Adventures in Science: Interview with Robert R. Williams

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Watson Davis: Our Adventures in Science guest today is Dr. Robert R. Williams; Chemist and synthesizer of vitamin B1 or thiamine. Dr. Williams, you're one of the people that have revolutionized some of our eating habits, you've put into food throughout the world and you're planning to do it still further, at least one of the very essential elements that prevent disease, that is, thiamine; one of the vitamins.

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Watson Davis: And we want to hear about that, we want to hear what's happening. Now, thiamine is- is one of the many kinds of food factors necessary for health, what are some of the others?

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Robert R. Williams: Well, the total number of vitamins today recognized is about 14. In addition to these 14 vitamins, there are at least 8 amino acids, which are absolutely necessary for human nutrition, and there are something like 12 or 14 mineral elements, which are also required.

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Watson Davis: We really need these, do we, In order to be healthy?

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Robert R. Williams: Yes, indeed, the problem is far, far more complex than we once supposed it, uh, when we believed that merely a supply of any kind of fat, carbohydrate and protein would do the trick! We now realize that the intricacies of the nutrition of any living thing are extremely complex and difficult.

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Watson Davis: Dr. Williams, when was it that you made this thiamine synthetically and in such a way that it can be actually manufactured?

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Robert R. Williams: It was produced first in milligram amounts in 1936, by 1937 it was being produced in kilo amounts, and since that time its risen to a production of about 100 tons a year! Now, this large increase in production has largely been due to the use of thiamine to restore to white bread and flour the vitamin, the thiamine, which it lost in milling.

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Watson Davis: Dr. Williams, actually you- a person only needs a pinch of this stuff, hardly that, per day or even per year.

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Robert R. Williams: Oh yes, the amount of thiamine actually required per person per year is scarcely a visible amount if you add it in pure form and filed it down the end of a pen knife, it would occupy only- make only a little pile the size of perhaps a- a grain of millet. But, it's just as necessary as if huge quantities were required.

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Watson Davis: Well, thanks to this enrichment of flour and bread, which came into being during the war, didn't it Dr. Williams?

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Robert R. Williams: Yes, it began in 1941.

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Watson Davis: Well thanks to that program, practically all of us have no shortage of thiamine today and, therefore, beriberi is practically unknown, which is the disease that the lack of thiamine causes. It's practically unknown in this country today, isn't it?

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Robert R. Williams: Yes, the doctors can't find cases of beriberi or pellagra, with which to teach their students what the disease looks like anymore, and I'm not sorry to have the doctors deprived of this opportunity, because along with that removal of these diseases has been a- or has been a great improvement in the health and vigor of the mass of the people. No one can say how large of a percentage of the population has gotten benefit, but it's very substantial.

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Watson Davis: Actually, Dr. Williams, people who do have vitamin- thiamine deficiency really do clinically improve very greatly when they're fed it, and there are a few clinical cases of that sort right now, aren't they, from time to time due to food idiosyncrasies and that sort of thing?

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Robert R. Williams: Oh yes, occasional cases will crop up and their responses to the administration of the thing they lack are very, very dramatic. I myself have seen babies in the Philippines respond within three hours, nurse hungerly, and when

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Robert R. Williams: three hours before they were almost in a dying condition, and go off peacefully to sleep.

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Watson Davis: Well, Dr. Williams, if we're, you know, practically free of these dietary diseases, or are we free of dietary diseases? Are there- is there any kind of disease that we have in this country that you'd like to call attention to?

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Robert R. Williams: There is very little nutritional disease due to any deficiency of any kind left in the United States now. Of course, cases of minor deficiency can be found, but, I mean to say that it is no longer a prevalent public health problem. Our biggest problem, our biggest nutritional problem, in this country today is obesity. Too much eating, which tends to put on weight and to imperil the heart especial, especially in the middle and later years of life. We don't know the cause of this too well, but we do know that it's too much food that is responsible for this particular difficulty.

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Watson Davis: Dr. Williams, that's not true, of course, in other parts of the world. There, other parts of the world are chronically underfed and they do have these deficiency diseases. Now you, I understand, have been working on the plan of putting thiamine into rice, which is one of the great staple foods of the world. In particularly in the Far East and India, and will you tell us about that? Is there a chance you can duplicate in these other countries what you've done here in banishing this dietar- this dietary disease of beriberi?

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Robert R. Williams: When we can actually effectuate programs of serial enrichment in other countries of the world, particularly those of Asia, we shall accomplish a hundredfold more than we have accomplished in the United States in the betterment of public health. Be

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Robert R. Williams: great increase in effectiveness in these countries as compared with the United States is that we never did have the deficiencies in such severe form, and- as they are prevalent in all rice-eating Asia, even today. The greatest focus of beriberi in the world today, and has been for 40 years, is the Philippines, where the American government was once in control and where much of the early work on the identification of this vitamin was done, but beriberi still remains a problem for the public health officer, which- who needs the support of public opinion before he can master the problem.

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Watson Davis: Actually, you saw beriberi first in Manila, didn't you, when you were there, some time ago?

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Robert R. Williams: Yes, I was introduced to it in 1910.

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Watson Davis: And you sort of, perhaps, had a resolve then that you might do something about it.

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Robert R. Williams: Yes I did, and I still count myself as an apostle to the underfed of the world rather than to the obese people in this country. This problem of obesity is very important but the other one still remains, and that's my job.

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Watson Davis: Well, as a result of you using some of the royalties from this thiamine invention, I believe you've created the Williams-Waterman Fund for the Combat of Dietary Diseases and that actually has carried on research and also introduction of thiamine into these countries now. Puerto Rico's getting along pretty well on enriched rice, isn't it?

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Robert R. Williams: Yes, Puerto Rico adopted rice enrichment in 1951 and has carried it out very effectively, there's been no particular problem there. However, we have not succeeded in bringing about the systematic general enrichment of rice in any other of the rice-eating countries of the world. Our biggest effort has been in the Philippines where my work began and

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Robert R. Williams: in Bureau Science there in 1910. Through Dr. Salcedo and other Filipino doctors of the Department of Health, a vast experiment was carried out on the province of Butuan. You recall Butuan as the place where the Americans and Filipinos stood in their resistance against the Japanese for several months in early 1942. This experiment in Butuan proved that enriched rice can abolish beriberi, because beriberi ceased to exist in Butuan for several months during the period when the enrichment of the rice was being subsidized.

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Watson Davis: Well then, it was a very dramatic experiment that you had there- that you did there. And why is it, Dr. Williams, that we can't get the world to really realize that we can save the lives of little babies and make people more vigorous? Why don't they go ahead and do it? Is it economic to a large degree?

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Robert R. Williams: Oh it's partly economic, but this is not so- so difficult. After all, you can provide all the thiamine that anyone requires for a matter of 7 or 8 cents a year. And this is not large money, even for Filipino pocketbooks. It's rather that people get into controversies as to: "What is the best way to do it?" We recently witnessed in New York a great argument and controversy about the fluorination of water. A good, well informed, medical opinion came out in favor of it, but it wasn't difficult to find those who could oppose it, and who could bring, what seemed like, important arguments to bear against it. We've had that same experience in trying to make rice enrichment general in the Philippines.

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Watson Davis: Well, let's hope that something will happen to go ahead and get that done over there because, as I understand it, you'd probably be- have a rise in the vigor and the energy of the people over there, which would pay off industrially and in actual income. Didn't you estimate that, Dr. Williams?

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Robert R. Williams: Yes, you can easily imagine a family that's lost child after child through the years, from beriberi, gets completely discouraged. The mental attitude

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Robert R. Williams: And the psychical vigor too of such people is a far below par, and you can not expect eh vigorous enterprising attack on the economic problems that face the country.

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Watson Davis: Well then uh there's a still another problem you were worrying about and working on Doctor Williams, that's this amino acid deficiency. What do you call it? Uh, kwashiorkor is it?

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Robert R. Williams: Yes kwashiorkor, and that's an African name for a disease of weanling children, children who have come off the mother's breast usually because another baby has succeeded them. Uh, and its in this period when their getting adjusted eh to the difference between mother's milk and eh and the gruels, usually of cereals, that the mother has to feed them that uh this disease occurs.

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Watson Davis: Well what are we going to do about that? Do uh, can we supplement foods uh sufficiently well? Uh Doctor Williams uh with these amino acids is it going to be as simple and straight forward as we uh applicate thiamine to food?

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Robert R. Williams: No, the problem poses some uh in added difficulties principally because while a requirement of human beings for any of the vitamins is measured in milligrams. The uh uh requirement of each of the essential amino acids is measured in hundreds of milligrams uh and any product which is to be used for supplementing the protein deficiencies, the amino acid deficiencies of a people must be made very much more cheaply simply because you need a hundred times as much or five hundred times as much, as you do of any one of the vitamins. Uh, we do not know yet what the cause of kwashiorkor in precise terms, I wish we did uh I think this is one of the most important problems that we can address ourselves to and our fund is now supporting a serious endeavor in South Africa just to find out exactly what it is that is lacking in these babies that die of kwashiorkor.

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Watson Davis: More power to you Dr. Williams for this sort of work, uh,

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perhaps we can look forward to a world

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in which there is little deficiency, uh, in the food and very

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little starvation. It'll undoubtedly in many respects be a much happier

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world because we do realize that a large part of the world is starving

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in part. Our Adventures in Science guest today has

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been Dr. Robert R. Williams, chemist and synthesizer of thiamine.

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