Fred Ward

After 21 years at my dream job, I’m very sad to announce my early retirement from the National Institutes of Health. My life’s work has been to scientifically study how our food environment affects what we eat, and how what we eat affects our physiology. Lately, I’ve focused on unravelling the reasons why diets high in ultra-processed food are linked to epidemic proportions of chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity. Our research leads the world on this topic. Given recent bipartisan goals to prevent diet-related chronic diseases, and new agency leadership professing to prioritize scientific investigation of ultra-processed foods, I had hoped to expand our research program with ambitious plans to more rapidly and efficiently determine how our food is likely making Americans chronically sick. Unfortunately, recent events have made me question whether NIH continues to be a place where I can freely conduct unbiased science. Specifically, I experienced censorship in the reporting of our research because of agency concerns that it did not appear to fully support preconceived narratives of my agency’s leadership about ultra-processed food addiction. I was hoping this was an aberration. So, weeks ago I wrote to my agency’s leadership expressing my concerns and requested time to discuss these issues, but I never received a response. Without any reassurance there wouldn’t be continued censorship or meddling in our research, I felt compelled to accept early retirement to preserve health insurance for my family. (Resigning later in protest of any future meddling or censorship would result in losing that benefit.) Due to very tight deadlines to make this decision, I don’t yet have plans for my future career. The NIH has been a wonderful place because it allows scientists to take risks, form unique collaborations, and do studies difficult to conduct elsewhere. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished and I’m fortunate to have had such wonderful colleagues and scientific collaborators. I hope to someday return to government service and lead a research program that will continue to provide gold-standard science to make Americans healthy.

Squad

Every day I wake up and there’s more tariffs

The MCE is an old feeding study that took place in 6 state mental hospitals and 1 nursing home. The presentation in the QT is inadequate for understanding the limitations of the study and why it doesn't affect dietary recs. 1) Average length of the intervention was only a year, not 5 yrs. Around 3/4 of the participants were discharged in the 1st year due to the nature of the patient population and due to broad deinstitutionalization of mental hospital patients during the period of the study. The move towards more community-based care over institutions meant patients couldn't stay enrolled in the study and have their diets controlled. 2) nearly all of the cardiovascular events occurred within the first year of enrollment. These are exceedingly unlikely to have occurred because of the dietary interventions. Nearly all diet and drug trials point to a lag where we need several years of exposure to the intervention for it to impact events meaningfully. Pts are dying for reasons independent of the diet (see point 4) 3) the intervention created modified meat/dairy products with corn oil to increase omega 6 PUFAs to ~15% E. This was done in part through a partially hydrogenated margarine that contains trans fats (although total trans fat intakes between groups weren't quantified). Current dietary recs emphasize both omega 3 and omega 6 fats up to about 10% kcal and eliminating industrial trans fats, making the diet used in MCE not like what is recommended now. 4) apart from a) the high drop out rate, b) events all occurring before diet had time to take an effect, and c) the diet composition being very different than current recs, the patients dying were almost certainly those who entered very sick. Those least likely to die in the study were those with 1) higher blood pressure; 2) higher BMI; 3) higher cholesterol; 4) those who smoked . Coupled with the fact that most deaths occurred within a year, these are all nails in the coffin that participants who died were sick because these all tend to be reduced with waning health. Not smoking, for example is more or less a marker here of being too sick to get outside for cigarette, not a protective effect of cigarettes. The study is looked at by the research community as a planned attempt to intervene in a captive population whose diets you could control, but ultimately one that failed due to the factors above. It is a joke to refer to it as 'the most rigorous clinical trial'.

The Minnesota Coronary Experiment was a 5-year study and stands out as the most rigorous clinical trial ever to compare the effects of seed oils vs saturated fats, due to its exceptional controls. It was carried out in 6 state mental hospitals and 1 nursing home in Minnesota and involved 9,423 participants (1968-1973). One group ate food cooked/prepared with seed oil and one group ate food cooked/prepared with saturated fat. The seed oil group lowered their cholesterol as predicted but here's the kicker, that group died much younger than the saturated fat group: For every 30 mg/dL reduction in serum cholesterol, the risk of death increased by 22%. The researchers were so disappointed with the results that the study wasn't published until 15 years later! Every doctor should know about this study.