Fri, Mar-18-16, 19:37
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Senior Member
Posts: 15,075
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Plan: mostly milkfat
Stats: 190/152.4/154
BF:
Progress: 104%
Location: Ontario
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I was sorting through my books today, one is Let's Eat to Be Healthy by Adele Davis, years ago some children were poisoned following her advice on potassium.
Quote:
Two-month-old Ryan Pitzer was even less fortunate [5]. According to the suit filed by his parents, Ryan was killed in 1978 by the administration of potassium chloride for colic as suggested in the same book. The suit was settled out of court for a total of $160,000—$25,000 from the publisher, $75,000 from Davis's estate, and $60,000 from the potassium product's manufacturer. After the suit was filed, the book was recalled from bookstores, but it was reissued after changes were made by a physician allied with the health-food industry.
Davis's recommendation of potassium for colic was based on misinterpretation of a 1956 article in Nutrition Reviews about potassium metabolism in gastroenteritis [6]. The article referred to a previous study of 653 hospitalized infants which found that the incidence of abdominal bloating and intestinal paralysis were higher among 67 who had low levels of potassium. The article noted that although potassium might improve these symptoms, giving it to a dehydrated infant could cause cardiac arrest [7]. (This is what killed Ryan Pitzer.) The article had nothing whatsoever to do with colic and did not state that "most babies needed 3,000 milligrams of potassium chloride" to recover. The dosage was 1,000 to 2,000 milligrams administered over a 24-hour period, not all at once. The "immediate and dramatic improvement" to which Davis referred was in one infant (not 653) and took about a week. The potassium loss was caused by persistent vomiting and diarrhea, not "too much sodium."
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http://www.quackwatch.com/04Consume...tion/davis.html |