A
physician
group
filed
a
lawsuit
against
HHS
and
the
U.S.
Department
of
Agriculture
(USDA),
alleging
that
the
government
botched
the
most
recent
dietary
guidelines.
The
suit
was
brought
by
the
Physicians
Committee
for
Responsible
Medicine
(PCRM),
a
Washington,
D.C.-based
nonprofit
founded
in
1985
that
advocates
for
plant-based
diets
and
alternatives
to
animal-based
research.
The
group
has
a
long
history
of
using
legal
pressure
to
further
their
goals.
In
their
legal
complaint,
PCRM
argues
that
HHS
and
USDA
assembled
a
“secret
panel”
that
was
“rife
with
conflicts
of
interest”
and
did
not
follow
the
long-established
process
for
updating
the
guidelines.
Ultimately,
the
group
is
asking
that
the
court
withdraw
the
current
guidelines
and
issue
new
ones
that
follow
a
process
that
is
compliant
with
the
Federal
Advisory
Committee
Act
(FACA).
“The
government
allowed
the
meat
and
dairy
industries
to
ghostwrite
the
Dietary
Guidelines,”
PCRM
President
Neal
Barnard,
MD,
said
in
a
press
release.
“They
put
money
in
industry’s
pocket
and
cholesterol
in
Americans’
arteries.”
The
dietary
guidelines
are
usually
based
on
the
work
of
the
volunteer
Dietary
Guidelines
Advisory
Committee
(DGAC).
Every
5
years,
20
nutrition
and
obesity
experts
comb
through
the
evolving
evidence
over
the
course
of
2
years
and
write
a
report
on
how
they
advise
the
government
to
update
national
guidelines.
After
they
submit
the
report,
DGAC’s
role
is
over
and
they
have
no
say
in
what
actually
changes.
While
HHS
and
USDA
are
not
required
to
follow
DGAC’s
advice,
the
government
usually
heavily
considers
the
recommendations.
DGAC
submitted
their
extensive,
400-page
scientific
report
right
as
the
second
Trump
administration
took
over
with
Robert
F.
Kennedy
Jr.
at
the
helm
of
HHS.
This
leadership
worried
some
DGAC
members,
but
others
hoped
for
the
best.
However,
last
August,
abstracts
related
to
work
done
by
DGAC
were
retracted
from
a
major
nutrition
conference,
sparking
concerns
that
2
years
of
work
producing
a
robust
scientific
report
may
be
disregarded,
sources
told
MedPage
Today
at
the
time.
Kennedy
subsequently
said
that
the
updated
guidelines
would
only
be
a
few
pages
long,
which
further
worried
DGAC
members
who
feared
their
report
would
not
be
considered
and
that
complicated
topics
would
be
overly
simplified.
When
the
2025-2030
U.S.
Dietary
Guidelines
for
Americans
were
released
in
January,
including
the
infamous
inverted
food
pyramid,
DGAC
members
told
MedPage
Today
that
the
guidelines
were
full
of
errors,
sloppy
language,
and
cherry-picked
evidence.
PCRM’s
lawsuit
further
alleges
that
HHS
and
USDA
violated
the
FACA
when
they
hand-picked
nine
members
for
a
second
panel
to
review
the
evidence
and
update
the
guidelines
without
notifying
the
public
or
adequately
vetting
conflicts
of
interest;
several
panelists
are
known
to
have
strong
ties
to
the
beef,
dairy,
and
egg
industries.
“This
is
the
first
time
in
history
since
1980,
when
the
Dietary
Guidelines
Advisory
Committee
began
informing
the
guidelines,
that
we
saw
this
lack
of
transparency,”
said
Fatima
Cody
Stanford,
MD,
MPH,
an
obesity
medicine
physician
at
Harvard
Medical
School
in
Boston,
who
served
on
the
most
recent
DGAC.
“I
think
this
really
speaks
volumes
to
what
we’re
seeing
under
this
current
administration,”
she
told
MedPage
Today.
When
the
guidelines
were
released,
Stanford
said
that
she
was
“very
disappointed
to
see
that
the
almost
2
years
of
work
that
we
put
into
the
scientific
report”
was
not
represented.
Christopher
Gardner,
PhD,
a
nutrition
expert
at
Stanford
University
in
California,
who
also
served
on
the
most
recent
DGAC,
told
MedPage
Today
that
he’s
glad
a
group
sued
the
government
over
the
guidelines.
“Standard
scientific
and
political
procedures
are
not
being
followed,
and
you
can’t
let
that
lie.
Somebody
has
to
show
outrage,”
he
said.
“People
have
spent
decades
setting
that
process
up
so
that
it’s
as
transparent
as
possible,
and
they’re
bypassing
all
of
it.”
Gardner
noted
that
some
of
the
transparency
measures
that
DGAC
were
expected
to
uphold
felt
excessive
at
times,
but
were
important
for
the
integrity
of
the
work.
For
instance,
in
the
final
stretch
of
putting
together
the
scientific
report,
Gardner
and
another
DGAC
member
wanted
to
meet
on
the
weekend
to
try
to
finish.
They
were
told
they
could
not
do
that
because
multiple
federal
staff
members
needed
to
be
present
for
discussions.
What
is
most
odd,
he
added,
is
that
Kennedy
bothered
to
create
the
second
so-called
“secret
panel”
in
the
first
place.
“It’s
well
known
that
[they]
don’t
have
to
take
our
advice
…
they
could
have
dismissed
the
whole
thing
and
said
everything
they
said,”
Gardner
noted.
So,
he
wonders,
why
did
the
administration
bother
creating
a
second
group
that
bypassed
the
usual
process
and
violated
laws?
Beyond
this
situation,
Gardner
said
that
he
fears
that
the
public
will
get
more
confused
about
who
to
listen
to
about
nutrition
and
think
that
there
isn’t
scientific
consensus.
There
is
consensus,
he
added,
but
like
much
in
the
field
of
nutrition,
it
is
nuanced
and
granular.
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