It appears he was!
Report: Atkins Had Heart Disease History
3 hours ago
NEW YORK - Dr. Robert Atkins, whose popular diet stresses protein-rich meat and cheese over
carbohydrates, weighed 258 pounds at his death and had a history of heart disease, a newspaper
reported Tuesday.
Atkins died last April at age 72 after being injured in a fall on an icy street.
Before his death, he had suffered a heart attack, congestive heart failure and hypertension,
The Wall Street Journal reported, citing a report by the city medical examiner.
At 258 pounds, the 6-foot-tall Atkins would have qualified as obese, according to the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention's body-mass index calculator.
Diet is one potential factor in heart disease, but infections also can contribute to it.
Last month, the diet guru's widow, Veronica Atkins, demanded an apology from Mayor Michael
Bloomberg after Bloomberg called her late husband "fat."
She told the Journal she was outraged that the report had been made public.
"I have been assured by my husband's physicians that my husband's health problems late in life
were completely unrelated to his diet or any diet," she said.
The medical examiner's report was given to the Journal by the Physicians Committee for
Responsible Medicine, a group that advocates vegetarianism.
Stuart Trager, chairman of the Atkins Physicians Council in New York, told the Journal that
Atkins' heart disease stemmed from cardiomyopathy, a condition that was thought to result from
a viral infection.
Atkins' weight was due to bloating associated with his condition and the time he spent in a
coma after his head injury, and he had been much slimmer during most of his life, Trager said.
In April 2002, a year before he died, Atkins issued a statement saying he was recovering from
cardiac arrest related to a heart infection he had suffered from "for a few years." He said it
was "in no way related to diet."
On Tuesday, the medical examiner's office would say only that Atkins died of a head injury
from the fall.
"I can't comment on people's previous conditions. It's against the law," said spokeswoman
Ellen Borakove.
Borakove said that, because of family objections to an autopsy, the medical examiner had
conducted only "an external exam" and a review of Atkins' hospital records.
She said a report had been sent to a doctor in Nebraska who requested it, and said he
apparently gave it to the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
It was later discovered that the doctor was not "the treating physician" and should not have
had access to the report, Borakove said. The medical examiner's office plans to complain to
Nebraska health officials, she said.
One of the handwritten comments in the medical examiner's report referred to "MI" (myocardial
infarction, the technical term for heart attack), the newspaper said. Trager said Atkins had
no record of having had a heart attack, saying medical histories on examiner's reports are
often written by less-experienced doctors who may not know a patient's detailed history.
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