Access to all articles, new health classes, discounts in our store, and more!
Why V – P Vitamin Products Are Not Offered For Council Acceptance
Published in Vitamin News, Vol. 7, 1939.
* * *
This question is often asked us. There are several reasons why we do not want to obtain this endorsement.
The first is that we do not want to be under the restriction that requires that any therapeutic claims be in accordance with the consensus of medical opinion. We insist in our right to publicly state the facts about the uses of our products now, and not twenty years from the date of their discovery, for it takes that long for the “consensus” to accept new things that are revolutionary by nature.
For example, we pioneered in telling the profession about the value of vitamins in treating heart conditions. The consensus of medical opinion even at this late day, for example, is that “there is no connection between vitamins and heart disease, and no vitamin product is of any value in treating heart conditions.” That Is the statement made by the best experts the Food and Drug Department was able to assemble to aid in the prosecution of the manufacturer of a vitamin product in a recent case.
Pages 126 (a) and 126 (b) of Vitamin News herewith attached indicate how far wrong these so-called “experts” were.
Pasteur was ridiculed for twenty years, because his ideas were so revolutionary. The truth means nothing to the “expert.” He will believe nothing, and accept nothing, that does not carry an explanation that fits his preconceived theories. WE HAVE FACTS TO OFFER THAT NEED NO APOLOGIES. WE OFFER THEM FOR CONSIDERATION BY ANY PHYSICIAN WHO IS SUFFICIENTLY OPEN-MINDED TO WANT TO MAKE HIS OWN TESTS. IF THEY DO NOT FIT PAST THEORIES, THAT IS NO REASON FOR US TO HESITATE IN PASSING THEM ON AFTER THEY HAVE BEEN PROVEN BEYOND DOUBT. THESE FACTS MEAN LIFE OR DEATH TO THE PATIENT WITH HEART DISEASE.
The “experts” called in the above case were the best medical and vitamin men obtainable from the faculty of the University of Wisconsin and Marquette University. To make the statement these men did, in this year of 1939, is illustrative of the same peculiar antipathy to new ideas that was shown by the opponents of Pasteur. Such men have to die off and be replaced by men educated in the “new school” before progress can take place.
For us to operate in accordance with the A. M. A. Council is to permit such antiquarians to dictate our business policies.
Our business is founded, rather, upon the endorsement of physicians, who have given our products the real test of clinical use. The following unsolicited comment from a California physician is typical.
“Believe you and others will be interested in Mrs. F., who was suffering from hypertension since last January. She had been under intensive treatment by another physician from January to October 1 without any improvement. During this time she had suffered two mild strokes and was so debilitated that at times she was so weak that she had to be fed. I started her on one-half Catalyn twice a day on October 1. In five days I had reduced her pressure from 240, where it had been for ten months, to 220. I increased to one tablet night and morning and in the next five days the pressure was reduced another twenty points. I increased to one tablet t.i.d. and the pressure was down to 180 at the end of two weeks. Her two sons returned at this time and the excitement and additional guests caused her pressure to go up to 220 again. I then added organic mineral tablets one a day. Prior to this time I had allowed her up for short Intervals, but put her back in bed and have kept her there for the past month. Her reading yesterday was 162 over 86. She is again being allowed up for short intervals and expects to have her feet under the table at tomorrow’s dinner.” (December. 25, 1937)
“Another interesting fact relative to her treatment–on October 1 her pulse was very intermittent, missing every second or third beat. By December I had become almost steady. On that date I counted one hundred beats without a miss.
“Needless to say I am a rabid enthusiast over Catalyn products. I make no hesitancy in saying frequently that I believe vitamin therapy is the biggest thing in medicine yet developed and I am heartily in accord with your idea of multiple vitamin therapy. It seems to me the only logical view to take of vitamin deficiency. Also your vitamin products are exclusively prescribed by myself and are the only ones recommended to my compeers.”
Sincerely yours,……, M. D.
Another unwarranted position taken by the Council is the acceptance of synthetic vitamins as equivalent to the natural product. It has accepted viosterol as Vitamin D whereas it is known to be actually a chemically different substance from real Vitamin D. It has not yet revoked the acceptance, even though there is no doubt as to the fact that viosterol is a dangerous artificial substitute for the real thing. (See Vitamin News, pages 51, 128)
Neither does the Council properly recognize the difference between vitamin complexes and the pure products. All wholesome food materials are complexes; we have no means of exhaustively specifying what they contain.
The difference between complexes and the pure vitamins is very well indicated by their value in supplying nutrition to yeast. The yeast plant requires vitamins of the B and G groups to live. It takes up these vitamins from the media it lives in, and concentrates them to some extent thereby. We offer graphic charts to show the great difference in the life-giving properties of our “V-P” Complexes as compared to the chemically pure substitutes, unit for unit.
Effect of “V-P” Vitamin B Complex on Yeast Growth
Effect of “V-P” Vitamin G Complex on Yeast Growth
There is much the same variation in results in the use of these vitamin products in treating human vitamin deficiencies. That is why the unit offers no reasonable basis for comparing the nutritive value of different vitamin products, or their therapeutic values either.
When the A. M. A. Council is willing to be guided by facts ALONE, and ceases to follow unfounded and dangerous theories, we will seek its endorsement. That endorsement will then mean something. As long as it denies FACTS in order to justify a position founded on THEORY, it is on dangerous ground, and we see no prestige for us in having such endorsement.
“What the rank and file of the medical profession ten or fifteen years ago did not know about nutrition fills many books today.
“Prof. B. V. McCollum, one of the distinguished nutrition authorities, declared in 1935 that ‘deficiency of vitamin B1 constitutes one of the major health problems of the world.’ Opposed to this is a dictum of obscure origin, but one frequently and forcibly uttered by medical gentlemen who seem to substantiate one another, assuring the bewildered laity that people in this country get plenty of vitamins in their ordinary diet.
“Intuition is all very well so far as it goes, but it becomes ridiculous when doctors cling to it long after the accumulating weight of new knowledge shows that the old idea was wrong.” (Brady, “Intuition and Nutrition,” Milwaukee Sentinel, Nov. 4, 1939)
“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all argument, and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance. That principle is condemnation before investigation.”–Herbert Spencer
“The supreme misfortune that can befall any man is for him to embrace a theory in preference to a fact.”–Leonardo da Vinci
“Receiving thankfully all that physiology or chemistry or any other science can give us, let us still hold that that alone is true which is proved clinically, and that which is clinically proved needs no further evidence.”–Sir James Paget