News and views hot off the wire - Robert C. Atkins dies - Obituary - Biography

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, July, 2003 by Arline Brecher

The headline was a shocker: Robert C. Atkins, famed diet doctor, dead at 72. The untimely passing of yet one more medical pioneer saddened the 30 million or more who have bought his books, especially those who benefited from his controversial advice for beating obesity. To one who knew him well, it felt like a death in the family. It still does, and I suspect, it always will.

My relationship with Dr. Atkins began in a contentious atmosphere. In 1972, the first edition of Dr. Atkins Diet Revolution hit the stores, and triggered what was to be a 32 year battle with bariatricians holding more orthodox views. Among those nationally known experts eager to debate the issues raised was Dr. Neil Solomon, head of the Maryland Department of Health, whose book The Truth About Weight Control presented opposing views to those of Dr. Atkins and was in contention for the top bestseller slot on the New York Times book list.

I was firmly in Dr. Solomon's camp -- not surprising considering I'd done the first reviews that launched his book, wrote many of the follow-up interviews, and was 'ghost writer' for his nationally syndicated column. In addition, Harold and I became friends with Dr. Solomon, his wife and young boys. On several occasions we weekended with them at the nearby Maryland shore, and were rewarded with a wire service scoop when we were both on site at the Silver Springs Hospital where Governor George Wallace was taken the day he was shot. Dr. S. was very much in charge and we got the inside-the-operating-room scoop.

Eventually, the talk shows became involved with other issues, and the 'which-diet-works?' controversy died down. It was some 15 years before I met up with Dr. Atkins again. I was surprised to spy him perusing the aisles at an ACAM conference, yellow legal pad in hand, scribbling away with great determination. He appeared alone, unrecognized, and enjoying the anonymity.

"Why, Dr. Atkins" I said as I stopped him. "What are you doing here?" a sly reference to the fact that we were not attending a convention of obesity specialists, but one devoted to even more debatable therapies -- non-orthodox treatment of cardiovascular disease and other serious ailments. It was a rude question, even for a reporter. His kind response and patient explanation was my first glimpse of a side of Dr. Atkins totally different from how he'd been portrayed. "I'm finding out how much I don't know," he said rather humbly. "And I'm trying my best to learn more."

Not at all the reply I'd expected, and it encouraged me to follow up with more questions, and he obliged with an expanded explanation. I was surprised to learn that he was a cardiologist and he'd become interested in chelation therapy as well as other alternative treatments for many illnesses and conditions. "And," he continued to my utter delight, "you probably know more about chelation than I do, since you've written the Bible on that subject."

"It seems no one knows you're here," I complained. "No, and I like it," he said. "I'm here to get educated, not to give interviews. Let's just keep it that way, OK?"

During the next 15 years, he and I had opportunity to meet and chat many times at many other meetings. Although he continued to be identified as a "diet doctor" -- even in the many TV reports and published obituaries in recent days -- he was best known to many of us in the alt/med field for his intense interest and involvement in the health freedom movement and his support of holistic physicians targeted by their medical boards.

In 1987, Dr. Atkins co-founded FAIM (The Foundation for the Advancement of Innovative Medicine) and his financial support enabled this organization to launch campaigns in 17 states that resulted in the passage of freedom-of-access legislation. Many persecuted physicians throughout the US have retained their licenses thanks to his intervention. Furthermore, despite his development of the Atkins Center into a premier medical clinic, successfully treating a variety of ailments in non-orthodox ways, he was still tagged as the 'diet doctor' to the day he died and now forever more.

One of the more astounding claims Dr. Atkins made on many an occasion (quoted in our book Forty Something Forever) is that he could cure 95% of the ailments other physicians treat with prescription drugs, with natural more beneficial nutritional remedies. Even though that aspect of his great medical wisdom was ignored by establishment critics over the years, he proved willing to defend that assertion in a dramatic way. In 1998, he wrote and published a remarkable book: Vita-Nutrients in which he literally gave away all his nutritionally based medical protocols for most common diseases. When I first happened on the book, I was ecstatic to find so complete a prescription for wellness. It's been my bedside companion and medical guide ever since, book-marked, annotated, and freely quoted. Among the gems buried in the many pages is the Atkins treatment for high blood pressure which substitutes P-5-P and taurine for harmful diuretics. Like many of the other well-researched 'recipes' that allow people to discard dru gs, it works.