"Conflicts of Interest in the Annals of Internal Medicine Meat Studies "
A series of articles published in the Annals of Internal Medicine
recommending people just keep eating their meat
was decried by nutrition researchers as irresponsible and unethical,
a travesty of science, an assault on public health,
and the most egregious abuse of evidence that they had ever seen.
There were calls for retraction even before it was published
from eminent public health leaders, from a former US surgeon general,
a former president of the American College of Cardiology,
and the directors of preventive medicine and nutrition institutes
from Harvard, Yale, Tufts, and Stanford.
In my last video I explained the how, the method by which
they manipulated the science, but never really got to the why.
I mean, the lead author's similar attempt
to discredit the sugar guidelines
was explicitly paid for by an industry front group funded
by the likes of Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, Mars candy bars, and Pepsi.
But if you look at the meat paper at the panelists' declared
conflicts of interest, they all say they didn't have any,
including the lead author
who was involved in the sugar study,
whose primary funder wasn't just representing Big Soda and candy,
but the likes of McDonald's
and one of the largest meat packers in the world.
Yet Johnston didn't disclose that as a potential conflict of interest
when he switched from exonerating sugar to exonerating meat.
What did he have to say for himself?
Even though the sugar study was published in 2016,
he got the money for it in 2015,
outside of the three-year mandatory disclosure window.
This is the same guy who said the industry front group had no role
in writing their paper until the Associated Press revealed
the truth, and the journal had to publish a correction.
But Johnston doubled down this time, saying "it is tenuous at best
to suggest that his earlier work on sugar had any influence
on how his team made the new meat recommendations."
The important thing is, "We have no relationship with the meat industry."
Oh really? A few months later the truth came out.
Correction in the so-called NutriRECS panel meat recommendations.
Oops, Bradley Johnston failed to indicate he had gotten a grant
from Texas A&M AgriLife, which gets millions of dollars
a year from the meat industry to do things like run Beef Boot Camp,
or espouse the health benefits of beef brisket,
or promote the celebration of National Bacon Day.
After all, Texas A&M AgriLife serves pork producers
to improve pork producer profitability.
This is the group that not only gave
Dr. "no-relationship-with- the-meat-industry" Johnston
a direct grant for over $75,000,
but they officially joined the whole NutriRECS consortium to provide,
as Dr. Johnston explained, generous support to impact
nutrition-related decision-making and policy in North America and beyond.
Yet none of this was disclosed in the paper.
No even potential conflicts of interest,
yet they had formed a partnership with an arm
of Texas A&M partially funded by the beef industry
to the tunes of millions a year from the beef industry alone.
Oops. In fact, Patrick Stover, Mr. "no-conflicts-of-interest"
is the director of AgriLife.
And a month before the meat paper was published,
Bradley Johnston was offered and accepted
a tenured position at Texas A&M AgriLife,
was already working for them when it was published,
but didn't think to mention it. So when the Annals
initially sent out a press release,
which they later corrected, saying no need
to reduce red or processed meat consumption for good health,
they may have been simply acting as a mouthpiece
for meat-industry propaganda.
The pseudoscience presented in the Annals meat papers appears
to have been written solely to create doubt and confusion
in the wider population.
The misleading recommendations were not intended
to convince scientists, who clearly understand
the nature of the relationship between meat and health,
and for that matter, sugar and health.
The pseudoscience is presented solely to create doubt and confusion
in the wider population. Frankly, industry will do
what it needs to do to push as much of its product
into the world as it can, and so will do what it needs to do
to obfuscate the relationship between its products
and human and planetary health;
they've done it with tobacco, fossil fuels,
Monsanto's Roundup, sugar, and now meat.