Washington, DC – This week the journal Pediatrics published an anti-dairy “review article” from the misnamed Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), an animal rights group masquerading as a medical charity. Incredibly, PCRM’s authors declared that they held “no conflict of interest” when submitting their article to the medical journal.
Today the Center for Consumer Freedom called on PCRM’s leaders to stop misleading Americans and their doctors, and come clean about their animal-rights motives for attacking milk and other dairy foods. PCRM has previously run television ads recklessly claiming that milk consumption leads to prostate cancer.
In 2002 PCRM issued a series of statements claiming that Harvard University research documented a connection between milk consumption and cancer. But Dr. Daniel Cramer, whose research PCRM cited, later told reporters that the group misrepresented his work. “I think that particular group has their own sort of agenda, of not wanting milk production around, and cows to be utilized,” Dr. Cramer said. “They want everybody to be vegetarians.”
PCRM has well-documented ties to the animal rights movement, including over $1.3 million in financing from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). PCRM president Neal Barnard, a non-practicing psychiatrist, also serves as president of the PETA Foundation and PETA’s “medical advisor.” During a Food and Drug Administration hearing in 2003, Barnard derisively called cheese “morphine on a cracker” and “dairy crack.”
“Despite its name, the ‘Physicians Committee’ is not a legitimate health charity,” said David Martosko, director of research at the Center for Consumer Freedom. “PCRM is made up of virulent animal rights activists, intent on abusing Americans’ good will toward pediatricians in the pursuit of ‘animal liberation.’ PCRM’s constant demands for a dairy-free America are rooted in an animal-rights philosophy, not a concern for children’s health.”
“PCRM’s goal is the same as PETA’s,” Martosko added: “to remove milk, yogurt, and cheese from children’s diets — regardless of what good science has to say on the subject. In this latest bit of junk science, PCRM cherry-picked which studies it would look at — guaranteeing an animal-rights-friendly conclusion.”
To read the “Seven things you didn’t know about PCRM,” visit www.ConsumerFreedom.com.