, gosh yes, once someone has been afforded more than his or her share of free speech, it’s perfectly okay to use violence to correct the imbalance.  I’m sure that’s what James Earl Ray had in mind, too.  Although if you really think about it — and I’d suggest consuming an egg or two before tackling this one — you and Lierre Keith have been afforded exactly the same amount of free speech.  The only difference is that more people have elected to listen to her.

In fact, she is profiting from the soap box she has been given to pretend she is a radical environmentalist who just happens to jet around the country to and from her home in rural Massachusetts.

Making a profit and flying on a jet?  Truly unforgivable.  Since Al Gore has set himself up to make millions in the carbon-credit business while flying all over creation in a private jet and living in a mansion that uses 20 times the national average for electricity, can we expect you to toss a pepper-pie in his face anytime soon?  Or will you remain true to form and attack Tipper instead?

In a world where vegans and vegetarians are a definite minority, face constant bombardment with pro-meat messages our American cattle culture, and frequently have to deal with direct attacks from government, law enforcement, and multinational corporations that profit from the sale of factory-farmed meat and dairy, Ramsey Kanaan of PM Press, himself a long-time vegan, strangely chose to pile on with yet another attack on vegans, this time being especially traumatic in that it comes from the inside of the supposed radical environmental movement.

Those direct attacks from the government on the oppressed vegan minority are an outrage, all right.  Just last week, storm troopers dragged a dozen vegans out of our local Whole Foods and shot them in the street.  It’s a shame you don’t live in a country where you’re free to just ignore those traumatizing pro-meat messages and continue living as a vegan.

Through the Bound Together collective, of which Ramsey Kanaan is a member, Lierre Keith has been asked to speak in the Bay Area repeatedly. The mean-spirited book and these speaking engagements are largely one-way conversations with Keith dominating the dialogue.

Wait … you mean she’s been asked to speak repeatedly?!  Wow, that usually only happens to people who have something interesting to say and can therefore draw a crowd.  But I see your point about the one-way conversations.  It’s got to stop.  In fact, nearly every time I attend a speech, the speaker just stands up there speaking and speaking and speaking, without ever asking me what I believe.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought to myself, “Damn!  If only I had a pepper-laced pie, I could bring some balance into this dialog.”

But today, anonymous masked peoples stood up and refused to allow PM Press and Bound Together to yet again try to cram Lierre Keith down our throats. They stood up for many who have suffered silently, without a voice, since the publication of her book.

I hear you, bro.  I remember the glory days when people were allowed to choose which speeches they’d attend.  Now, of course, the meat industry kidnaps vegans at gunpoint and crams Lierre Keith’s speeches down their throats.  Those were some true freedom fighters who attacked her.  More bravery like this, and perhaps someday vegans will be allowed to publish their own books, give their own speeches in public, or — dare I say it? — express their opinions on their very own blogs, instead of being forced to suffer in silence.

The article was bad enough.  Here are a few bits of wisdom from vegans commenting on the article:

Lierre Keith was appropriately treated when she was physically stopped from continuing to advocate for and incite the murder of innocent non-human beings.

Can’t argue with that.  Next time I see some vegan farmer tilling the soil and killing thousands of non-humans in the process, I’m going to mace him in the face.  (No wait, I keep forgetting about vegan logic:  it’s okay to kill creatures in the quest for food as long as you aren’t killing on purpose.)

She was pied, get over it. Big deal, even IF it was a spicy pie. Somebody call the waaaambulance for this loser. This action was both hilarious & totally appropriate.

Yeah, a little spice in the eyes is hilarious.  Nothing to fuss about.  Any chance we could meet in person so I can share a few laughs with you?  I do this bit with Tabasco sauce that’s just side-splitting.

Lierre obviously comes from a privileged perspective if the very first thing she said was “someone call the cops” as only the privileged automatically think of police as their friends and defenders. Lower classes and darker skinned people do not immediately look to police for help. They’ll take the help if it’s there, but they don’t assume police generally exist to serve them.

That’s why I enjoy watching “Cops” on TV:  it just cracks me up seeing all those people who come from a privileged perspective calling the police on each other.  Last week I saw a repeat of the episode where the guy in the smoking jacket answers the door and says, “Yes, officer, my wife Muffy is such a pill, I’m afraid she let loose with the pepper-spray in the middle of a heated discussion about the relevance of Kantian ethics in modern society.  Could you be a dear and slap some cuffs on her?  And I won’t object if you make them uncomfortably tight.”

But if you’re suggesting Lierre Keith should deal with being physically attacked in a manner more befitting the “lower classes and darker skinned people,” I’m pretty sure we can round up plenty of volunteers to administer the appropriate justice.

Has anyone considered that it wasn’t Vegans who pied who but an agent provocateur trying to create division?

Damn, you caught us.  See, that’s the thing about us meat-eaters:  we take ourselves and our identities as meat-eaters so seriously, we sit around and try to think of ways to split up the vegan movement.

Message to Keith and others who promote oppression, repression and murder of the innocent, and destruction of the planet, however misinformedly well-intentioned – “No more free ride!”

By all means, please start physically assaulting anyone who believes eating meat is beneficial.  I’d suggest you start with Fred Hahn.  That will give you a chance to field-test your theory that avoiding meat actually makes people stronger.  (Although I predict the theory will turn out to be misinformedly wrong.)

As a vegan I’m both mad at and ashamed of the people who did this. They are bullies.

You sound eerily sane.  How long have you been a vegan?  (To be fair, more than a few vegans were disgusted by the attack.  Good for them.)

Some commenters suggested the attackers were suffering from the “vegan rage” Keith describes in her book.  That was my first thought as well.  But since then, I’ve decided we may be confusing a correlation with a cause.  Yes, they could be prone to rage because a vegan diet has depleted their brains.  But I think it’s just as likely they’re militant vegans because they fit the personality type described so brilliantly by Eric Hoffer in his book The True Believer.  I plan to write a post on that topic later in the week.  It seems more appropriate for my other blog, so it’ll probably end up there.  I’ll let you know.

Showcase

Tim Slagle | MySpace Video

After writing my last post, I got to thinking a bit more about the UCLA study that set me off – the one in which the authors noted that 72.1% of people hospitalized for a heart attack had LDL levels below 130 mg/dl (the recommended level) and yet, instead of concluding that high LDL doesn’t cause heart disease, speculated that LDL targets should be set even lower.

Specifically, I wondered what percent of the population is below that level. After all, if 95% of all adults have LDL below 130 but only account for 72.1% of the heart attacks, then you could reasonably say LDL may have something to do with heart attacks. Or looking at it from the other direction, if 5% of all adults have LDL over 130 but account for 27.9% of all heart attacks, then yes, high LDL may be a problem.

It took some digging, but I eventually founds the statistics I wanted on the American Heart Association’s web site, both in web pages and PDFs. Here’s the magic number:

Percent of American adults (over age 20) with LDL Cholesterol at or above 130 mg/dl: 32.6%.

Just roll that one over in your brain for a moment. Now combine it with the UCLA study data, and here’s what you get:  people with “high” LDL make up 32.6% of the population, but account for just 27.9% of the heart attacks.

Boy, doesn’t that just make you want to toss back a Crestor cocktail? And keep in mind, that group would include people whose LDL levels are 130, 150, 175, etc.  We’ve been told for decades that the higher your LDL, the more likely you are to clutch your chest in the middle of the night. But if the “high” LDL group experiences slightly less than their share of heart attacks, how can that possibly be true?!

The lead investigator for the UCLA study suggested that the “optimal” LDL level hasn’t been set low enough; perhaps it should be 40-60 mg/dl.  Excuse me? Are we now supposed to believe that LDL is dangerous, but all levels above 60 are equally dangerous? Given the statistics I just cited, that’s the only possible explanation, except for this one:  LDL doesn’t freakin’ matter. It’s a meaningless number.

The AHA site also offered a slew of statistics broken down by race. Don’t bother trying to lock these in your brain because I’ll revisit them in a moment:

Among non-Hispanic whites age 20 and older, the age-adjusted prevalence of total blood cholesterol levels over 200 mg/dL is 45.0 percent of men and 48.7 percent of women; 15.3 percent of men and 18.1 percent of women have blood cholesterol levels of 240 mg/dL or higher.

Among non-Hispanic blacks age 20 and older, the age-adjusted prevalence of total blood cholesterol levels over 200 mg/dL is 40.2 percent of men and 41.8 percent of women; 10.9 percent of men and 13.1 percent of women have blood cholesterol levels of 240 mg/dL or higher.

Among Mexican Americans age 20 and older, the age-adjusted prevalence of total blood cholesterol levels over 200 mg/dL is 51.1 percent of men and 49.0 percent of women; 16.8 percent of men and 14.3 percent of women have blood cholesterol levels of 240 mg/dL or higher.

The age-adjusted prevalence of U.S. adults age 20 and older with LDL cholesterol levels of 130 mg/dL or higher, which is associated with a higher risk of coronary heart disease, is…

For non-Hispanic whites, 31.5 percent of men and 33.8 percent of women.
For non-Hispanic blacks, 34.4 percent of men and 28.6 percent of women.
For Mexican Americans, 42.7 percent of men and 30.4 percent of women.

“Age-adjusted” means they’ve balanced the data to compare people of similar ages.  If the average Mexican-American is 27 and the average white American is 39, it’s a bit pointless to compare the two groups directly.  With that mind, let’s organize these numbers so they make sense.  (I can’t stand clunky terms like “Non-Hispanic Whites,” so at the risk of offending the tender-hearted, I’m just going to refer to all three groups of over-20 Americans as White, Black, or Mexican.) 

Wow, looks those Mexican-American men are in deep trouble.  More than half have total cholesterol over 200, and nearly half have LDL levels above 130.  Fewer blacks than whites have high total cholesterol, but more blacks are in that “high LDL” category, so let’s see … going by the prevailing theories, I’m going to say Mexican-Americans have the highest of heart disease, then blacks, then whites.  So let’s check that analysis against the actual rates of coronary heart disease, also available on the American Heart Association site, and add that as our final table row:

Whoops! Just exactly the opposite of what the lipophobes have been telling us all these years. Mexican-American men, the “worst” in every cholesterol category, have the lowest rate of heart disease. Well, perhaps the experts were talking about women all along. Let’s check the data:

Looks like the black women caught a break here. They’ve got the best cholesterol levels in every category and therefore surely have the lowest rate of heart disease. Let’s add the actual rates of coronary heart disease in our final row:

Uh, gee, that’s kind of embarrassing, isn’t it? Mexican-American men, the group with the worst LDL figures, have the lowest rate of heart disease. Black women, the group with the best LDL figures, have the second-highest rate of heart disease. I thought perhaps the higher rate of heart disease among black women could be explained by a higher rate of smoking, but it turns out the AHA had those figures as well: 20.6% of white women smoke, but only 17.8% of black women.

Still think LDL levels have anything to do with heart disease? Please, print this out and hand it to your doctor if he ever tries to put you on a statin because your LDL is “too high.”

And here’s what really fries my bacon about these numbers: I found them in documents published by the American Heart Association — one of the many organizations still trying to scare us about high LDL. Their own statistics say they’re wrong.

In comparing the cholesterol statistics with the heart-attack data, I did notice a figure that seems to actually matter, either as a cause or a marker: low HDL. Here’s a quote from the press release about the UCLA study:

The study also showed that HDL cholesterol, or “good cholesterol,” levels have dropped in patients hospitalized for heart attack over the past few years, possibly due to increasing rates of obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes. Researchers found that 54.6 percent of patients had HDL levels below 40 mg/dL.

And here’s the magic number from the American Heart Association: American adults with HDL levels below 40 mg/dl: 16.2%.

Now we’re looking at a small fraction of the population that accounts for more than half of the heart attacks.  It should be clear to anyone with a functioning brain that raising HDL is a heck of a lot more important than lowering LDL.

If you’ve seen Fat Head or read any of the books or blogs I recommend, you already know what raises your HDL: eating more natural fat … exactly what the American Heart Association tells us to avoid.

I guess they’re too busy putting their seal of approval on boxes of Cocoa Puffs to actually check the relevant data — including their own.

p.s. — I’m leaving tomorrow for the low-carb cruise.  I’ll check comments when I can, but won’t be writing another post until I get back.

Awhile back, I bookmarked an online press release about a study of LDL levels among heart-attack victims.  Here’s the headline and opening paragraphs:

Most heart attack patients’ cholesterol levels did not indicate cardiac risk

A new national study has shown that nearly 75 percent of patients hospitalized for a heart attack had cholesterol levels that would indicate they were not at high risk for a cardiovascular event, based on current national cholesterol guidelines.

Specifically, these patients had low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol levels that met current guidelines, and close to half had LDL levels classified in guidelines as optimal (less than 100 mg/dL).

Holy jumpin’ jiminees! I said to myself.  We’re finally going to dump the stupid “high cholesterol causes heart disease” theory!  If nearly 75 percent of the people who suffer heart attacks have “normal” LDL levels and nearly half have “optimal” LDL levels, then it’s obvious to anyone with a functioning brain that high LDL isn’t the problem.

Then I read the next paragraph:

“Almost 75 percent of heart attack patients fell within recommended targets for LDL cholesterol, demonstrating that the current guidelines may not be low enough to cut heart attack risk in most who could benefit,” said Dr. Gregg C. Fonarow, Eliot Corday Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine and Science at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study’s principal investigator.

I read that paragraph a few times and concluded that UCLA was probably conducting a nationwide experiment with a title something like Behavioral Effects of a Press Release Specifically Designed to Inspire Intelligent People to Bang Their Heads Against The Nearest Immovable Object.

After I stopped banging my head on my desk, I kept reading:

While the risk of cardiovascular events increases substantially with LDL levels above 40-60 mg/dL, current national cholesterol guidelines consider LDL levels less than 100-130 mg/dL acceptable for many individuals. The guidelines are thus not effectively identifying the majority of individuals who will develop fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular events, according to the study’s authors.

Fabulous … so now the truly “safe” level of LDL is being pegged at 40-60.  Once we adopt those guidelines, the vast majority of the population will immediately require statins to meet them — which is probably the point.  An article about the study in USA Today certainly reached that conclusion … Boy, we may have to give statins to millions more people than we originally thought!  Although to be fair, the USA Today article included this quote as well:

But UCLA’s Fonarow, whose study was published in the American Heart Journal, says there’s another possibility. “There are two potential implications,” he says. “Either the threshold of what was set as an ideal LDL was set outrageously high, thus allowing the vast majority of patients to be missed, or LDL isn’t much of a risk factor.  It’s got to be one of the two.”

Unfortunately, the doctor seemed to leaning toward the lower-threshold theory.  I was beyond annoyed, but as the aspirin took effect, the swelling went down, and the mental fog cleared, it occurred to me that I’m missing a golden opportunity here:  Instead of complaining about bad science, I should learn to use it to my advantage.  All I’d have to do is identify the bad-science protocol and use it to build a theory that suits me.  So I thought about the “cholesterol kills!” theory and how it came to dominate medical thinking, then sketched out the basic steps:

• Identify an association
• Mistake the association for cause-and-effect and propose a theory
• Find a bit more weak evidence to support the theory
• Allow those with a financial interest in the theory to get on board and steer the research
• Explain away all evidence that the theory is wrong

With this protocol in mind, I am hereby announcing a bold new theory to the scientific world:

THE PRIMARY CAUSE OF HEART DISEASE IS HIGH TAX RATES

Here’s the association we need to get started:  In his book The Cholesterol Myths, Uffe Ranvskov included a chart that plotted municipal tax rates against heart-disease deaths for several cities in Sweden.  I’ve reproduced it below.

My goodness!  The evidence is clear … the higher the tax rate, the higher the rate of heart disease.  Boost the tax rate to 30%, you may as well just grab an Uzi and start spraying bullets into the streets.  Going in the other direction, Ravnskov calculated that if tax rates were lowered to 9.55%, heart disease would be conquered.  Well, I say Dr. Ravnskov was correct, even if he thought he was being funny in a Swedish sort of way. 

I’m only speculating at this point (we’re early in the process, after all), but my guess is that high taxes create stress, the stress produces an overabundance of cortisol, and the cortisol leads to inflammation that damages arteries. But I still need a bit more evidence, so I copied some charts from the American Heart Association site.  Here’s the first one.

Aha!  The evidence is clearly mounting.  The United States had no permanent national income tax until 1913, and as you can see, heart disease was quite rare before then.  But as tax rates climbed for the next several decades, so did heart disease. 

John F. Kennedy cut income tax rates to boost the economy, and according to our chart, heart disease rates dipped soon thereafter … then rose again in the high-tax 1970s … then dipped again soon after Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts … then rose again after George “Read my lips!  No new taxes!” Bush raised taxes … then dipped a bit during Clinton’s term (we may have a paradox here) … then fell sharply around the time George “I’ll cut taxes but spend like crazy anyway” Bush enacted his economic policies.

Now let’s look at the second Heart Association chart, which shows hospital discharges for cardiovascular diseases — including people discharged alive, dead, or status unknown.  (I’m guessing the facilities that couldn’t determine if their patients were alive or dead were V.A. hospitals.)

I think our paradox just went away.  There’s a dip soon after Reagan’s tax cuts, a steady rise during Bush and Clinton — both of whom increased taxes — then a smaller dip that roughly parallels the term of Bush The Younger.  (Hey, his tax cuts weren’t as dramatic as Reagan’s, so that just proves my point.) 

I’m declaring my theory scientifically sound and well supported by the available evidence.

Getting people financially invested in my theory will be a piece of cake.  Roughly half the population votes against higher taxes anyway, and most of the other half only votes for higher rates when they’re told they won’t be the ones paying.  I’m pretty sure that within months after my theory gains some momentum, we’ll see a slew of well-funded studies concluding that we could save hundreds of thousands of lives each year by lowering the top tax rate to 20 percent. 

Eventually the gullible media will be on board as well.  Every April, there will be articles mentioning that there’s a spike in heart attacks during the last week before taxes are due.  The term “artery-clogging alternative minimum tax” will become common. Doctors will aggressively prescribe lower tax rates for patients with known risk factors … such as owning a successful business, living in California, or having at least one close relative named Wesley Snipes.

The trouble will come when the contrary evidence starts rolling in.  Large clinical trials will fail to show that reducing taxes actually reduces heart disease. Dr. Malcolm Kendrick will write a book pointing out that the French pay more in taxes than Americans do, but have lower rates of heart disease, and if you look around the world, there’s no correlation between tax rates and heart disease whatsoever.  A national study will conclude that 72 percent of all heart attack victims are already paying less than 20 percent in taxes.

But I know how to handle those little annoyances:

• Bury the clinical studies, or label them as “inconclusive.”
• Pretend the French don’t exist, and refer to them as a “paradox” if anyone brings them up.
• Conclude that our “optimal” tax rate of 20 percent is still too high and needs to be even lower.

Meanwhile, there will no doubt be a fair number of contrarians who don’t buy my theory and will insist on paying high tax rates despite my warnings.  I’ll tell them the same thing doctors tell me when I refuse to go on a low-fat diet:  Fine, you can ignore me if you choose … but don’t come crying to me when you have a heart attack.