Foreword

ONE MORNING IN THE SUMMER OF 1991, I received an interesting phone call from a surgeon at the prestigious Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. He had read a recent New York Times story about our study on diet, lifestyle, and health in China and was interested in our preliminary findings. He invited me to speak at a conference that fall in Tucson, Arizona. His ambitious title for the meeting: “The First National Conference on the Elimination of Coronary Artery Disease.”

That, in itself, was intriguing enough to persuade me to accept. But I also was impressed by the fact that this Dr. Esselstyn had secured the participation of many well-known heart specialists, including Framingham Heart Study director William Castelli and Dr. Dean Ornish, who had recently gained considerable recognition for his work showing the possibility of reversing heart disease through changes in diet and lifestyle. This conference would be challenging, to say the least. In my own academic environment, it was startling enough at the time even to mention a tenuous association of diet and heart disease. But the elimination of coronary artery disease? This was a paradigm shift.

The conference was highly successful—and provocative. So was a subsequent meeting in Orlando, Florida, which Dr. Esselstyn organized in association with Michael Eisner, then chief executive officer of the Walt Disney Company.

Since those early days, my wife, Karen, and I have come to know well both Dr. Esselstyn—“Essy,” as his friends call him—and his energetic wife and colleague, Ann. I have often lectured with him on the same stage. And I have come to know his remarkable research and its findings, as well as its major implications.

Dr. Esselstyn’s studies are among the most carefully conducted and relevant medical investigations undertaken during the past century. His goal—eliminating coronary disease entirely—may not be achievable during our lifetimes, but he has told us that it can be done and how it can be done. His determination to pursue this research and to teach the rest of us what he has learned, against formidable opposition in the medical establishment, is a testament to his personal and professional courage and integrity.

This book is a must read, both for ordinary people interested in health and for the dons of clinical and medical research institutions. People who ignore its message will do so at their own peril. There is no pharmaceutical wonder or medical trickery, either now or in the future, that can match these findings.

 

—T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus of nutritional
biochemistry, Cornell University, and coauthor
of The China Study (2005)