Ah Trev yes ... but I read Dr. Atkins' book. He mentions fats and the research about them contributing to heart disease. He says not to worry about the cholesterol and other numbers (paraphrasing going on here! I no longer have the book so I'm trying to remember the tone of what he said!) because over time they will be lower than when you started. I believe he recommended having them drawn before you start, and six weeks into it. The overall tone is that you won't be harmed from eating large amounts of fat. I may be wrong here, but I distinctly do not remember him guarding against "bad" fats.
I was working in the Cardiac ICU when I tried this diet. I respected every single cardiologist on staff at this hospital, and when I asked them about this issue, they all told me to stop the diet, and stop it NOW. They explained to me in detail why it would harm someone in the long run. None of the explanations they gave me were mentioned in Dr. Atkins' book. If that's all people read, and they believe it, they won't know the proven research out there refutes it. More needs to be done, obviously, to see if there's a way to do the diet and eat the "good" fats, without hurrying heart disease, but we aren't quite there yet.
My point is that unless you know all this other stuff beforehand, you're apt to take his book at face value. Heck I did the diet for four months! And I'm a critical care nurse!! I got a nice big kidney stone they had to surgically remove from eating like that, and my urologist said ABSOLUTELY it was from the diet. It was a uric acid stone. Those are from by-producuts of TOO MUCH PROTEIN. Since I was already prone to stones, that is not the kind of "diet" I should be doing. Should I have sued? LOL!! Of course not.
I hear what you're saying about personal responsibility, but people believe things they read. Especially when the author has the title "MD" after his name!! LOL!! This will be an interesting case to watch, for sure!!
Carol
