Mayor Bloomberg's Atkins Diet, Death Quips

JANUARY 21--New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is apparently a conspiracy theorist when it comes to the circumstances of Dr. Robert Atkins's death last April. Bloomie, it seems, ain't buying the story that the anti-carb diet guru died as a result of injuries sustained during a fall on an icy Manhattan street. During a lunchtime photo op yesterday at a Brooklyn firehouse, Bloomberg announced, "I don't believe that bullshit that [Atkins] dropped dead slipping on the sidewalk." The 61-year-old billionaire added that Atkins was "fat" and served "inedible" food at his Hamptons home when Bloomberg visited. The mayor's inference, of course, was that Atkins was actually felled by his meat-heavy diet, that his arteries were clogged with beef drippings. However, if Bloomberg had just checked with his own Department of Health, the pol would have discovered that Atkins's death certificate (which you'll find below) chalked up the "immediate cause" of the doc's demise to "blunt impact injury of head with epidural hematoma." (1 page)