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| gery was no better than conventional medications at preventing heart attacks or saving lives. The patients were randomly assigned to receive either medical therapy or bypass surgery, and the death rate in both groups was identical. |
| The study was not well-received by surgeons, who demanded a new trial. The government then spent 100 million dollars on the Coronary Artery Surgical Study, or CASS. This time 780 patients with severely blocked arteries were divided into two groups, one of which received surgery, the other conventional medical therapy. The results, published in 1983, showed that for the average patient, the risk of dying from bypass surgery is three to five times greater than the risk of dying from heart disease. In an editorial accompanying the CASS study, Eugene Braunwald, M.D., then chief of cardiology at Harvard Medical School, predicted that the use of bypass surgery would decrease because of its ineffectiveness. |
| Obviously, that didn't happen. Why are so many men receiving bypass operations? As Dr. Whitaker explains, |
| If the profession followed the recommendations of its own scientific studies, the heart surgery industry would collapse overnight. In order for that industry to survive and flourish, it must perform large numbers of totally unnecessary procedures. And since that industry churns out about 1,000 newly minted heart surgeons each year, all eager to ply their craft "helping folks" with this terrible disease, the heart patient with just a little heart disease swims with sharks in a feeding frenzy. Friends, this is not a scientific debate among hard-working, concerned physicians doing their best to help their patients. This is fraud on a monstrous scale. |
| For most of the 20th century, physicians insisted that there is no link between diet and heart disease, that heart |
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