A study of illness in 118 South African infants

Illness Diarrhea Diarrhea lasting 7 days or more Upper respiratory tract infection Lower respiratory tract infection Rash Total Number of cases in infants receiving Vitamin A 56 15 102 17 23 213 Number of cases in infants receiving placebo (control) 63 18 123 23 28 255

Data from "The effects of vitamin A supplementation on the morbidity of children born to HIV-infected women," by Anna Coutsoudis, Raziya Bobat, Hoosen Coovadia, Louise Kuhn, Wei-Yann Tsai, and Zena Stein. Published August 1995 in the American Journal of Public Health.

A study of illness in 1,520 Indian children

Illness Diarrhea Persistent diarrhea Acute respiratory infection Pneumonia Measles Total Number of cases in children receiving Vitamin A 1,338 49 88 26 26 1,527 Number of cases in children receiving placebo (control) 2,687 147 147 50 58 3,089

Data from "Effect of vitamin A supplementation on childhood morbidity and mortality," by S. Chowdhury, R. Kumar, N. K. Ganguly, L. Kumar, and B. N. Walia. Published 2002 in the Indian Journal of Medical Science.

Effect of Vitamin A in Rates of Lung Cancer for

People Exposed to Cigarette Smoke and Asbestos

Cigarette smoking and asbestos are both associated with lung cancer. A team of medical researchers wondered if Vitamin A would prevent lung cancer after people had already been exposed to cigarette smoke and asbestos. They found 18,000 volunteers who were smokers or who had been exposed to asbestos, and gave half of the volunteers Vitamin A. The other half got a dummy drug, or placebo. The placebo is basically just a sugar pill that has no vitamins in it. After many months, the researchers found that some of their patients had developed lung cancer and some had not. This graph shows the difference between the Vitamin A group (treatment group) and the placebo group (control group). Data from Effects of a Combination of Beta Carotene and Vitamin A on Lung Cancer and Cardiovascular Disease, by Gilbert Omenn, Gary Goodman, Mark Thornquist, John Balmes, Mark Cullen, Andrew Glass, James Keogh, Frank Meyskens, Barbara Valanis, James Williams, Scott Barnhart, and Samuel Hammar. Published May 1996 in the New England Journal of Medicine.

% Diagnosed with Lung Cancer

Vitamin A Deficiency around the world Clinical means the deficiency is so bad that it is causing widespread, urgent health problems. Severe: subclinical means its almost clinical, but not quite. Moderate: subclinical means its a common problem, but not urgent. Mild: sporadic or high-risk means very few people experience a problem. No data: problem likely means we dont know, but we should assume the worst. Problem under control means that people in these countries get enough Vitamin A and dont really have to worry about deficiencies.

This graph was made with data from three different studies, involving a total of 475 people who took either 0.6 g of Vitamin C per day, 1 g of Vitamin C per day, or a placebo (a sugar pill that looks and tastes like the Vitamin C tablet).

Results from three studies on the effect of vitamin C on the common cold
80 70 60

Percent sick

50 40 30 20 10 0 1 2 3

Vitamin C group

Control (placebo) group

This second graph comes from a study of 880 men and 1,241 women, age 40 years and up, who had never had a stroke. The study began in 1977 and followed the participants until 1997. During those 20 years, some of the participants did have one or more strokes, as seen below. Researchers took blood samples to measure each participants level of vitamin C.

Risk of stroke associated with levels of Vitamin C

100%

Risk of stroke (scaled)

80% 60% 40% 20% 0%

Vitamin C level in blood (mol/L)

40

41-51

52-63

64

Amount of Vitamin C in various foods

Name of food Picture of food Amount of Vitamin C in one serving

Guava

376 mg (628% of recommended daily value) 167 mg (278% of recommended daily value) 96 mg (160% of recommended daily value) 95 mg (159% of recommended daily value) 80 mg (134% of recommended daily value) 60 mg (100% of recommended daily value)

Kiwi

Orange

Sweet yellow pepper Kale

V-8 Splash

Tomato

55 mg (91% of recommended daily value)

Excerpt from Do You Believe in Magic? The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine, by Paul Offit (2013)
In 2012, more than half of all Americans took some form of vitamin supplements. What few people realize, however, is that their fascination with vitamins can be traced back to one man. A man who was so spectacularly right that he won two Nobel Prizes and so spectacularly wrong that he was arguably the world's greatest quack. In 1931, Linus Pauling published a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society titled "The Nature of the Chemical Bond." Pauling's idea revolutionized the field, marrying quantum physics with chemistry. His concept was so revolutionary in fact that when the journal editor received the manuscript, he couldn't find anyone qualified to review it. When Albert Einstein was asked what he thought of Pauling's work, he shrugged his shoulders. "It was too complicated for me," he said. For this single paper, Pauling became the youngest person elected to the National Academy of Sciences, was made a full professor at Caltech, and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He was 30 years old. In 1951, Pauling published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled "The Structure of Proteins." Scientists knew that proteins were composed of a series of amino acids. Pauling proposed that proteins also had a secondary structure determined by how they folded upon themselves. He called one configuration the alpha helix -- later used by James Watson and Francis Crick to explain the structure of DNA. Pauling's accomplishments weren't limited to science. Beginning in the 1950s -and for the next forty years -- he was the world's most recognized peace activist. Pauling opposed the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, declined Robert Oppenheimer's offer to work on the Manhattan Project, stood up to Senator Joseph McCarthy by refusing a loyalty oath, opposed nuclear proliferation, publicly debated nuclear-arms hawks like Edward Teller, forced the government to admit that nuclear explosions could damage human genes, convinced other Nobel Prize winners to oppose the Vietnam War, and wrote the best-selling book No More War! Pauling's efforts led to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In 1962, he won the Nobel Peace Prize -- the first person ever to win two unshared Nobel Prizes. Then all the rigor, hard work, and hard thinking that had made Linus Pauling a legend disappeared. In the words of a colleague, his "fall was as great as any classic tragedy." The turning point came in March 1966, when Pauling was 65 years old. "During a talk in New York City," recalled Pauling, "I mentioned how much pleasure I took in reading about the discoveries made by scientists in their various investigations of the nature of the world, and stated that I hoped I could live another twenty-five years in order to continue to have this pleasure. On my return to California I received a letter from a biochemist, Irwin Stone, who had been at the talk. He wrote that if I followed his recommendation of taking 3,000 milligrams of vitamin C, I would live not only 25 years longer, but probably more." Stone, who referred to himself as Dr. Stone, had spent two years studying chemistry in college.

Pauling followed Stone's advice. "I began to feel livelier and healthier," he said. "In particular, the severe colds I had suffered several times a year all my life no longer occurred. After a few years, I increased my intake of vitamin C to ten times, then twenty times, and then three hundred times the RDA: now 18,000 milligrams per day." From that day forward, people would remember Linus Pauling for one thing: vitamin C. In 1970, Pauling published Vitamin C and the Common Cold, urging the public to take 3,000 milligrams of vitamin C every day (about 50 times the recommended daily allowance). Pauling believed that the common cold would soon be a historical footnote. "It will take decades to eradicate the common cold completely," he wrote, "but it can, I believe, be controlled entirely in the United States and some other countries within a few years. I look forward to witnessing this step toward a better world." Pauling's book became an instant best seller. Scientists weren't as enthusiastic. On December 14, 1942, about thirty years before Pauling published his first book, Donald Cowan, Harold Diehl, and Abe Baker, from the University of Minnesota, published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association titled "Vitamins for the Prevention of Colds." The authors concluded, "Under the conditions of this controlled study, in which 980 colds were treated . . . there is no indication that vitamin C alone . . . has any important effect on the duration or severity of infections of the upper respiratory tract." Other studies followed. At least 15 studies have now shown that vitamin C doesn't treat the common cold. As a consequence, neither the FDA, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Dietetic Association, the Center for Human Nutrition at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, nor the Department of Health and Human Services recommend supplemental vitamin C for the prevention or treatment of colds. Although study after study showed that he was wrong, Pauling refused to believe it, continuing to promote vitamin C in speeches, popular articles, and books. When he occasionally appeared before the media with obvious cold symptoms, he said he was suffering from allergies. Then Linus Pauling upped the ante. He claimed that vitamin C not only prevented colds; it cured cancer. In 1971, he declared that vitamin C would cause a 10 percent decrease in deaths from cancer. In 1977, he went even further. "My present estimate is that a decrease of 75 percent can be achieved with vitamin C alone," he wrote, "and a further decrease by use of other nutritional supplements." With cancer in their rearview mirror, Pauling predicted, Americans would live longer, healthier lives. "Life expectancy will be 100 to 110 years," he said, "and in the course of time, the maximum age might be 150 years." Subsequent studies have consistently shown that vitamin C doesn't treat cancer. In December 1980, Linus Paulings wife died of stomach cancer. In 1994, Linus Pauling died of prostate cancer.

Table 1 total mercury (Hg) in high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) samples Sample Name Hg content (g Hg/g HFCS) Sample Name Hg content (g Hg/g HFCS)

MANUFACTURER A Sample 1

Not detected

MANUFACTURER B Sample 1

Not detected

MANUFACTURER A Sample 2

Not detected

MANUFACTURER B Sample 2

Not detected

MANUFACTURER A Sample 3

0.012

MANUFACTURER B Sample 3

0.350

MANUFACTURER A Sample 4

Not detected

MANUFACTURER B Sample 4

0.390

MANUFACTURER A Sample 5

Not detected

MANUFACTURER B Sample 5

0.065

MANUFACTURER A Sample 6

Not detected

MANUFACTURER C Sample 1

0.130

MANUFACTURER A Sample 7

Not detected

MANUFACTURER C Sample 2

0.400

MANUFACTURER A Sample 8

Not detected

MANUFACTURER C Sample 3

0.570

MANUFACTURER A Sample 9

Not detected

MANUFACTURER C Sample 4

0.110

MANUFACTURER A Sample 10

Not detected

MANUFACTURER C Sample 5

0.240

Detection Limit = 0.005 g Hg/g HFCS

Renee Dufault et al. Mercury from chlor-alkali plants: measured concentrations in food product sugar. In Environmental Health, January 2009.

Corn Syrup's Mercury Surprise

Are grape jelly and chocolate milk bad for kids' brains?
By Melinda Wenner | Tue Aug. 4, 2009 11:20 AM GMT

New research suggests that High Fructose Corn Syrup (HFCS) could be tainted with mercury, putting millions of children at risk for developmental problems. In 2004, Renee Dufault, an environmental health researcher at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), stumbled upon an obscure Environmental Protection Agency report on chemical plants' mercury emissions. Some chemical companies, she learned, make lye by pumping salt through large vats of mercury. Since lye is a key ingredient in making HFCS, Dufault wondered if mercury might be getting into the ubiquitous sweetener that makes up 1 out of every 10 calories Americans eat. Dufault sent HFCS samples from three manufacturers that used lye to labs at the University of California-Davis and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The labs found mercury in most of the samples. In September 2005, Dufault presented her findings to the FDA's center for food safety. She was surprised by what happened next. "I was instructed not to do any more investigation," she recalls. FDA spokeswoman Stephanie Kwisnek says that the agency decided against further investigation because it wasn't convinced "that there was any evidence of a risk." At first, Dufault was reluctant to pursue the matter. But eventually, she became frustrated enough to try to publish the findings herself. She had her 20 original samples retested; mercury was found in nearly half of them. In January, Dufault and her coauthorseight scientists from various universities and medical centerspublished the findings in the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health. Although they weren't able to determine what type of mercury was present, they concluded that if it was organic mercury, the most dangerous form, then based on average HFCS consumption, individuals could be ingesting as much as 200 micrograms of the neurotoxin per weekthree times more than the amount the FDA deems safe for children, pregnant women, women who plan to become pregnant, and nursing mothers. But the FDA and the Corn Refiners Association, an industry trade group, claim there's nothing to worry about. The group hired ChemRisk, the consulting firm whose scientists testified on behalf of a polluting utility in the lawsuit portrayed in Erin Brockovich, to analyze Dufault's report. ChemRisk criticized Dufault for not specifying the type of mercury her tests had found. This, the consultants said, was key, since mercury poses different risks depending on its chemical form. In its unadulterated

For the final part of your research, visit http://www.SweetSurprise.com to learn more about high-fructose corn syrup. Be sure to read the About Us section so you can learn about the people who made this website. You can take notes in the space below and/or in your science notebook. Remember that during Fridays debate, you will need to cite evidence for any points you make.

The effect of Red 40 and other food dyes on hyperactivity in preschool children
From The effects of a double blind, placebo controlled, artificial food colourings and benzoate preservative challenge on hyperactivity in a general population sample of preschool children, by B. Bateman, J. O. Warner, E. Hutchinson, T. Dean, P. Rowlandson, C. Gant, J. Grundy, C Fitzgerald, and J. Stevenson. Published June 2004 in Archives of Disease in Childhood .

In this first graph, researchers asked 277 parents to rate their childs ability to concentrate, on a scale

from 1 (no ability to concentrate) to +1 (very high ability to concentrate). A rating of zero (0) was
considered average or normal. During Phase 1, each child consumed a diet totally free of artificial colors and recorded the change in concentration. During Phase 2, children drank a placebo, or dummy drink, that looked and tasted like it had food coloring, but actually had none (control). During Phase 3, the child stopped taking the placebo and returned to the diet free of food coloring. During Phase 4, the child consumed a drink with Red 40 and other food additives (independent variable).

Childs ability to concentrate, as reported by parent

Phase 1

Phase 2 (Placebo)

Phase 3

Phase 4 (Food coloring)

In this second graph, phases 2 and 4 have been switched. Phase 1 is still the diet free of artificial colors. Phase 2 is now the drink with Red 40 and other food additives (independent variable). Phase 3 is the diet free of food coloring again. Phase 4 is the placebo (control).

Compare this graph with the previous graph and note similarities or differences. Do the

two graphs make sense together? Why or why not?

This was a double-blind study, which means that parents and children did not know which drink was the placebo and which one had food coloring. Can you tell which is which just by looking at the graph?

Childs ability to concentrate, as reported by parent

Phase 1

Phase 2 (Food Coloring)

Phase 3

Phase 4 (Placebo)

In this third graph: Phase 1 is still the diet free of artificial colors. Phase 2 is the placebo (control). Phase 3 is the diet free of food coloring again. Phase 4 is the drink with Red 40 and other food additives (independent variable).

Instead of measuring the childs ability to concentrate by a parents observation and rating, this time the researchers gave each child a series of psychological tests. The graph shows their ability to concentrate as measured by their scores on these tests. Just by looking at the graph, could you tell which drink has Red 40 and which is the placebo?

Childs ability to concentrate, as measured by psychological tests

Phase 1

Phase 2 (Placebo)

Phase 3

Phase 4 (Food coloring)

In this final graph: Phase 1 is still the diet free of artificial colors. Phase 2 is the drink with Red 40 and other food additives (independent variable). Phase 3 is the diet free of food coloring again. Phase 4 is placebo (control).

Again, the childs ability to concentrate was measured by a series of psychological tests. Just by looking at the graph, could you tell which drink has Red 40 and which is the placebo?

Childs ability to concentrate, as measured by psychological tests

Phase 1

Phase 2 (Food Coloring)

Phase 3

Phase 4 (Placebo)