Controversy and Dr. W. Gifford-Jones

What I Learned as a Medical Journalist
W. Gifford-Jones, M.D.
published 2013

read outline
http://www.docgiff.com/books/

I bought this 2013 book recently and started reading it today.  He keeps it simple but it is filled with good info, like 290 people die in America everyday from prescription meds and nobody dies from natural products that can be used instead of the powerful medical solutions.

His newspaper articles appeared in the local Free Press a few times.  He talks about a treatment for clogged arteries/atherosclerosis,  that interested me: Med-C Plus that is vitamin C and lysine in powder form.  It is something I intend to buy because he claims it can prevent and reverse coronary heart disease and much of his argument on the findings of Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling and other noted medical figures, including British researcher Dr. Sydney Bush.  Dr. Sydney Bush has shown that diabetes patients and the rest of us, can restore normal blood flow by taking high concentrations of Vitamin C and lysine.  Perfect for sedentary people like me.  

Dr. Ken Walker, aka W. Gifford-Jones MD, admits opposition to his vitamin C advocacy might stem from his controversial stands on touchy medical subjects

By Jeffrey Ougler, Sault Star

Tuesday, May 20, 2014 4:45:19 EDT PM

SAULT STE. MARIE - Given his enviable Ivy League credentials and half-century of experience as a physician and surgeon, one might think Dr. Ken Walker’s views on vitamin C and what he trumpets as its profound power to curb cardiovascular disease would be lapped up by the medical community.

Especially considering the fact he banks much of his argument on the findings of Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling and other noted medical figures, including British researcher Dr. Sydney Bush.

Perhaps surprisingly, few in the field seem to share his diagnosis...even within the hallowed halls of his alma mater, The Harvard Medical School.

“The point is, 99% of the doctors disagree with me,” Walker said in a recent telephone interview from his Toronto home. “There’s no doubt about that. That’s a gimme.”

Walker has even lent his name to the product Medi-C plus (vitamin C and lysine), with a portion of proceeds directed to help support the Gifford-Jones Professorship in Pain Control and Palliative Care at the University of Toronto.

“Hopefully, some doctors will listen,” Walker said.

“I don’t think there is any really easy way to (spread the message) except go around and talk about it.”

“Go around” he does. In fact, the day following this interview, Walker was slated to give two out-of-town addresses on this topic so close to his heart – a busy schedule for anyone, especially someone who recently rang in his 90th birthday.

It's a milestone, Walker argues, he might not have reached had he subscribed to cholesterol-lowering drugs following his own coronary 16 years ago. Instead, he opted for high vitamin C volumes, plus lysine, a choice cardiologists branded at the time as “sheer madness.”

“I bet my life on it and, as it turned out, it was a good, educated guess at the time,” Walker said. “Even if I died tomorrow I’ve had a damn good track record.”

Denial within the medical community stems, in part, from the billions pharmaceutical companies have tied up in medicine, Walker contends.

But the veteran physician freely admits his candor on some of society’s most touchy subjects, from women’s reproductive rights to his advocacy of euthanasia and assisted suicide, makes many others wary.

W. Gifford-Jones MD, bears his soul in his regular syndicated newspaper column, The Doctor Game, a practice launched in 1975 in The Globe and Mail and continues to this day in publications across North America and Europe.

Walker’s belief in a woman’s right to legal abortion and his battle to have heroin legalized to ease the agony of terminally ill cancer patients, are the stuff of legend. And all documented in numerous columns as well as a 2000 memoir, “You’re Going to Do What?”

Who: Dr. Ken Walker, aka W. Gifford-Jones MD;
Link: http://www.saultstar.com/2014/05/20/dr-ken-walker-aka-w-gifford-jones-md-admits-opposition-to-his-vitamin-c-advocacy-might-stem-from-his-controversial-stands-on-touch-medical-subjects