Diet doctor Atkins obese when he died
Associated Press  - February 10, 2004

Chealth.canoe.ca - 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. An Atkins spokesman said the doctor's condition, including his weight gain, stemmed from viral-induced heart problems.

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 six-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's heart disease stemmed from cardiomyopathy, a condition that was thought to result from a viral infection.

Atkins's 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's 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.