To watch anti-wheat messiah Dr. William Davis rhyme off disease after disease supposedly caused by the consumption of wheat during last week’s episode of CBC’s the Fifth Estate was to be left in absolute incredulity.
He compared wheat merchants to cigarette companies.
He claimed wheat causes more than 70 percent of all diseases, including various cancers, high blood pressure, schizophrenia and dementia.
He claimed wheat has killed more people than all of the wars in the world combined.
And no one knows this but him. Not the hundreds of thousands of scientists who have spent lifetimes and billions of dollars studying these diseases. They are all wrong.
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It’s true that those with celiac disease should avoid wheat, but ex-perts throughout the show ably debunked Davis’s hysterical claims. Legitimate medical and scientific organizations don’t support him.
Still, he has sold almost three million books in more than 30 countries. His style of “guruism,” as it’s become known, is dangerous to farmers. Enough of this hype, which includes high-profile celebrities, can eventually prompt politicians to act.
Davis claims modern wheat proteins have been genetically modified to the point that they work like heroin.
And we’re all hooked. Dr. Oz, who’s had his own problems with credibility of late, accommodates him on his popular TV show.
Fifth Estate host Mark Kelley cited a University of Saskatchewan study that found the protein in wheat hasn’t changed much over the last 80 years. It’s not heroin.
Davis’s claims are largely anecdotal, which scientists say is no science at all.
Yet it’s surprising how quickly politics can overtake real science.
So it’s worth reading Michael Raine’s story on page 30 this week from the AG Issues forum in Phoenix, Arizona, in which Jim Blome, president of Bayer Crop Science, beseeched farmers to take part in a process of public education, what he calls “agvocacy.”
It’s an awkward word, but farmers would do well to embrace it before politics gets in the way.
