Vegans Can't Cure Acne: the Dishonesty of Dr. Greger & NutritionFacts.org

i heard on the news today that a famous
person a celebrity died of colon cancer i happened to be vegan it popped into my head that i could do a quick google search i could find out how much better or how much worse are my chances of dying of colon cancer in my early 40s as the celebrity had died in his early 40s one website told me vegans have a 16 percent better chance of never getting colon cancer another website used a different scientific study um that concerned vegetarians rather than vegans and came to inclusion it was 22 percent better odds for uh for vegetarians dr greger dr michael greger the leader of nutritionfacts.org with his budget of over 2 million dollars per annum has a website that opens with the bold declaration that 70 of cases of colon cancer are avertable and then the very next sentence is an equally bold declaration that a vegan diet can help you avert prevent and even reverse colon cancer no no it doesn't tell you doesn't tell you that your odds are 70 better it doesn't tell you that it doesn't even insinuate that the 70 statistic however is the only statistic in in the article you never get the 16 you never get 22 percent you never get any any other number to help you calibrate your expectations for how great the health benefits of a vegan diet or swiss no no 70 percent and then this vague but passionate assurance that this has some dramatic health benefit the whole article is written in what we would call weasel words that's a wikipedia term or it's a term popularized by wikipedia it is written in a manner that is obfuscatory misleading and that uses science in such a dishonest way that it becomes pseudoscience this was not my only experience with dr michael greger today today i saw a video on his channel that assures you assures you that the cause of acne is dairy and meat in the american diet until recently for example only a week association has been accepted for the role of milk and dairy products in acne formation but there is now substantial evidence supporting the effects of milk and dairy products as enhancers of acne aggravation more than 85 of teens in western countries exhibit acne this implies that the majority of our population is living with over-activated tor signaling a major disease-causing factor so early dietary counseling of teenage acne patients is thus a great opportunity for dermatology which will not only help to improve acne but may reduce the long-term adverse effects of western diet on more serious tour driven diseases whereas on the island of okinawa nobody has acne but it's considered a disease of western civilization meaning in some places like okinawa it was rare or even non-existent constantly insisting that veganism is the solution to the problem of acne as evidenced by the population of okinawa who are not vegan no significant percentage of people of okinawa are vegan most of the vegan restaurants in okinawa are for white western tourists who are there to swim at the beach or who work at the american air force base or whatever the people of okinawa are not vegan there's already this bizarre form of lie and deception built into holding up okinawa as an example or a paragon of the health benefits a vegan diet can bring into your life people of okinawa have acne it is just absurd to pretend both halves of that equation are completely false like you want to argue you want to insinuate vegan diet equals no acne so you then say people of okinawa eating the okinawan diet right no acne it's all completely false go to google maps and you can just use google translate put in the japanese term for dermatologist or acne clinic in particular you think nobody in okinawa has acne if you watch a video of people walking around downtown okinawa they look like normal people they look like you and me and you're also going to see mcdonald's restaurant you're going to see all kinds of modern unhealthy food the japanese diet and the food being sold on the street visible from sidewalk level it's not vegan and it's not healthy the people of okinawa are not paragons of good health and even if they were they're not vegan this youtube video insinuates and obfuscates and uses the most dishonest weasel words imaginable to try to lead the audience to the conclusion that if they have acne it's because they're eating a non-vegan diet and that a vegan diet will cure acne but it never says those words it never says that veganism will cure acne he shows a series of screenshots of scientific studies he doesn't tell you how those scientific studies relate to the thesis he's presenting right this is like again it's the use of scientific facts to create a scientific fiction it's the abuse of science as pseudoscience right he seems to know what he's talking about and he seems to just have this vague conviction that acne is linked to the diseases of the decadent west and these diseases of the decadent west are caused by a non-vegan diet and they're cured by a vegan diet so you fill in the blanks and the people of okinawa they allegedly don't have acne right and and and they have it's never we're never what is the diet in okinawa do people in okinawa eat fish do people in okinawa eat at mcdonald's do people okay now i have dermatologists if you go to okinawa just leave through the newspaper are you going to see ads for acne cream do you think in the pharmacies of okinawa they're not selling no no yeah right never mind this is a hoax this is a scam and there are millions of dollars involved there's also a long-term process whereby the vegan movement is discredited by the people who are making the most money out of propounding veganism you know muste's no intro no outro just real talk a few people were mortified and scandalized that i as a vegan as an aspiring vegan activist that i would criticize dr michael greger for the brutal financial reality that they are collecting 1.5 million dollars per year in round numbers about one and a half million dollars per year in donations in order to produce youtube videos just look at the website just look at their youtube channel you cannot take a glance at what that foundation is doing and say that this justifies a budget of 1.5 million dollars per annum when you have a finite project a finite budget you're raising money for you know how much is enough this is of profound ethical dr greger is asking for more donations right now and nobody nobody except me has stood up and said two million dollars is enough how will he know how will he know when he has enough if you keep giving him more money he'll find ways to spend it the fundraising page for dr greger's charity that seems to behave like a business from my perspective nutrition facts that are still constantly asking for donations a couple of years ago it was 1.5 million dollars then it was about 2 million now they're well over 2 million per annum and they say oh behind the scenes um we have a dozen employees well do you pay every single one of your dozen employees more than 150 000 a year really really you have a dozen employees writing that article preparing that youtube video making these vague dishonest claims with feedback really it takes a dozen really this is an organization that as it pushed from 1.5 million to 2 million to above 2 million per annum in income um you know they never had they never had the shred of intellectual integrity you would need to say the honest truth about any of these things and i've seen the damage done all right i have known people who were misled by promises that the vegan diet would cure their acne and it doesn't it doesn't work what happens what happens when you have a political movement that's based on false promises what happens when the loudest and best funded voices in your movement earn their living through over-the-top exaggerated promises and hyperbole there are a whole lot of people in the vegan movement telling you the reasonable truth about the diet about the ethics about the impact in the environment they don't have two million dollars a year to spend right i feel that we as a movement we don't have two million dollars to lose i mean really people like to disrespect my crew but the fact is that you know my name and i don't know you