Ah, the health gurus!  What a fascinating Rorschach test they are, tidily
polarizing us into to two camps -- those who Bless the gurus and those who
Damn them.  Now our esteemed Moderator, despite a few grudging concessions
to the gurus, maligns them in a way that cries out for reply.

Peter, it is curious to note your defensive posture on behalf of Kirt.  He
is well able to speak for himself, as we know.  Perhaps he had good reason
for letting me go uncontested when I pointed out his recent (as you term
it) "ideological u-turn."  Kirt's change of heart is a fact, Peter, not an
baseless barb on my part as you suggest.  Having withdrawn an adulatory
book manuscript about Burger and two other gurus, Kirt now, as I understand
it, styles himself an "ex-Instincto."  When you suggest I was unfair to
him, you are unfair to me.

Next you declare that fasting, for "most people," has done more harm than
good.  On what evidence?  Knowing you to be open-minded and scientific, I
recommend a credible fasting book like the one by Joel Furhmann, M.D.  So
respectable is he that the famous Dr. Dean Ornish has referred "difficult
cases" to him, according to a cover blurb.  [Fuhrmann, /Fasting and Eating
for Health -- A Medical Doctor's Program for Conquering Disease"/: St.
Martin's, 1995, 255 pp., thoroughly footnoted.]

Does it surprise you to know that Kirt, whose independent-mindedness you
applaud, endorsed fasting?  In his 1997 manuscript, he ranked it second to
Burger's Instinctotherapy -- his gold standard in those days.

In your zeal to tar the gurus, Peter, they can't win for losing.  When
their ideas are not eccentric and unproved, they are old-hat and unoriginal
-- Catch-22!  You write, for example,

        << Many before Ehret were aware of the connection between diet and health. >>

Maybe so, but it was charismatic gurus like Ehret, not doctors and
scientists, who brought this life-changing message home to me -- and to
many others.  Yet when we testify to our transformed lives, you brush it off:

        << I fear you are a part of a minority and that most [would have done
better on] different paths. >>

The gurus, you complain, have "a chip on their shoulder" (necessary,
perhaps, to defy Establishment dogma?) and they are "dangerous."  So Peter,
shall we repudiate the gurus and trust YOUR advice instead?

Just like Kirt, all of us need to learn the fine art of honoring a teacher
without lapsing into cultic servility ... or its flip side, jaded cynicism.
 Sure there are mountebanks and quacks (even in the AMA!).  But inspiring,
charismatic teachers have opened doors and turned lives around.

Join me, Peter, as several others have done, in the toast I raise again:
Three cheers for the health gurus and the beacons they light for us all!
May we never follow them blindly, but may their tribe prosper.

C.