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From: dyer@harvard.UUCP (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.veg
Subject: Re: vitamin B-12, evil from vitamin pills?????
Message-ID: <701@harvard.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 11-Feb-86 00:40:21 EST
Article-I.D.: harvard.701
Posted: Tue Feb 11 00:40:21 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 12-Feb-86 21:06:41 EST
References: <1033@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Organization: Aiken Comp Lab, Harvard
Lines: 31
Summary: hogwash, um, wheatwash?

> >     One final word of warning:  don't get your B-12 from vitamin
> > supplements!  These contain breakdown products of B-12 (technic-
> > ally referred to as "B-12 analogues") that actually have an anti-
> > B-12 effect!
>
> What?  Expand on this, please.  Do you actually mean that taking
> this stuff leaves you worse off than before?  (And all these years
> I thought one-a-day was protecting my spinal column, or whatever it
> is that a B-12 deficiency hits....)

I suppose there is more legitimacy for such silliness here in net.veg
rather than in net.med, where such statements would be quickly be given
the heave-ho they deserve.  Still it pains me to see the factoids that
my dopplenetter is passing off as facts.  Poor Karen has probably
received more damage from Jym's comments on B-12 than her lifetime of
prophylactic vitamin taking (you know, her adrenalin rises, causing
all sorts of poisons to accumulate, the organism is in a state of fear,
rather like a bull before it's slaughtered or a fish hooked and...)
Too bad he isn't clued in on the moral implications of network posting.

Is this the equivalent of Rich Rosen loitering in net.religion.christian?
I think not, and I hope not, because both Jym and I are making comments
which are subject to objective scrutiny.  You'll be hard pressed to find
any such "anti-B-12" elements in any multivitamin preparation, not for
that matter have our B-12-producing intestinal flora decreased since Pasteur's
day (at least for the majority of us who are not taking antibiotics at
any point in time.)
-- 
/Steve Dyer
dyer@harvard.harvard.edu
harvard!dyer