February 10, 2004
Report: Atkins Had Heart Disease History
From AP Newswire:
NEW YORK - Dr. Robert Atkins, whose popular diet stresses protein-rich meat
and cheese over carbohydrates, weighed 258 pounds at his death and had a
history of heart disease, a newspaper reported Tuesday.
Atkins died last April at age 72 after being injured in a fall on an icy
street.
Before his death, he had suffered a heart attack, congestive heart failure
and hypertension, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a report by the
city medical examiner.
At 258 pounds, the 6-foot-tall Atkins would have qualified as obese,
according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's body-mass
index calculator.
Diet is one potential factor in heart disease, but infections also can
contribute to it.
Last month, the diet guru's widow, Veronica Atkins, demanded an apology from
Mayor Michael Bloomberg after Bloomberg called her late husband "fat."
She told the Journal she was outraged that the report had been made public.
"I have been assured by my husband's physicians that my husband's health
problems late in life were completely unrelated to his diet or any diet,"
she said.
The medical examiner's report was given to the Journal by the Physicians
Committee for Responsible Medicine, a group that advocates vegetarianism.
Stuart Trager, chairman of the Atkins Physicians Council in New York, told
the Journal that Atkins' heart disease stemmed from cardiomyopathy, a
condition that was thought to result from a viral infection.
Atkins' weight was due to bloating associated with his condition and the
time he spent in a coma after his head injury, and he had been much slimmer
during most of his life, Trager said.
In April 2002, a year before he died, Atkins issued a statement saying he
was recovering from cardiac arrest related to a heart infection he had
suffered from "for a few years." He said it was "in no way related to diet."
On Tuesday, the medical examiner's office would say only that Atkins died of
a head injury from the fall.
"I can't comment on people's previous conditions. It's against the law,"
said spokeswoman Ellen Borakove.
Borakove said that, because of family objections to an autopsy, the medical
examiner had conducted only "an external exam" and a review of Atkins'
hospital records.
She said a report had been sent to a doctor in Nebraska who requested it,
and said he apparently gave it to the Physicians Committee for Responsible
Medicine.
It was later discovered that the doctor was not "the treating physician" and
should not have had access to the report, Borakove said. The medical
examiner's office plans to complain to Nebraska health officials, she said.
One of the handwritten comments in the medical examiner's report referred to
"MI" (myocardial infarction, the technical term for heart attack), the
newspaper said. Trager said Atkins had no record of having had a heart
attack, saying medical histories on examiner's reports are often written by
less-experienced doctors who may not know a patient's detailed history.