NOAKES VERDICT: HE WON THE BATTLE BUT THE WAR GOES ON
By Marika Sboros
The ashes have settled on the unequivocal not guilty verdict for Prof Tim Noakes but what’s next? Will there be a scientific phoenix rising? Any prospect of even a breath of fresh evidential air flowing through stale halls of “conventional” dietary advice?
Not if the dietitians involved in the case against him have anything to do with it.
Immediately after the verdict on April 21, 2017, Association for Dietetics in SA (ADSA) president Maryke Gallagher was on TV. She made it clear that ADSA would not change the “conventional” (low-fat, high-carb) dietary advice it dishes out. ADSA also issued a general, highly ambiguous statement to that effect the same day.
Two days later, the Nutrition Society of SA was equally emphatic. The verdict has “absolutely no bearing or impact on the current or future status of nutrition or the dietary guidelines in South Africa”, it said.
Thus, the dietitians and their backers have sent a clear message to Noakes. He has won the battle but the war against him and low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) science goes on. However, Noakes has made it clear he is more than ready for scientific battle. In the second in a series of reviews of the verdict, here are some views on the implications of his resounding vindication.
There has been deafening silence from the HPCSA and other doctors and nutrition academics involved in the case against Noakes. That silence speaks volumes. It suggests that the war against LCHF science will be even dirtier in future. Interestingly, the HPCSA has also yet to publish the not guilty verdict on its website. That’s after wrongly issuing a statement in October 2016 that it had found Noakes guilty.
Advocate Joan Adams
That prompted a terse response from Pretoria advocate Joan Adams, Chair of the HPCSA’s Professional Conduct Committee. The Committee effectively acted as the “judge” in the case against Noakes. Adams said that the HPCSA’s guilty verdict was “devoid of all truth”. That turned out to be prescient.
Certainly, the Committee’s verdict was as comprehensive a vindication of Noakes as it was humanly possible to be. HPCSA rules require that its five-member Committee reached a majority verdict.
In a 60-page ruling, Adams announced a four-to-one not guilty verdict. She ruled on 10 points on which the HPCSA had failed to prove the charge of unprofessional conduct.
The points included three pillars of the charge. Firstly, the HPCSA alleged a doctor-patient relationship between Noakes and the breastfeeding mother on Twitter. Secondly, that he tweeted medical advice, not information.
Thirdly – and crucially – that his tweet was unconventional because it was not evidence-based. Therefore, the HPCSA alleged that Noakes’ tweet was dangerous and could have been life-threatening.
Click here to read: Noakes not guilty of ‘something or other’
Adams and her committee didn’t buy any of it. Instead, they agreed with much of the defence heads of argument.
Noakes’ lawyers successfully argued that the HPCSA showed bias, unfairness, hypocrisy, double standards and gross injustice towards him throughout. Strydom was little more than a “disgruntled dietitian”, advocate Michael van der Nest (SC) said. She and other dietitians were peeved because the public seemed to listen more to Noakes than to them.
The case was never about his conduct as a medical doctor, Van der Nest said. It was an “unprecedented prosecution of South Africa’s eminent scientist” simply for his views on nutrition.
The HPCSA was biased against Noakes even before it decided to prosecute him. His innocuous tweet was simply the pretext for prosecution – and persecution, Van der Nest said.
Noakes’ legal team: (l to r) Adam Pike of Pike Law, Dr Ravin ‘Rocky’ Ramdass and Michael van der Nest (SC).
Thus, Strydom almost “miraculously” managed to get the HPCSA, a statutory body, to prosecute Noakes on a whim, he said. And the HPCSA appeared to have issued a “win-at-all-costs” order to its legal team.
The ultimate irony was that the dietitians had “cried out” for “evidence” on LCHF, Van der Nest said. And when Noakes provided it – over 6000 pages, 1200 slides and more than 340 publications and articles – Strydom wasn’t there to hear it. The HPCSA also did its level best to exclude and ignore all the evidence.
“What kind of body charges a person for being dangerous and incorrect and then tries to exclude the evidence showing he is not?” Van der Nest asked.
Advocate Dr Ravin “Rocky” Ramdass argued convincingly in favour of the relevance of all the defence evidence for LCHF.
In her latest newsletter, British obesity researcher Dr Zoe Harcombe was scathing about Strydom and the HPCSA. Harcombe was one of three expert witnesses for Noakes. The others were US science writer Nina Teicholz, author of The Big Fat Surprise, and New Zealand dietitian academic Dr Caryn Zinn.
Harcombe said that Strydom should not have made the complaint. The HPCSA should not have charged Noakes. The case was “premeditated and malicious”, she said. It left her with “nothing but contempt” for Strydom as the complainant and “little more regard for (the HPCSA)”.
She was especially critical of the HPCSA’s claim that Noakes had brought the case on himself. “No person would choose to have this hanging over them for (more than) three years”, she said.
Dr Zoë Harcombe
“No person would want the immense emotional and mental burden that this imposed upon them and their family.
And “no person would wish to waste millions of rands responding to the whim of a spiteful dietician”.
Harcombe referred to Adams as the “magnificent Chair in this hearing”. Adams carefully laid down case law to support her Committee’s verdict. That included a ruling suggesting that Committee members should place themselves “in the exact position in which (Noakes) found himself”.
Adams showed “great empathy”, Harcombe said. She and her Committee demonstrated “emotional intelligence and decency to put themselves in (Noakes’) shoes”. These were qualities that Strydom and the HPCSA “demonstrably lacked”.
Given that the case may have bankrupted lesser mortals, financially and emotionally, the human instinct for fairness said that someone should “pay for this”, she said.
“When children misbehave, they need to have consequences of their bad behaviour otherwise they don’t learn to behave,” Harcombe said.
There should be consequences from the HPCSA’s case against Noakes. If not, more dietitians across the globe would complain.
It would be understandable if Noakes and his legal team proceeded with a costs suit against Strydom and the HPCSA, Harcombe said. However, the world of nutrition and sports science would lose out if Noakes spent one more day in a court room.
His place “is in a laboratory or lecture theatre”, she said. Noakes must be able to continue his role as ” one of the (world’s) rare A1-rated scientists in this field”.
Click here to read Harcombe’s full post on The HPCSA vs Noakes: A reflection
ADSA’s statement immediately after the hearing quotes Gallagher saying: “We respect (Noakes) for his work as a sports scientist.”
The hearing was “never about winning or losing or standing for or against Noakes”, she said. It was about “protecting the health of babies and future adults”. ADSA welcomed the verdict and “the precedent this case provides on what we considered unconventional advice”.
ADSA president Maryke Gallagher and new ‘crisis manager’ Neeran Naidoo
She said that ADSA and its members would continue to provide evidence-based dietary advice. She also said that this advice was “in line with guidelines” from the Department of Health and international bodies. Gallagher claimed that these guidelines are the result of a “scientific and rigorous process”. She did not elaborate on that process.
ADSA would consider new approaches and practices based on scientific evidence that “credible health organisations” adopted, she said. However, Gallagher ignored the extensive and robust science, which the defence presented.
ADSA has now hired the CEO of a crisis management company to manage its public image. He is former Woolworths communications executive Neeran Naidoo.
His LinkedIn profile describes Hewers Communications as “a niche market crisis communication and issues management agency”.
Gallagher is also a consultant to Woolworths.
Click here to read ADSA’s statement on the verdict.
In an interview with Radio 702’s Redi Tlabi, Noakes signaled readiness for all scientific battles ahead.
At more than three years, the case against him was longer than the standard ultra-marathon, Noakes said. However, the prosecution “didn’t realise that they were up against an ultra-marathon runner”.
“We weren’t going to quit early. We crossed the finish line in first place today,” Noakes said of the verdict.
He interprets the verdict as a green light to give information on Twitter without worrying that dietitians or the HPCSA will stop him. He has also dispelled the myth that LCHF was about no-carbs or excessively low-carbs for kids.
The problem is babies born to mothers who ate lots of carbs during their pregnancy, Noakes said. These mothers also usually wean children on to high-carb diets. The children then start eating lots of carbs early on in their lives. As a result, many go on to develop the progressive condition of insulin resistance.
And by age 25 or 35, many become pre-diabetic. Consequently, the only effective treatment is to reduce carbohydrate intake.
“We are not saying that children can’t eat carbs,” Noakes said. However, “if you bring your children up properly, they can afford to eat carbohydrates during their lives”.
- Click here to subscribe for email notifications of Foodmed.net postings
- Like my Facebook Page
- Follow me on Twitter @MarikaSboros
You pose the question….. ” but what’s next?”
It would be wonderful if the protagonists could put their differences aside and focus their combined attention on the metabolically disabled and dysfunctional. Whilst everyone is locked in mortal combat of the egos we have millions of people in this country who are suffering the negative effects of bad dietary advice with toxic sugar at its highly processed core. There is a solution to this problem but getting to the solution involves a change in thinking on the part of all involved. For too long now the old school refuse to budge and the LCHFers fail to draw them in. This is a failure on the part of the LCHFers who are frequently disparaging in their interaction.It is not a problem to be solved, it is a fight to be won. They should not be adversaries they should be informed scientists and doctors concerned with the well-being of the sick and working together to find solutions. Let SA show the rest of the world the way
There is a growing legion of very well informed beneficiaries of LCHF and all the experts should be tapping into this incredible source of knowledge which proves that LCHF works to reverse the frequently terminal effects of Metabolic Syndrome. That is the bottom line.
By the way, I would imagine that the opposition did not see Tims wonderful evidence as an excellent training exercise. They saw it as an exercise in humiliation. The fact that it was well deserved humiliation is rather beside the point.
As for the HPCSA, if this trial is reflective of how they think then they are a disgrace and should be disbanded. Any member with any self respect should resign
For all the ‘millions who are suffering’, thankfully they have many honest sites to get the needed info from, starting with Dr. Noakes’ and those who he associates with. 🙂
I wish there was a Paypal button so we could throw
a few dollars at Prof Noakes. Any idea how we can
donate to him?
https://www.thenoakesfoundation.org/
What is it with dieticians taking on academics and medical specialists much more qualified than them. Do they honestly expect Tim Noakes and Gary Fettke to bow down to them and meekly follow their outdated low fat, high carbohydrates agenda? When will the ADSA and DAA come clean with their (too) close associations with ‘big food’?
Fabulous summary.
Dieticians are generalisably their own special type of stupid. So often neither legitimate academics nor scientists.
Marika, could you give us more gen about the 5th member of the committee, the one that thwarted unanimity. Who paid him or her?
Hi Robert, good point about the five-member committee. Had to comprise three of Prof Noakes’ peers and two Joe/Jill Soaps – members of the public. So there were three doctors: Drs J Giddy, H Saloojee and A Liddle, plus Chair Joan Adams (who happens to be a brilliant barrister, perfect legal eagle needed to negotiate the legal minefield that HPCSA set up for itself) and Mr Vogel. The only one to dissent was Dr Alfred Liddle. Don’t think anyone paid him. He was emotional, broke down in tears as he said he believed that Prof Noakes was guilty as charged. He appeared not to have understood any of the legal, ethical, medical, scientific and practical niceties involved in this case. Also knows nothing about Twitter etiquette or that it’s an information sharing platform. Hardly the place where any normal human being would go for a private consult with their doctor! Unless they are some sort of exhibitionist! I felt sorry for Dr Liddle. He clearly meant well, IMHO. He has a right to his opinion, uninformed though it was. And in this case, it carried no weight at all. Luckily for the science and Prof Tim Noakes’ peace of mind!
That’s generous of you. I’ll do what I can to ensure my kith and kin avoid Dr Liddle’s professional services like the plague.
Governments and the food industry have to maintain the ‘balanced diet’ concept. The world food supply consists of 60% to 70% carbohydrate calories. If everyone in the world switched to low carb high fat there would not be enough fat (good ones) to go around. So someone has to eat all those carbs as it maintains the illusion of success for the ‘Green Revolution’. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C-VH73kXcAA6qmN.jpg
Still, this is a much more mucky equation than it seems at first. For instance sugar cane consumes (in all senses) vast tracts of the most fertile land in SA without contributing a whole lot of nutrition to the pot.
Shifting tack: if fat eating facilitates skipping meals and even fasting as opposed to gross over-consumption how would it effect the final equation?
Shifting tack again: Consider the enormous resources spent on ill-health, from Big Pharma to reduced productivity and even sadness.
Nothing simple here. And, for now, I’m ignoring the colossal cruelty animal husbandry inflicts on this planet. (It’s impossible to digest Harari’s books “Sapiens” and “Homo Deus” without giving a respectful nod to veganism.)