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| Farber | Few today remember the controversies over scurvy and pellagra, which, until the discovery of vitamin C and niacin, were blamed by the medical establishment on mysterious infectious agents. Those who pointed out, even before they knew the cause, that dietary changes cured both conditions were dismissed as flat-earthers. |
| Gallo | Footnote 15 refers to the scientific consensus on scurvy being overturned when it was finally realised that it was due to a vitamin C deficiency. The implication is that this is similar to the case of HIV. Our present-day understanding of HIV and AIDS results from the efforts of thousands of scientists publishing tens of thousands of studies over 25 years. No other disease in history has been studied in this depth. It would require the exposure of an unprecedented conspiracy or duping for the scientific consensus on HIV as the cause of AIDS and the benefits of ARVs to be overturned. This is absurdly implausible. ARVs are probably more studied than any other class of drugs. Comparing HIV science to the history of scurvy is misleading and silly. Furthermore, the link between vitamin C and scurvy was definitively discovered in the 1930s, at the onset of the modern era of medical research. Scientific method in medicine has developed dramatically since then. Furthermore, Farber provides no reference for those proposing citrus fruit as a remedy for scurvy being dismissed as flat-earthers. Although scurvy was not properly understood until the 1930s, as early as the 17th century the surgeon general of the British East India Company suggested using fresh food including oranges, limes etc. as a preventative measure. This soon became standard practice in the British Royal Navy.92 But Farber is also highly selective. She fails to mention the successes of pharmaceutical products in medical science. These include the numerous infections treated by penicillin, treatments for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer etc. These treatments have had a substantial effect on improved life-expectancy since the 20th century. |
| RA | Scurvy and Pellagra are both excellent examples of vitamin deficiencies for which an infectious theory was promoted by the medical establishment for decades after the correct cause had been identified. The Gallo document claims that scurvy “soon became standard practice”, but it was not actually for several decades: “Lind’s theory of vitamin intake to combat scurvy was not used in Britain until 40 years after its development, and in America, it only caught on after 100 years” [1] The Gallo document does not mention Pellagra, a Vitamin B deficiency, perhaps because they are aware that even the National Institutes of Health admits that even though the true cause was identified by a US Public Health Service physician, Dr. Goldberger, his findings were not accepted for more than a decade from his experimental proof in 1914 until after his death in 1929. [2] A surgeon with the US Public Health Service, Dr. Goldberger was a firm adherent of the germ theory of disease. However, based on his own observations and also on his reading of Italian researchers, he came to doubt that pellagra was a communicable disease. In 1914 the diet of southern poor was cornpone. Goldberg suspected that the cause was dietary, so he had shipments of meat, milk and vegetables shipped to two Mississippi orphanages and the Georgia State Asylum. Those already afflicted recovered, and no new cases developed. Although the results seemed to prove that the standard corn-based diet was the cause of pellagra, he needed further proof. That is, he had to first cause and then cure the disease. The inmates of Mississippi’s Rankin State Prison Farm were free of pellagra. They grew a range of crops, and they ate what they grew. Eleven inmates, with the inducement of a full pardon, agreed to participate in Goldberg’s experiment. They were switched to a corn-based diet, and within five months, they developed pellagra rashes. Returned to their normal diet, they recovered. Despite the integrity of Goldberg’s research, the scientific community largely rejected it. It not only challenged the mainstream view that pellagra was caused by “the pellagra germ,” it also threatened cultural sensibilities and the sharecropper economic system of the American south. To counter his critics Goldberger and several of his supporters injected the blood of people with pellagra into themselves, swabbed their noses and throats with mucous from people with pellagra and swallowed capsules made with pellagra rashes. Nobody got pellagra. Goldberger’s findings were never accepted in his lifetime. Although a bona fide medical hero, he was regarded as a pariah until well after his death. |
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