Diet, Fasting, And Anti-Establishmentarian Tactics

As long ago as 2012 I have been interested in the work of science writer Gary Taubes, especially in his efforts to investigate issue of low-carb diets and their effect on heart disease, diabetes, and the like. I read his "Good Calories / Bad Calories" shortly after it came out, and commented in a post at NewEpicurean that I thought the tactics he was using to popularize his theories in the face of "establishment" opposition might be applicable to our work with Epicurean Philosophy.

I have continued to follow his work and in part because of that (and because a friend was recently diagnosed with Cancer) I came across this video below by Dr. Thomas Seyfried and his continuation of work from mid-century Germany linking cancer to mitochondrial problems rather than exclusively to genetics. This is an issue that Taubes mentioned in his 2012 book developed to a much higher level.

I see that Seyfried has a number of videos over the last several years, but the one I am linking here impresses me for his passion and his presentation of evidence. I not only find this fascinating, but I continue to think there is a strong parallel between this medical controversy and our Epicurean controversies against "orthodox" interpretations of Epicurus.

Our equivalent to the groundbreaking work of Otto Warburg, at about the same period of time, might be the groundbreaking work of Norman Dewitt.

Good points, Martin, so I changed my "is" to "might be" in that last sentence.

Yes I am not competent to comment on the medicine, other than to state that in my own case, low-carb dieting has been the best method for me to control weight and blood sugars.

The issue I find interesting and relevant to us here is the parallel involved when people in a scientific field find themselves at odds with an entrenched establishment, and how they go about dealing with getting themselves heard in today's world.

For years I have followed various podcasters and websites in this field, and it's interesting to me how they network, share information, have conferences, etc. Usually there seems to be a major book or set of books involved, in this case many of which were generated originally by Gary Taubes, a science writer who is outside of the medical field himself.

In our case there are very few books with a view of Epicurus such as that of Norman DeWitt. Probably the progression in our Epicurus work will need to follow a similar route, with more books that specifically embrace the non-mainstream view.

I suppose we can currently add the book by Gosling & Taylor, and the articles by Nikolsky and Wenham, but there is much much more to be done.

Martin this reminds me that we need to find some good videos on the physics issues. I know that Alex is very impressed with Victor Stenger and to the extent I have read into him that seems promising. 1. Do you know of videos we should add? 2. Do you consider Stenger to be a good representative of someone who is friendly to Epicurean physics?

Similarly I bet we can find some videos on the math/geometry vs. reality issues.