Seignalet/Jean-Marie Quiquempois Debate

Review of the book “Food or the Third Medicine” by Jean-Marie Quiquempois, medical intern (at the time)

Date: Wed, Sep 30, 1998 From: Jean-Marie Quiquempois Subject: Reviews of the book “Food or the Third Medicine”

Hello After browsing your website and participating quite a bit in the fr.bio.medecine forum, here’s what I can say: Dr. Seignalet’s theory is interesting. The dietary approach to autoimmune diseases deserves further exploration. Dietary antigens could trigger a cross-reaction with self-antigens. But, and there is a “but,” several in fact, this is a rather strange approach to highlighting such promising results!

  1. Why write a book that doctors and scientists won’t read? Mr. Seignalet knows full well that doctors and scientists who stay informed read medical and scientific journals, rarely books.
  2. It is therefore surprising that Mr. Seignalet has not published on this subject in journals considered reputable by the scientific and medical community to which he belongs.

I did a Medline search on this yesterday:

The other 87 articles are in primarily national and relatively unspecialized journals. If he wants his results to be known, he needs to publish them in international journals with peer review committees. Furthermore, the Lancet contains this article from 1992, but no abstract is available! This is akin to a letter or a response to another article, but it’s a structured article in the commonly accepted way: introduction, patients and methods, results, conclusion. Furthermore, such work and results are not presented in just two pages of The Lancet, and only once in a lifetime. 3. Where is the protocol? Every clinical trial, every study, follows a well-defined protocol that reflects and ensures the rigor and reproducibility of the work. But in the book’s outline, there is no chapter on the protocol. What are the characteristics of the patients included? And what treatments did they receive? What are the efficacy criteria? How can we be certain that nothing else changed in patient care during the study? It’s crucial to understand that these are the questions the scientific and medical community will ask, because that’s where the evidence lies. The general public, in this area, will believe what they’re told, especially when presented with evidence they’ll consider proof. The general public is very gullible in this regard. And this provides a first answer to my question: why not consult the scientific community for such research? Because scientists won’t recognize this research. 4. The problem of double-blinding is very real. Whether or not it’s a placebo, double-blinding is essential. A placebo will cure 40% of stomach ulcers, while a reference molecule like a proton pump inhibitor will cure 98%. This doesn’t mean the ulcer’s surface area is reduced by 40% by the placebo; it means that in 4 out of 10 patients, 100% of the ulcer was cured. Thus, a placebo effect can lead to complete healing. Implementing a placebo is conceivable, even possible, in the case of dietary adjustments. 5. We can take the criticism even further. What proves that the patients treated with this diet are representative of all patients suffering from the same illness? How did these patients come to consult Dr. Seignalet? And here, you’re met with the argument of recruitment bias. Take 100 patients who are followers of alternative or complementary medicine; 60 will recover simply because they believe in it. The influence of the mind on the body cannot be denied. If you’re being chased by a bear and you scrape your leg on a bramble, you won’t feel it, being so busy fleeing. The mind controls, influences. Thus, one can intentionally or unintentionally select patients who would respond well to any new approach even slightly different from conventional medicine, and voilà, you’ll find the benefit. 6. So, is Dr. Seignalet a charlatan? An unconventional doctor? A true scientist? An alternative physician? No one can deny his scientific background, this revolutionary theory aside. But nowadays, it’s easy to prove you’re right if you truly are, because we have tried and tested scientific tools that objectively confirm the veracity of a hypothesis. This is one of the weaknesses of your argument, and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s not up to you to say, “This is proof I’m showing here,” that’s for the decision-makers to say. 7. I will conclude with this famous phrase, which aptly summarizes the difficulty of any true medical or scientific study: “When I order my flea to jump, it jumps. If I remove one of its legs, it jumps less well and not always; if I remove all six legs, it stops jumping altogether. Proof that if you remove all six legs from a flea, it becomes deaf!”

Jean-Marie Quiquempois Medical Resident Montpellier, October 21, 1998

Reply from Dr. Jean Seignalet

Dr. Quiquempois’s generally critical reflections inspire the following comments:

  1. The theory I defend is far more complex than a simple cross-reaction between food antigens and self-antigens. I therefore urge my correspondent not to be content with simply knowing the outline of my work, but to read it in its entirety. I would like to reiterate that I distinguish three categories of diseases primarily caused by bacterial and/or food molecules that have passed through an excessively permeable small intestine:

    1. Autoimmune diseases, induced by peptides presented to T lymphocytes by HLA molecules.
    2. Diseases of accumulation, induced by non-peptide molecules (carbohydrates, lipids, lipopolysaccharides, Maillard reaction products, etc.) that clog the extracellular and intracellular environments.
    3. Elimination diseases, linked to inflammation of the excretory organs, through which white blood cells transport harmful molecules from the blood to the outside of the body. 90% of diseases fall into one or more of these three categories.

  2. I do not have the same statistics as my correspondent regarding my publications.I haven’t written 89 articles, but 235.

The number of texts accepted by peer-reviewed journals is not 2, but 78, which makes a significant difference. These articles or books were published in reputable French journals (56 of them) and in Anglo-Saxon journals (22 of them).

All of these journals had peer review committees, some of which were quite demanding.

Here is a detailed list of these journals, with the number of articles published in each in parentheses:

  1. Presse Med. (15)

  2. Tissue Antigens (8)

  3. Sem. Hôp. Paris (7)

  4. Rev. Rhum. (6)

  5. Néphrologie (6)

  6. Nouv. Rev. Fr. Hemat. (5)

  7. Lancet (3)

  8. Transplantation (3)

  9. Rev. Franç. Trans. (3)

  10. J. Genet. Hmm. (3)

  11. Transplant. Proc. (2)

  12. Pan. Biol. (2) 13.Rev. Europe. Study. Clin. Biol. (2)

  13. Vox Sang. (1)

  14. Human Hered. (1)

  15. Dermatologica (1)

  16. N.Engl. J.Med. (1) 18.Arch. Franc. Pediatr. (1)

  17. Clin. Allergy (1)

  18. Encycl. Med. Chir. (1)

  19. Artbritis Rhenm. (1) 22.Rev. Med. Internal (1)

  20. Immunogenetics (1)

  21. Sleep (1)

  22. Ann. Dermatol. Venal. (1)

  23. J. Gynecol. Obstet. Biol. Reprod. (1)

  24. Contrary to my detractor’s assertions, my patients were treated according to well-defined protocols. He can refer to the chapter on rheumatoid arthritis in my book. There he will find all the information he needs: the number of patients, their age, sex, duration of the disease, diagnostic criteria, and the clinical and biological parameters verified before and after the diet. I have not repeated the details of this protocol, which is of interest only to physicians, in every chapter, as my book is primarily intended for the general public. However, a precise protocol was followed for each disease.

  25. It is true that I did not conduct double-blind studies, that is, a comparison of the effects of my diet with those of a placebo. This type of study was not difficult to implement, since it simply required advising certain patients to follow a diet containing dangerous foods (dairy, grains, cooked products) and excluding safe foods (bananas, oranges, for example). However, I chose not to use this method for several reasons:

    1. The patients who consult me ​​are not hospitalized, but sometimes travel from very far away and have covered hundreds of kilometers to try my method. I do not believe I have the right to prescribe them a bogus diet under the pretext of proving the effectiveness of my technique, which does not require such confirmation.
    2. Comparing a treatment with a placebo is certainly useful when the treatment has only inconsistent and partial effects. This comparison becomes irrelevant for a diet that achieves a high percentage of dramatic improvements or complete remissions in diseases considered incurable.
    3. A placebo can sometimes lead to moderate and transient improvements, mainly in psychosomatic illnesses, the importance of which has been greatly exaggerated (see the last chapter of my book on this subject). However, I have never seen a placebo produce a significant and lasting improvement in rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, asthma, Crohn’s disease, or type 2 diabetes. On the other hand, an ancestral-style diet achieves clear and definitive success in 80% of rheumatoid arthritis cases, 95% of ankylosing spondylitis cases, 90% of asthma cases, 90% of Crohn’s disease cases, and 100% of type 2 diabetes cases, provided it is started early enough. Therefore, there is no clear difference between the effectiveness of diet and the potential effectiveness of a placebo.

  26. It is true that the ideal would be to publish my work in traditional medical journals and magazines. The problem is that these journals and magazines systematically reject my articles on diet.

It is interesting to note that, as an immunologist specializing in the HLA system, I have published numerous articles in excellent journals without difficulty. I don’t believe I suddenly became incompetent by moving from immunology to dietetics.

The explanation, in my opinion, is quite simple. There is a prevailing ideology in medicine, as there is in other fields, such as politics or agriculture. My immunology work appealed to the readers (AP note: “review committees”) of journals because it aligned with this prevailing ideology. My research on diets, however, is criticized because it falls outside the framework of this prevailing ideology, which holds that certain diseases have an incomprehensible mechanism and are treated with medication, even if these medications fail to cure them.

Proposing a logical mechanism for many diseases and a treatment based on a simple diet, which is very often successful, is a message that is unacceptable to proponents of “classicism.” The scientific community my correspondent refers to is, in my opinion, not at all scientific. An expression of disbelief might be understandable in religion, but not in medicine. The only scientific approach is experimentation. But those who criticize me are careful not to conduct this experimentation themselves. I have all the information they need to carry out double-blind studies in a hospital setting, if that pleases them.

Since this information hasn’t been published in medical journals, it seemed logical to write a book. It’s important that the many patients know that there is a method that can often help them. Whatever my critic may think, this book has been read by quite a few doctors, especially homeopaths and acupuncturists, but also by a fair number of allopathic doctors. In fact, about ten allopathic doctors have benefited from my method for various ailments they suffered from.

While hospital physicians have largely ignored my work, a significant number of private doctors use the ancestral diet as a therapeutic approach and have achieved the same successes as I have.

My records and testimonials from numerous satisfied patients are available to anyone who truly wishes to explore what should be the ideal of every physician: understanding the mechanisms of disease and curing the sick.

Dr. Jean Seignalet Immunology Laboratory, St. Eloi Hospital, Montpellier