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Brot Krankheit
Published by the Royal Lee Foundation in conjunction with an excerpt from the book Harvey W. Wiley–An Autobiography, February 1960.
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We reprint Dr. Harvey W. Wiley’s story (from his Autobiography) of how he unsuccessfully tried to enforce the 1906 Pure Food Law as applied to coal tar dyes, the adulteration of flour with bleach chemicals, and the addition of habit-forming drugs to soft drinks.
The commercial interests that were violating the law were too powerful politically to be disturbed by Dr. Wiley. In fact, they seem to be still too powerful to be disturbed, since the practices are still going on.
Flour is still being poisoned with bleach chemicals, in spite of such uncontrovertible proof as we offer in the way of the article we have added “Brot Krankheit,” in which we have omitted the author’s name to avoid embarrassing him professionally. (Organized Medicine and organized Dentistry have ways of punishing their members who tell the truth where food racketeers are involved. The food racketeers apparently have both these organizations well in hand). (The dentists for instance are forced to avoid criticizing the fluoride campaign on penalty of losing their membership in their own Association; although Dr. McCay at Cornell has conclusively demonstrated that one part per million of fluoride in water causes rats to lose their teeth and develop diseased kidneys as they reach old age).
It would be a mighty feat to clean up the flour situation. Flour can only be wholesome if freshly ground and immediately made into bread. Fresh flour is as perishable as fresh milk, and no centralized milling could exist if the people were to get honest flour. It would have to be made in every community just as milk is supplied locally.
(We suggest you read the book Graham On Bread, available from Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, Milwaukee 1, Wisconsin; Price $1.50. The author analyzed the situation in 1835–it was bad then–worse today. 750,000 people a year are dying of heart disease, and we spend a billion and a half dollars a year on tooth repair, a primary factor being our low quality bread.) (In India the incidence of tooth decay is ONE PERSON IN EIGHTY. Here our drafted men have an average of 15 cavities each).
The oils in flour become rancid in a few weeks. These rancid oils are carcinogenic and destructive to liver cells. How much these toxic effects are enhanced by the bleach, Dr. X can only estimate in his article “Brot Krankheit”…
–ROYAL LEE–Feb. 1960
I have recently observed many patients that have improved subjectively and objectively within a period of a few weeks after the elimination of bread and chemically treated flour from their diets. Some of these patients had chronic systemic lupus erythematosus, and others had chronic eczematoid dermatitis of unknown etiology.
On the hypothetical assumption that bread and flour, as consumed in this country, contain one or several noxious products that could be either a major or contributing cause of illness, we are continuing these investigations.
Despite the fact that in 1947, three separate and distinct articles on the use of agene (nitrogen trichloride) appeared in the November 22 issue of the J.A.M.A., little has appeared since in the American literature on this subject. Nitrogen trichloride for twenty-five years or more prior to 1947 was the primary maturing agent used by millers of white flour. About this time its toxicity for dogs, producing convulsions and death, was clearly demonstrated. This was considered sufficiently important that a special article by B. P. Dunbar, Commissioner of Food and Drugs, of the Federal Security Agency, in this issue of the J.A.M.A., recommended a reduction in the use of agene to a minimum, and supposedly seven years later, this has been accomplished.
In its place chlorine dioxide (Dyox) is now the commonly used maturing and bleaching agent for commercial flours. In the same issue of the J.A.M.A. (1947) an article appeared by Newell, Erickson, et.al., from the University of Wisconsin, demonstrating that nitrogen trichloride treated flours produced canine hysteria or running fits or convulsions in dogs, but that other oxidizing agents, such as chlorine dioxide, benzoyl peroxide, chlorine, nitrogen peroxide, and methyldichloromine, could be substituted without harmful effect on experimental animals.
In the same issue of the J.A.M.A. an article by Capt. Maurice Silver, et. al. indicated that agene or nitrogen trichloride for the previous twenty-five years has been used in 90% of all the white wheat flour produced in North America and England. Up to this particular time, apparently there had been no report of the noxious effect of agene in humans, either in this country or in England.
The detailed report, therefore, which appeared in the March 21, 1953, issue of The Lancet, by Sheldon and Yorke, in which they beautifully described and graphically incriminated as the etiological agent in a single case of widespread dermatitis coupled with profound depression in the same patient, bread made from flour treated with both agene and chlorine dioxide is of paramount importance: An abstract of this report is available in the Yearbook of Dermatology and Syphilology, by Sulzberger and Baer. It is fitting that this abstract is the first under the category of “Drug Eruptions” and is to be found on page 160. This particular case report is important, not only because it demonstrates clearly the noxious effect of maturing agents. when added to flour and consumed by humans (nitrogen trichloride and chlorine dioxide) but it also centered the attention of Lord Teviot on the broad general topic of adulteration of food, which he brought to the attention of the House of Lords in England, June 10, 1953, and was published in the British Medical Journal, June 20, 1953. (Note the close proximity of dates relative to the spoken and the printed word.)
Particularly significant is the fact that even though agene-containing flours were known to be toxic for experimental animals in 1947, in both England and this country, steps were taken only gradually in both countries to eliminate the use of this particular maturing agent. Even today we have only partial assurance that the use of agene has been completely discontinued by the milling industry in this country or in England.
Despite the fact that I have been assured by representatives of a company that makes and sells both nitrogen trichloride and chlorine dioxide to the major millers of this country that it is doubtful that agene-treated flours are in use in this country today, he freely admitted that it is still used by some millers in the treatment of flour for the export trade. The use of agene, or nitrogen trichloride, is preferred by the milling industry to the use of chlorine dioxide because it yields a better flour for commercial breadmaking purposes, and it is cheaper to use than chlorine dioxide. When one considers the keen competition that exists in this country between the large chain bakeries, one is tempted to speculate as to the possibility of agene-treated flour still being used by some large commercial bakeries.
If it produces a loaf of bread that looks better, particularly if the bakers can buy the flour a few cents cheaper per sack, treated with agene rather than chlorine dioxide, the inference is clear!
Considering these factors, it is entirely possible that even today some of the bread consumed in the United States may contain the noxious product produced by agene. Its use by the milling industry conceivably could have been reduced from 90% to 10% during this period of readjustment from 1947 to date. Furthermore, certain types of grain cannot be satisfactorily used for the production of flour by the use of other oxidizing agents, presumably in most instances chlorine dioxide, whereas a perfectly satisfactory flour for baking purposes would result from these grains if treated with agene.
In addition to these possibilities, the flour chemists in this country and many other interested parties in this country and in England are firm in their belief that agene-treated flours are innoxious to human beings.
A feeble attempt to prove its lack of noxious effect resulted in an article in which a sum total of three epileptic patients were fed on agene-treated bread for a period of time. It was stated that all of these three patients ate one half their own body weight of this particular bread and that there was no increase in the tendency to convulsions in these three patients. Based on this experiment, it was concluded that agene-treated flours and bread made therefrom was innoxious for the human animal and that its toxicity was specific only for the dog, the rabbit, and the ferret. Significantly “questionable toxicity” is admitted in monkeys.
The toxic product produced by agene-treated flours has been crystallized by Moran and his colleagues at Saint Albans in the Cereals Research Station of the Research Association of British Flour Millers. This work was done by Bentley, McDermott, Pace, Whitehead, and Moran, and reported in 1950 in Nature. Further investigation on the convulsive effect of this crystalline substance was reported in Nature, May 12, 1951, by the Research Department of Boots Pure Drug Company, Ltd., Nottingham, by Broom, Gurde, and Harmer. Interestingly enough, both English investigative groups used rabbits weighing from 600 to 800 gms. as the experimental animal. The Saint Albans group reported that the convulsive dose in these rabbits was 2 mg. of the levo rotary compound and 5 mg. of the dextro levo rotary compound (90% convulsant). The Nottingham group, in repeating these experiments, found that some rabbits tolerated as much as 18 mg. of the dextro levo rotary compound and that in others the convulsions in rabbits were delayed. The Nottingham group of investigators concluded that the reason several times the dose of the crystalline noxious substance was required to produce convulsions in rabbits in their series, as compared with the Saint Albans series, was that for their rabbits in Nottingham the diet included green stuff, whereas the Saint Albans rabbits had none of this in their diet. Furthermore, the green stuff contained a protective substance, quite possibly levo glutamine.
One is prone to speculate at this particular point that possibly bread contains a noxious substance, which in small quantities has a marked adverse effect on patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. I can recall over twenty years ago a report on the beneficial effect of a diet used in the treatment of lupus erythematosus consisting almost exclusively of green vegetables, reported by Ayres and Anderson. In addition, the Welsh treatment for lupus erythematosus, using large amounts of Vitamin E and calcium pantothenate in the treatment of lupus erythematosus might conceivably offer some protective mechanism against the toxicity of substances found in bread in patients with lupus erythematosus. Admittedly, this may be specious reasoning, but I believe it is justified considering our lack of knowledge with respect to the cause and management of lupus erythematosus and other illnesses that seem to have a systemic origin or unknown identity.
CASE REPORT: We have had a white female, age 27, under our care and observation for the past three years. The diagnosis of chronic systemic lupus erythematosus has been confirmed on two occasions by demonstration of the L. E. phenomena in two different institutions. Three episodes occurred that were, in our opinion, rather significant. The first occurred before coming under our care at which time she was given ACTH therapy, which had to be promptly discontinued because of its paradoxical effect. During this episode she almost died. The second interesting episode was that during a period of ten months, changing her residence from Dallas to Colorado Springs, she made marked objective and subjective improvement with practically no supportive therapy while in Colorado. Upon returning to Dallas, within two weeks most of the usual symptoms recurred, including elevation of temperature, extreme weakness, fatigue and muscular aches and pains. A recent cautious attempt at therapy with hydrocortisone, given orally, 40 mg. daily, again had to be discontinued on the third day because of an exacerbation of all symptoms and signs, extreme prostration and inability to turn over in bed. These symptoms disappeared within five or six days after the cessation of hydrocortisone therapy. Subsequently, upon the elimination of all bread and flour from her diet recently this patient improved within a period of three days, subjectively and objectively, in a dramatic manner unprecedented during her three years’ illness. She volunteered information in retrospect that eating of prepared biscuit had on three occasions, within 12 to 24 hours, necessitated complete bed rest because of exacerbation of temperature and pain. Both the patient and I are completely convinced that in her particular case there is some noxious agent in bakery bread and flour to which she promptly (within 24 hours or less) reacts adversely, and from which she recovers spontaneously in a period of three to eight days. Unadulterated wholewheat flour muffins were tolerated by her without ill effect.
An article by P. J. Costa and B. D. Bonniecastle of the Department of Pharmacology at Yale University appeared in Archives Internationales de Pharmacodynamie et de Therapy, 1952, September 15 issue, page 330. These investigators used dogs in their studies and produced convulsions by the oral administration of agenized zein in 100% within two days. There were 18 dogs in the control series. They found that desoxycorticosterone acetate administered daily, and progesterone administered daily minimized the convulsions produced by the agenized zein. In addition, the daily administration of ACTH and Cortisone intensified the convulsive seizures and increased mortality rate in their dogs. They further state that status epilepticus has been produced by both ACTH and Cortisone in non-epileptics and that dilantin sodium produces a degeneration of the adrenal cortex in rats and suggested that its action in human epilepsy could be by depressing the adrenal cortex. It appears from these studies that the steroid hormones, at least in dogs, intensifies the convulsive effect of the noxious product produced by agene.
If part of the symptomology of systemic lupus was produced or aggravated by noxious products obtained from eating bread in the patient described above, there seems to be a logical explanation for the paradoxic effect of steroid therapy in her particular case.
Despite certain experimental data that tend to exonerate chlorine dioxide as being provocative of producing a noxious product when used as the maturing agent in flour, it is a little difficult to exonerate this particular oxidizing agent completely. F. H. Lewey from the Laboratory of Neuroanatomy and Neurosurgery of the Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania published in the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology in 1950, page 396, his experiments using agene and chlorine dioxide-treated flours fed to dogs. The dogs died from convulsions following the agene-treated flour ingestion and he demonstrated a liquefaction necrosis deep in the cortex, particularly in the region of the Hippocampus, and in addition changes in the cerebellum, microscopically. He noted that chlorine dioxide was not toxic for dogs, even when used in the 100 times normal amount. These negative findings in dogs supposedly exonerating chlorine dioxide which now purportedly is the commonly used maturing agent for flours in this country have two weaknesses. The case reports in the Lancet by Sheldon and Yorke clearly indicated that all of the symptoms were reproducible when bread was eaten that was made from flour that contained only chlorine dioxide as the maturing agent. In addition, one must remember that it took over twenty-five years of the general use of agene before the scientists of this country and Great Britain discovered that a noxious substance was produced which caused running fits in dogs (canine epilepsy-canine hysteria), as of 1947. In addition, six more years elapsed before the first evidence of the noxious effect in human beings was reported by Sheldon and Yorke. Perhaps it will take another 25 or 30 years to completely evaluate the safety of chlorine dioxide as a maturing agent in flour. This thought has been implied by several investigators in this field.
Summary
Until the exact status of possible noxious or poisonous substances found in bread and flour today can be completely evaluated it seems to be a wise and simple expedient to eliminate bread and flour from the diet of patients with lupus erythematosus and other illnesses in which systemic toxins are suspected. This can easily be done for a test period of from two to three weeks, with the possibility that subjective and objective improvement will result in such a definite manner that it will serve as a guide to management of this intricate and puzzling problem in medicine.