On the Nature of CBS NEWS 60 Minutes On Toxic Sugar, Pioneering Diabetes Research, Sugar Lobbies vs...Galileo and the Inquisition - My Father Gerard Paul Pereira PHD
Two Sides of the issue of Toxic Sugar, Diabetics, Obesity Epidemic, Pioneering Research and the costs of Being Ahead of your Time.
Gerard Paul Pereira PHD - Columbia University NY in the 1970's
Pioneering Researcher in Electron Microscopy, Histology, Cytology, Anatomy, Diabetes and Nutrition.
Pioneering Researcher in Electron Microscopy, Histology, Cytology, Anatomy, Diabetes and Nutrition.
Dear all,
For those of you who did not see the April 1 edition of CBS “60 Minutes” I am sending a link (http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7403942n) to a CBS video detailing the findings of a number of American scientists that refined sugar is toxic, can be addictive and has deleterious effects on the health causing diseases, such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, increased level of bad cholesterol in the blood, and even cancer. This fantastic scientific report is consistent with the findings of the research I carried out 40 years ago at Columbia University, which showed that feeding a pure sugar diet to a strain of mice induced severe destruction of the pancreas in 10 days leading to diabetes and restoring a normal diet to these animals brought about a complete regeneration of the organ in two weeks, thus resulting in the creation of an ideal animal model to study the factors that can prevent the hazards of sugar for the health of all peoples.
This research work brought me the wrath of the sugar industry which immensely impacted on my career as a research scientist. Some members of that industry even threatened my life if I were to publish my findings, arguing that they were making only a 5-cent profit on every five-pound bag of sugar. I am delighted that, after paying my dues, the report on “60 Minutes” has come full circle after 40 long years to prove me right. By scrolling down in the web page you can read the comment I made on the subject.
Enjoy!
Gerard Pereira PHD
by energinat April 4, 2012 4:24 PM EDT
This is a powerful report which is in part consistent with experimental results obtained 40 years ago. Collaborative research work I conducted at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University in the 1970's has demonstrated that feeding a presumably genetically predisposed strain of mice a pure sugar (dextrose) diet for ten days induces the destruction of the pancreatic acini and the islet beta (insulin) cells. This was associated with a transient hypercoagulable state. Refeeding a normal diet to the experimental animals resulted in a complete regeneration of the pancreas in two weeks. This work was presented and well received at scientific meetings in Dallas, Texas, in 1972 and in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1978. I was pleased to have at my disposal an animal model which, as stated by an eminent scientist at the Vancouver meeting, "will permit to answer all the questions asked about the pancreas over the last one hundred years". Indeed, the main focus of this research was to study the changes induced in the pancreas after dietary deficiency, and not the effect of sugar per se on this gland.
To my astonishment, however, a number of scientific journals refused to publish the results of this investigation, giving the format of the paper as a pretext. I finally realized where the shoe pinches when the American sugar lobby told me bluntly that, if I publish the paper, they will regard me as their enemy. Moreover, after giving a presentation at a university seminar, I was asked not to present any more on the subject. This shows that, because of its connections with the food and beverage industry, a good portion of the scientific community is subservient to the powerful sugar industry and does not care about the hazards of sugar for the health, fearing that such an innovation may put people out of business.
Gerard Pereira (Canada)
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Your story sounds very much like many others you that have been posted in various sites on the web. This is an extremely sensitive issue that a much more powerful industries than tobacco ever were will try and bury at any cost.
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