A reliable source who asked not to be i.'d.'ed sent me this>At 01:51 PM 6/14/01, Michael Pugliese wrote:
> Thanx, Mr. X Didja send it to lbo-talk?
You are welcome and no, feel free to pass it on, please remove my name from it.
Michael Pugliese
At 06:27 PM 6/13/01, michael perelman wrote:
>William Albert Albrecht, a famous soil scientist, made that point about
>50 years ago. I never met him but we corresponded and when he retired
>he sent me a package of his reprints. I discussed this in a very old
>book, Farming for Profit in a Hungry World. The idea was that pushing
>yields up created an imbalance within the plant, both because of
>breeding as well as farming methods that destroyed the soil.
>
>He was one of the premier soil scientists, well respected in his
>profession. He was in Iowa and much of his work concerned hybrid corn.
>Later, I was on a Department of Ag. panel Some of the scientists told
>me that they felt uncomfortable around him because he was too good at
>defending his position.
>
>> Brenda Rosser wrote:
>>
>> Daily Mail, March 5, 2001
>>
>> FRUIT and vegetables are not as good for us as they were 50 years ago
<brevity snip>
Hi,
This is offlist, I'm not subscribed on this email account.
If you care to dig a little deeper, you will find it was read into congressional testimony back in the 1930s, deeper still and you will find it was read by a 1930s version of James Trafficant, from some tabloid of the day.
There may be something to it all, but if that 1930s congressional record is the best evidence so far, I'll pass on the ulcers and gray hair. Perhaps Michael Pugliese can find out a bit more on it, I'll take the liberty of sending him a Cc:,,,
Is any of Mr. Albrecht's work accessible via the net?
There is a Dr. Wallach who is making much smoke and uses some mirrors, see http://www.american-nutrition.com/index.html for an example. He mentions the 1930's congressional record, I now see he also mentions a 1992 earth summit report - I'll have to look into that and see if it is based solely on 70-year old sensationalism, or if it brings any new research to the table. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Michael Pugliese, your Cc: was to the Pen-L list, I'm not on it.
Michael Perelman, see reply below:
At 12:13 AM 6/14/01, Michael Pugliese wrote:
> Heh! Is this the colloidal silver scam?
Similar, colloidal minerals. Several likely suspects, a Dr. Joel Wallach seems to be the leader of the informal, cutthroat pack. He has several domain names registered, all with similar content and all selling a mineral supplement of unknown worth - he cites Senate Document #264 liberally as prima facie evidence of a problem that has only gotten worse, in his view.
>The Spotlight always has ads for colloidal silver generators for $99.95.
http://www.m2ktalk.com/colloidalsilver.htm
>I looked into this a few months ago,
> this is what it did to one woman.
http://homepages.together.net/~rjstan/
www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/PhonyAds/silverad.html
http://www.google.com/search?q=Colloidal+silver+hoax
http://www.google.com/search?q=Colloidal+Silver+scam
I've heard about it.
>Michael Pugliese
At 04:51 AM 6/14/01, Michael Perelman wrote:
>Albrecht only wrote in professional journals, such as Soil Science. He
>was never involved in popularizing his work or getting involved with
>cranks. The people at the US Department of Ag. held him in very high
>regard.
I do not doubt that he was credentialed and had (has?) the respect of groups of people in various places, Dr. Wallach is also credentialed and has the respect of groups of people in various places. But did he say that the crops currently being grown are not as nutritious as they were before? Another possibility is that Dr. Albrecht's work, name and reputation are being hijacked by the quacks in the colloidal mineral industry.
There may be a problem with depletion of minerals from soil, but has it really gotten worse, or are modern farming techniques cognizant of this and do they take steps to combat and minimize or reverse it? Even if the "problem" has gotten worse, is help really provided by colloidal mineral supplements? Every medical doctor I've ever spoken with has told me that, given the 'patient' has a proper diet, vitamin and mineral supplements are a waste of money, outside of a few specific exceptions (prenatal care for expectant mothers being one such).
Google lists over 400 hits for "senate document 264" - the vast and overwhelming majority are advertisement pages for companies who wish to sell colloidal mineral supplements, or pages written by those who have bought into the hoax (and who often refer to another webpage where colloidal mineral supplements can be purchased). This webpage
http://www.colloidal.com.au/library/section1/soildepletion.htm
(for example) links Senate Document #264 to the 1992 Earth Summit Report (both are mentioned on Dr. Wallach's webpages), the Earth Summit Report is also widely cited as a "proof." Whatever G.H.W. Bush's other qualities (or lack thereof), he refused to sign any and all treaties emerging from that summit, which I find to be somewhat indicative of the relative worth of those documents.
This one links the 1992 earth summit report to Dr. Albrecht,
http://www.cancer-info.com/colloidal.htm
Here is the rest of the story, on Senate Document #264:
Written by Rex Beach, allegedly based on research by Dr. Charles Northern, it was actually an opinion piece printed in Cosmopolitan in 1936 (film at 11).
<http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/DSH/colloidalminerals.htm l>
Here is the National Council Against Health Fraud newsletter, which debunks a certain Dr. Wallach and his claims of mineral deficiency, it also debunks Senate Document #264 quite authoritatively:
http://www.ncahf.org/nl/1998/1-2.html - it's a long page, here is the relevent excerpt:
The most recent contribution to the body of counter information is
offered by Donald Davis, PhD, of the University of Texas at Austin.
Davis located "Senate Document 264" cited by Wallach as evidence
that 99% of Americans are deficient in minerals. It turns out that
the "document" is nothing more than the reprinting of a highly
speculative article about a passing fad written by a Florida farmer
in the June, 1936, issue of Cosmopolitan magazine as requested by
Florida's Senator Fletcher. Fletcher died 16 days after requesting
that the government printing office reprint the article.
Davis presented his findings in the November, 1997, Townsend
Letter. Davis contacted NCAHF in January and reported than Wallach
was continuing to promote this erroneous document as fact on at
least 40 radio stations throughout the nation. NCAHF has received
inquiries from abroad about Wallach's audiotape, asking for
information on its veracity. Wallach's lies appear to have become a
modern, urban legend.
So it all comes back to Dr. Albrecht. Did he distance himself from that earlier quackery? Are there any empirical data, grounded in tests duplicated and confirmed by laboratory analyses of soil samples and mineral content of the various fruits and vegetables? Or does it all trace back to senate document #264? If Dr. Albrecht's research is sequestered in some stodgy repositorium unwilling to share the intellectual wealth, it is as useless to me and everyone else as Dr. Wallach and the erroneous claims he bases on Senator Fletcher's fraud, aka Senate Document #264.