Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site spdcc.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!ihnp4!spdcc!dyer
From: dyer@spdcc.UUCP (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.med,net.consumers
Subject: Re: Warning are sought on Vitamin Supplements
Message-ID: <28@spdcc.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 5-Mar-86 18:12:35 EST
Article-I.D.: spdcc.28
Posted: Wed Mar  5 18:12:35 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Mar-86 06:37:04 EST
References: <239@bu-cs.UUCP>
Reply-To: dyer@spdcc.UUCP (Steve Dyer)
Organization: S.P. Dyer Computer Comsulting, Cambridge MA
Lines: 42
Xref: watmath net.med:3525 net.consumers:4439

>The article quoted almost sounds reasonable, then you hit a paragraph like
>this. Of course vitamins prevent disease (scurvy, rickets, beri-beri),
>they just don't prevent some diseases. I hope if the FDA labels, they be
>specific somehow, probably by providing what is known in a positive way
>rather than a negative statement like this ("won't prevent disease")
>which is rather hard to, er, swallow.

Sorry, Barry, but I don't agree.  Diseases like beri-beri and scurvy
are deficiency diseases, and in the context of modern western diets,
simply don't exist without something else being terribly wrong (e.g.,
chronic alcoholism.)  You might as well argue (and it would be a good
argument) that a well-balanced diet prevents deficiency diseases.
Certainly, the point that Craig was making is that "vitamin supplements"
as opposed to the particular chemicals, vitamins, which are found
naturally in food, do not prevent disease.  This sounds like semantic
cavilling, but I think it's an important distinction, and it is the
crucial point which is used by the hucksters and mavens to get the
credulous and uneducated to fork out money.

For the average non-3rd-world person, and that includes the seemingly-poorly-
fed hacker as well as the nutrition maven, taking vitamin supplements will not
prevent such deficiency diseases from occurring, because they would never
have occurred anyway.  It is very difficult to produce a clinically significant
vitamin deficiency, except in carefully controlled, long-term experimental
situations, or, as in the case of pellagra, scurvy, or beri-beri, where
environmental conditions were such that the everyday diet was CONSISTENTLY
missing essential nutrients for many months or years, as is seen in populations
whose primary sources of calories are corn (pellagra) or polished rice
(beri-beri), or where citrus and other fruits are lacking (scurvy).  In a
real sense, these kind of diseases are aberrations, "man-made" by dietary
limitations due to convention or culture (pellagra) or through technological
change (beri-beri, after the introduction of steam-powered milling machines)
or by enforced dietary restrictions (scurvy among sailors at sea.)

Of course, the vitamin pushers and addicts really aren't talking about
such old-world scourges as beri-beri and pellagra when they talk about
preventing disease.  Rather, they allude to a hazy "wellness" which can't
be measured or quantified or studied.
-- 
Steve Dyer
dyer@harvard.HARVARD.EDU
{bbncca,bbnccv,harvard}!spdcc!dyer