Last week, Washington, DC Mayor Tony Williams announced a plan to pose for a “Got Milk?” advertisement and designate May 11 “Drink Chocolate Milk Day.” Most of Our Nation’s Capital responded positively, and local television news reports openly praised the plan. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), however, was nonplussed. PCRM’s leader, Neal Barnard, has blamed milk and dairy products for prostate cancer, as well as “asthma, anemia, allergies, juvenile-onset diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and ovarian and breast cancer.” Barnard’s disdain for dairy products is extreme enough to have been publicly denounced by the American Medical Association, the National Osteoporosis Foundation, and the National Council for Reliable Health Information. In particular, the AMA passed a formal resolution in 1991 calling on him to stop “the unethical tactics [his] organization uses to manipulate public opinion.”
