ABSTRACT
It has been said (3) that the Norwegian experience inspired perhaps the most noteworthy study of a fish-enriched diet by a practitioner, that of Dr. Avery Nelson. Dr. Nelson interrupted his medical practice in 1946 to obtain a master's degree in nutrition and biochemistry from UCLA. While there, he heard about the reduction in cardiac deaths in Norway during the war; after returning to practice in Seattle, he began in 1952 to compare the number of fatal myocardial infarctions (MI) in patients consuming his special diet, including a minimum of three meals per week of fatty fish, with those in a control group who never ate fish. The experiment lasted 19 years and was published in 1972 (4), shortly before Dr. Nelson's death. Those in the group regularly eating oily fish were only 22% as likely to have suffered a fatal MI as were those in the group never eating fish.
