This article was so obviously self serving that it peed me off enough to write to the editor of the paper. Probably won't do a thing but here goes:

I wanted to share with you serious misgivings with the article you published on march 7.

First of all Mr. Seppala is basing his entire article on a fact that has been widely and publicly dispelled weeks ago.

"A consumer advocacy group released a medical examiner's report showing that the infamous Dr. Atkins suffered from obesity and heart disease."

This "information" has been discredited and recanted in every major newspaper, including the Wall Street Journal who first published it. Dr. Atkins hospital record proves that he was not in any way obese when he was admitted to the hospital. Unless you credit his subsequent weight gain to eating Twinkies while in a coma, you'll have to accept the fact this weight gain was caused by water retention due to major organ failures and the measures used to resuscitate him.

Perhaps you'll accept statements from Dr. Atkins' own doctor :

"The reason Robert weighed so much is that his body was terribly swollen. He was getting lots of intravenous fluid to keep his vital organs functioning and to decrease the pressure on his brain. They had to drain a tremendous amount of blood from his brain. It’s not uncommon to gain 60lb in those circumstances, even though it sounds a lot. The medical report states that he had “prominent” swelling in both legs. I could see at his bedside how swollen they were."

and

"His diet had nothing to do with his death. People forget that genetics plays a huge role in health. He had had a previous heart attack after he caught a virus in Turkey that gave him an irregular heartbeat and caused his heart to enlarge. He told everybody about it, he wasn’t hiding anything.. For somebody his age, his functional status was very good."

Last, but not least, this so called Consumer advocacy group is called the Physician Committee for Responsible Medicine. (PCRM). So far they have demonstrated a rather glaring lack of responsibility in their behavior by illegally obtaining a confidential medical report and making it public. However that's just the tip of the iceberg. Here is what the National Council against Health Fraud have to say about the PRCM.

"The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is a nonprofit association that claims to promote "optimal diet for prevention of disease," says there is evidence that humans don't have a specific requirement for protein, and teaches that "too much dietary protein from animal sources is detrimental to health." [1] PCRM's reference to "animal sources" is key to understanding its true purpose. Its leader, Neal Barnard, MD, has been identified as medical adviser to the radical animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), and PCRM may be substantially funded by it. Animal activists are highly successful fundraisers. The combined budgets for 15 of the leading animal protection organizations exceeded $115 million in 1994 (PETA took in $12 million) [2]. In NCAHF's view, PCRM is a propaganda machine whose press conferences are charades for disguising its ideology as news events."

And here is what the American Medical Associations thinks of the PRCM :

"The AMA finds the recommendations of PCRM irresponsible and potentially dangerous to the health and welfare of Americans. The AMA charges that PCRM is "blatantly misleading Americans on a health matter and concealing its true purpose as an animal 'rights' organization. In June 1990, the AMA formally requested PCRM to terminate the inappropriate and unethical tactics used to manipulate public opinion ..."

So this is the source for Mr. Seppala big story. When I read "Every one of them concluded that Americans should replace meat and dairy products in their diet with vegetables, fresh fruits, and whole grains" and "As consumers, we need to be constantly vigilant for diet gurus who would exploit our obsession with physical appearance to promote their profit-driven agendas.", I was forced to wonder exactly whose agenda is being served by writing and publishing such an article ,,,