Viewing page 6 of 7

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

Transcription: [00:11:19]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:11:31]
{SPEAKER name="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?

[00:11:42]
{SPEAKER name="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.

[00:12:10]
{SPEAKER name="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?

[00:12:26]
{SPEAKER name="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.