Harvard Scientists Caught Taking Bribes To Publish False Research About Causes of Heart Attacks

Fact checked
A father from Ireland says he feels guilty for getting his 10-year-old son vaccinated after the boy suffered a near fatal heart issue while playing at school.

Newly released documents reveal that the sugar industry bribed high-profile and influential scientists from Harvard University, paying them to publish fake news about the primary causes of heart attacks.

The Harvard scientists false claims significantly influenced public health strategies regarding nutrition for decades, and the results are still being experienced today.

The news was disclosed in a recent special report in JAMA Internal Medicine and has shocked the research community. If the experts are taking bribes and lying about the causes of heart attacks, what else might they be lying about?

In the 1960s, there was no obligation to disclose conflicts of interest, enabling sugar industry executives to collaborate extensively with the researchers in revising and refining their paper until it met their desired standards, all without the need to acknowledge their own involvement.

‘I thought I had seen everything but this one floored me,’ said Marion Nestle of New York University, who wrote an editorial on the new findings.

‘It was so blatant. And the “bribe” was so big. Funding research is ethical,’ Nestle said. Bribing researchers to produce the evidence you want is not.’

The fake research was published in a literature review in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1967.

It claimed that fat and cholesterol were the main dietary factors contributing to heart disease while disregarding evidence from the 1950s that linked sugar to heart disease as well.

According to the latest report, the review in NEJM was funded by the Sugar Research Foundation (SRF), which is now known as the Sugar Association.

The SRF’s involvement in the study was not disclosed until 1984.

Dr. Mark Hegsted, a nutrition professor at Harvard, co-directed the SRF’s initial research project on heart disease from 1965 to 1966.

In the new report, Laura A. Schmidt from the University of California, San Francisco, along with her colleagues, discovered correspondence that revealed how Dr. Hegsted was commissioned by the SRF to arrive at a predetermined conclusion.

Archives from the University of Illinois and the Harvard Medical Library demonstrate that the foundation established the objective for the literature review, provided funding, and reviewed drafts of the manuscript.

In 1962, an American Medical Association nutrition report indicated that low-fat, high-sugar diets might actually contribute to the development of cholesterol.

According to the new report, two years later, John Hickson, the vice president of the SRF, proposed a major program to counter negative perceptions of sugar.

Increasingly, epidemiological reports suggested that blood sugar, rather than blood cholesterol or high blood pressure, was a more accurate predictor of atherosclerosis.

Two days after The New York Herald Tribune published a full-page story linking sugar to various health issues in July 1965, the SRF approved “Project 226,” a literature review on cholesterol metabolism led by Hegsted and, among others, Fredrick Stare, another Harvard nutritionist with financial ties to the industry.

Nine months later, as Schmidt and her colleagues state, Hegsted explained that the project had been delayed due to the constant need to write counterarguments against new evidence linking sugar to heart disease published during that period.

By September 1966, according to the report, Hickson requested additional drafts of the literature review from the Harvard researchers, although there is no direct evidence of the Foundation commenting on or editing the drafts.

By November 2, Hickson had approved the latest draft as “exactly what we had in mind.”

The two-part review, concluding that the only necessary change to prevent heart disease was to reduce dietary fat intake, was published in the NEJM the following year, with no mention of the SRF’s involvement.

The journal did not require disclosure of conflicts of interest until 1984.

“The sugar association paid highly esteemed Harvard scientists to publish a review that focused on saturated fat and cholesterol as the primary causes of heart disease at a time when studies were starting to accumulate indicating that sugar is a risk factor for heart disease,” Schmidt said.

“That has had an impact on the entire research community and the direction it took.”

“For example, during this period, much of the messaging on how to prevent heart disease revolved around choosing margarine over butter, which has lower saturated fat content,” Schmidt said. “Now we know that margarine is high in trans fats, which contribute to heart disease and have been mostly eliminated from the U.S. food supply.”

“When manufacturers reduced fat, they added sugar,” she said. “We’ve lost a significant amount of time in evaluating how sugar affects coronary heart disease,” but it is impossible to measure the actual impact on public health over the last five decades.

Both large amounts of sugar and saturated fats are detrimental to health, and their effects are difficult to separate, according to Nestle. However, it seems reasonable to limit sugar intake to around 10 percent of daily calories.

Even today, industry funding continues to support a significant amount of scientific research, but journals and scientists are increasingly disclosing these funding sources, Schmidt noted.

“While we acknowledge that the Sugar Research Foundation should have been more transparent in all of its research activities, it is important to note that funding disclosures and transparency standards were not the norm at the time these studies were published,” the Sugar Association stated in a response.

“Moreover, it is challenging for us to comment on events allegedly occurring 60 years ago and on documents we have never seen.”

“The Sugar Association always seeks to further understand the role of sugar in health, but we rely on quality science and factual evidence to support our claims,” the statement concluded.

Baxter Dmitry

Baxter Dmitry

Baxter Dmitry is a writer at The People's Voice. He covers politics, business and entertainment. Speaking truth to power since he learned to talk, Baxter has travelled in over 80 countries and won arguments in every single one. Live without fear.
Email: baxter@thepeoplesvoice.tv
Baxter Dmitry

12 Comments

  1. My dad told us to boycott nestle back in the 1950s. He knew about them and Disney and all that lot because his dad was high up in the military and a doctor too.
    They all kbow but they live narcotics disguised as healthy food or fun” Oh a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down the medicine go down in a most deliteful way ”
    ” on the goods shoppe Lollipop its a sweet trip to the candy shop ”
    England was coloquially known as the lolly shop because it used its African slaves to grow the sugar crops on the Caribbean which it them could export to the biggest empire the world has ever seen l for basically nothing, no cost really at all. And then the colonials could all add it to their tea grown in India by their slaves there too People forget E hlamd enslaved the indians in India too Apparently they’re not reminded in their education or history.And since they just stole the Tea plants from China, which had the global patent, that cost them nothing too.
    They won’t stop because sugar sells alcohol as well.
    I saw a doctor or scientist yesterday saying the biggest dangers for althzeimers are caffeine alcohol marijuana. They’re favourite things.

  2. Pharma & their poison medical system cannot be trusted. That includes their “peer reviewed” studies. Corrupt people are easily bought off.

    • Here is what this didn’t tell you…
      The sugar causes magnesium to be all used up in your body, and also B vitamins, resulting in very low magnesium levels, and build up of homocysteine from lack of B vitamins, resulting in cramping muscles, plugged up vessels, and heart disease.
      So, it is caused by sugar, but its via magnesium and B complex vitamin deficiency, a clogging blood system, and loss of electrical signals of muscle.

      Lesson Learned…
      If you are a sugar addict, be sure to comsume magnesium citrate with each meal, about 100-200mg per meal, and take B complex vitamins with breakfast and lunch, in divided dose.
      If you really want to be more certain of good health, also take a good multi mineral with dinner.
      This will buy you about another twenty-five years of sugar abuse, but its best you cut down your sugar loads.
      Sugar is pure poison, its just a slow (k)iller.

      Its no surprise pharma would do this, the US medical system purpose is for population reduction. They are No. 1 cause of death in USA, and admit to being No. 3 cause of death from mistakes.

  3. It’s cute how they’re deflecting blame to heart disease when cancer is sugar’s main executioner. Look up what Dr. Otto Warburg won a Nobel Peace Prize for in the 1930s. Hint.. it wasn’t for discovering that sugar causes heart disease.

    Then let it sink in that no President or major political figure has died from cancer since then. Yet 1 in 3 of us will drop with it. Because modern medicine has NEVER been on our side.

      • The Shag of Iran died from cancer The Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez died from cancer .The CIA had scientists working to develop incurable cancer that they alleged they wanted to use on Castro The scientists use sugar to grow cancers in the labs .

        • The queen died from the covid vaccine. It pushed her over the edge. I’m sure Charlie had it done. He was losing patience, health, and time.

  4. First they deceive them as kids and when they know they’ve succeeded they send them to uni to teach them how to deceive others Basically .”and in the end times the whole world shall be deceived “

  5. For 15 years my doctors have been pushing me to get on statins due to my high cholesterol. at the time my BP was 116/65. I kept refusing.
    Today my cholesterol is still high, and my BP is 120/70.
    I am at weight for my height.
    I am on no meds at all.
    I am pushing 60.
    No health issues
    I always wondered if I did start taking statins 15 years ago. How many other health issues I would have and how many more meds I would be taking.

    • Our western medicine is crappy they never treat the cause of something, they just give you something against shulder pain or operate it even, maybe you wear your backback one one side. The sideffects we get cancers or new illments to treat are planned. Basically your age height weight or metabolism doesn’t matter to them. In the holistic asian medicine all is balanced and the cause is treated. In the western world our politicians cause more problems with each solutions they create. Just look up how many holistic doctor’s “die ” All our systems are seperated, so that no one seems to see connections in causes. Teached answers, to learned problems. It’s like in agrar industry they are teached earth the ground is dead, and needs pesticides and chemical fertilizers, but in reality the ground is alive and full of microbiology which feed theplants roots we poison them. The same happens to our gut bacteria, we kill them with fake sugars and pesticides. It’s all not teached on purpose to make us sick weak.

      • many have real doctors are researchers have died at young ages.
        you are correct in your thinking.
        Has to do with Social Security. The central bank can’t have the population living into their 90s. That is about 35 years of annual salaries per citizen. So they had to chronically poison us, make us weak and frail so we end up dieing in our 70s. but the human body is relentless, we are still living into our mid 80s. Still too high for them. They want us dead just before retirement.

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