Noakes: you won’t shut me up
Sports scientist found not guilty of unprofessional conduct
AS COMMITTEE chairperson Joan Adams delivered judgment in the “nutrition trial of the 21st century”, Tamzyn Murphy couldn’t contain her jubilation.
The dietitian, and devoted Banter, was sitting near Professor Tim Noakes, as she had done during the months of his gruelling professional misconduct hearing by the Health Professions Council of SA.
Now, after a three-year battle, he had finally been vindicated. “I felt absolutely ecstatic,” said Murphy, who feeds her young daughter a Banting diet.
“I had no idea that the question of the verdict was even weighing on my mind until madame chair (Adams) started to read the verdict and I realised where it was going. I felt so happy and relieved.
“I identified with what she said, that all medical wisdom was unconventional at one time or another, until it eventually becomes accepted,” said Murphy, who is investigating the role of low carbohydrate, high-fat diets advocated by Noakes in type II diabetes and insulin resistance.
After Adams, the chairperson of the professional conduct committee, declared that Noakes, a renowned sports scientist, was not guilty of unprofessional conduct, there was loud applause in the committee room.
For Noakes, the case was about “shutting up any voice trying to change public opinion about food and the food industry”. A number of people had tried to discredit him and tarnish his legacy as a researcher, he said.
“This case and the industries behind it were trying to shut me up, and shut everyone up about what we should eat.”
He and his family had suffered but decided to fight.
Two years ago, Noakes, who promotes a low-carbohydrate, highfat (LCHF) diet, was charged with giving unconventional medical advice on Twitter after he advised a breastfeeding mother, Pippa Leenstra, to wean her baby on to LCHF.
Claire Julsing-Strydom, the former president of the Association for Dietetics in South Africa (Adsa), complained that Noakes had given advice on his diet on Twitter to a mother who was breastfeeding.
Her tweet read: “@ProfTimNoakes @SalCreed is LCHF eating ok for breastfeeding mums? Worried about all the dairy + cauliflower = wind for babies (sic)??” Noakes had responded: “Baby doesn’t eat the dairy and cauliflower. Just very healthy high-fat breast milk. Key is to ween (sic) baby onto LCHF.”
Adsa argued that Noakes should have referred Leenstra to a dietitian to avoid causing confusion on the social media platform. “Although with good intent, Noakes did not act as a reasonable doctor,” Adsa submitted.
But delivering the judgment yesterday, Adams said the complainant failed to prove that Noakes and Leenstra had a doctor-patient relationship which could have resulted in Leenstra applying Noakes’s advice. Instead, because of a lack of this relationship, Leenstra indicated consulting other people on the matter. Adams said those who used Twitter were not vulnerable, uninformed or ignorant.
Assistance
“If Ms Leenstra’s baby was in real medical threat, she would not have wasted time on Twitter, she would have sought medical assistance,” Adams said.
Four of the five-member committee found Noakes not guilty, while one member, Alfred Liddle, disagreed.
Liddle broke down when he told the committee that Noakes should have known that his actions could mislead many people. He would not comment further.
Adams said “unconventional” did not mean unprofessional. The committee found Noakes’s tweet at worst unclear and, at best, promoting breastfeeding, but it was not harmful in any way.
After the verdict, Leenstra said: “I honestly don’t have a reaction, I don’t have an opinion on him and merely asked a question.
“I wasn’t even aware that the case was carrying on and that there was a verdict until one of my friends told me. His case really has nothing to do with me.”
Two KwaZulu-Natal experts have expressed their support for the ruling while another two, both university academics, preferred not to comment.
Glenwood homeopath Ben Wulfsohn said the ruling opened up a space for debating contesting issues of nutrition and disease. “That’s how progress is made in science, by debating and questioning,” he said.
Wulfsohn said the recent mantra, from the 1980s, had been the “carbohydrate-based food pyramid” and was not working.
“There has been a big, steady increase if you look at the graph of non-communicable diseases,” he said, referring to diabetes, obesity and cancer. “It started to climb in the 1980s.” The decade before, the “great industrialisation of dietary guidelines” was introduced and the idea of high carbohydrate, low fat opened the way to an explosion of the diseases.
Wulfsohn said: “His (Noakes’s) team brought so much evidence, actually showing that low carb, high natural fat has a lot of merit and that should be pursued as a matter of interest.”
Stephanie Joyner, a dietician working in Pietermaritzburg, said she wholeheartedly agreed with the judgment.
“I feel that the complaint was made in the heat of the moment and was more because egos had been bruised and not because there was genuine risk to anyone,” she said. “The trial, although completely unnecessary, at least gave Prof Noakes a platform to present the evidence that supports the use of a LCHF diet in certain instances, and health professionals that still refuse to engage in discussion or research on this topic are burying their heads in the sand.”