An interesting fact about Dr. Atkins. He wasn't just someone who lost weight and decided to make a living telling others how to do it.
He writes that he completed his studies in Internal Medicine and Cardiology in 1963.
By 1972 he had introduced 10,000 patients to the diet and 99% of them lost weight and that's when he wrote his first book.
By 1973 he was already being attacked by AMA.
He said that the panel basically proclaimed that Dr. Atkins was not telling the truth.
He says that is when he began to question mainstream medicine,
He found recommendations for unnecessary and futile surgery, recommendations to use dangerous medications instead of safer agents, recommendations for invasive and risky diagnostic procedures that provided less information than safer tests--perhaps worst of all their total refusal to consider vita-nutrient therapies.
Once he learned how consistently people benefited from vitamins, minerals and amino acids, he sought to develop therapeutic combinations of these nutrients that would serve to replace side effects-laden pharmaceuticals.(pp34)

I'll stop here.