Dean Ornish

Personal background

Ornish, a native of Dallas, Texas, is a graduate of Dallas's Hillcrest High School. He holds a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude in Humanities from the University of Texas at Austin, where he gave the baccalaureate address. He earned his MD from the Baylor College of Medicine, was a Clinical Fellow in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and completed a medical internship and residency at Massachusetts General Hospital (1981–1984).

Professional background

Ornish is known for his lifestyle-driven approach to the control of coronary artery disease (CAD) and other chronic diseases. He promotes lifestyle changes including a whole foods, plant-based diet, smoking cessation, moderate exercise, stress management techniques including yoga and meditation, and psychosocial support. Ornish does not follow a strict vegetarian diet and recommends fish oil supplements; the program additionally allows for the occasional consumption of other animal products.

From the 1970s through the 1990s, Ornish and others researched the impact of diet and stress levels on people with heart disease. The research, published in peer-reviewed journals, became the basis of the Ornish's "Program for Reversing Heart Disease." It combined diet, meditation, exercise and support groups, and in 1993 became the first non-surgical, non-pharmaceutical therapy for heart disease to qualify for insurance reimbursement. With the exception of chiropractic care, it was the first alternative medical technique, not taught in traditional medical school curriculums, to gain approval by a major insurance carrier.

Ornish worked with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for 16 years to create a new coverage category called intensive cardiac rehabilitation (ICR), which focuses on comprehensive lifestyle changes. In 2010, Medicare began to reimburse costs for Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease, a 72-hour ICR for people who have had heart attacks, chest pain, heart valve repair, coronary artery bypass, heart or lung bypass, or coronary angioplasty or stenting. In addition to the Ornish program, Medicare and Medicaid pay for ICR programs created by the Pritkin Longevity Center and by the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Ornish has been a physician consultant to former President Bill Clinton since 1993, when Ornish was first asked by Hillary Clinton to consult with the chefs at The White House, Camp David, and Air Force One. In 2010, after the former President's cardiac bypass grafts became clogged, Clinton, encouraged by Ornish, followed a mostly plant-based diet.

In 2011, Barack Obama appointed Ornish to the Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health.

Controversy

In March 2015, The New York Times published "The Myth of High-Protein Diets," an article by Ornish critical of diets high in animal fats and proteins. Science and health writer Melinda Wenner Moyer responded to Ornish in Scientific American; in it, she criticized Ornish's research and dietary recommendations, saying he used what she considered to be misleading statistics. Her article elicited a lengthy response from Ornish, who defended his position by citing a number of research studies, saying that she was mistaken regarding the statistics he had cited, and identifying serious flaws in the studies she said conflicted with his claims. In reply, Moyer wrote another article critical of Ornish's arguments, concluding: "Ornish’s diet would probably be an improvement on the current American diet—if people could actually follow it long-term. But his claims about the dangers of saturated fat and red meat go beyond the science and in some cases contradict it."^{(links to the article and previous replies)}