Noakes suspected Rossouw was flown out to Cape Town by the Heart Foundation ‘and other bodies’ to silence him because he’d been asking inconvenient questions. He believes the entire statin industry feels threatened by the possibility that his radical departure from conventional scientific wisdom might hold water. Both his assertions were vigorously denied by the debate convenors and Rossouw.
Debate convenor and UCT-based Associate Director of the multi-campus collaboration, the Chronic Diseases Initiative in Africa, Krisela Steyn, said she bumped into her former colleague Rossouw during an academic visit to Washington last year. Conversation turned to Noakes’ nutritional theory. ‘He expressed alarm and mentioned that he was coming out to visit family in Cape Town in December.
I simply asked whether he was prepared to take part in a UCT debate on the issue – and he agreed.’ She said the highly informed debate audience on the night applauded Noakes’ antagonists (Noakes presented first) because what he was saying was ‘inappropriate’. Fresh from lectures on diet where he had audiences ‘spell-bound’ at the Mandela Metro University in Port Elizabeth and Rhodes University in Grahamstown, Noakes was under no illusion that Cape Town would be different.
He told Izindaba he spent two months preparing his presentation, topped off by a run just before delivery to settle any nerves. ‘I’m not saying everybody agreed with me [in the two lectures preceding the UCT debate] but they at least accepted I had a point. One person later tweeted, “I’m going to destroy Noakes”. It’s fine if this [UCT] audience really are my peers. What have they done in science? What evidence is there that they are open to new ideas? What evidence is there that they’ve put out anything new and creative, and what evidence is there that they’ve been right? I’ve been right in everything that I’ve put out, with at least four or five major controversies – and I’ve been right on every one,’ he simmered two days after the debate.
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