A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MAGNESIUM CATASTROPHE IN THE UNITED
STATES
Since 1940, between 8 million and 32 million Americans have
died from magnesium deficiency, which causes cardiac disease,
cardiac arrhythmia, cardiac death, and suicide, among other
causes of death. Currently, annual American deaths from magnesium
deficiency are between 215,000 and 869,000.
By comparison, the deaths from the Hiroshima atom bomb were
only 80,000 to 200,000, so magnesium deficiency is equivalent to
the atomic bombings of several small American cities each year.
For another comparison, all American war deaths in the history of
the country total much less than 2,000,000, so magnesium
deficiency is a much greater catastrophe than all American wars
combined. Another comparison is Hitler's Holocaust, which claimed
6-10 million lives.
COMPARISONS OF Mg-DEFICIENCY DEATHS TO OTHER CATASTROPHES
CAUSE OF DEATH LOW ESTIMATE HIGH ESTIMATE
Mg Deficit 1940-1994 8,000,000 32,000,000
Annual USA Mg Deficit 215,000 869,000
Hiroshima Atom Bomb 80,000 200,000
All American War Deaths 1,500,000 2,000,000
Hitler's Holocaust 6,000,000 10,000,000
No doubt each of the intelligence agencies will argue that Mg
deficiency is a problem outside their special mandate, and so is
no fault of theirs. Those assigned to foreign territories will
claim that even though almost all the research has been conducted
outside the U.S., the deaths occurred inside the U.S., so it is
of no concern to the external intelligence agencies. And
intelligence agencies covering the domestic beat will argue just
the opposite, that nearly all the information lay outside of the
U.S., and therefore outside their jurisdiction. And all the
intelligence agencies will argue that it's not their job to keep
track of the failures of domestic agencies, such as NIH, NAS,
FDA, CDC, and the Surgeon General. And they will argue that these
are not 8 million to 32 million cases of manslaughter or criminal
negligence, but merely 8-32 million cases of accidental death,
and therefore not their concern.
How did such a catastrophe occur? By the myopia caused by
venality, hubris, and power struggles, similar to the gridlock
that enveloped NASA for several decades.
From reading and personal discussions, I have gained the
following historical overview.
For over 100 years, European communist intellectuals were
known to drink mineral water, so American anti-communists made
"pure water" a rallying cry to besmirch the mineral-drinking
leftists. In fiction, the pure-water-drinking-right-winger is a
stereotype. Joe McCarthy would not have been caught dead drinking
a mineral water.
Until 1940, medicine in this country was regulated by the
American Medical Association, which functioned as part medieval
guild, part old-boy social club, and as a quasi-governmental
regulatory agency. The AMA would finger charlatans, who would
then be prosecuted or hounded out of business. From the very
first, the AMA has been very conscious of the financial aspects
of the medical profession, generally choosing the most expensive
procedures rather than the simple cures. Home remedies and folk
medicine were suspect because they were cheap, and the
practitioners were outside the club. Many mineral spring waters
were commonly thought to have curative powers, which was an old
European tradition still practiced in Europe. But mineral water
was cheap and not within the control of the AMA, so it was
gradually suppressed, and Americans were taught that "pure" water
was best, meaning no minerals. In 1880, American mineral waters
were popular, but by 1950, "pure" was in.
Evidently, the AMA's conflicts of interest caused the
government to wish for an "arm's length" regulatory agency, and
so the FDA was born in 1940, an offspring of New Deal
legislation. But the FDA was staffed by AMA doctors and others
who had been educated in the way the AMA thought, so little
changed. The FDA had its own reasons for suppressing the benefits
of minerals in water; the FDA wanted only "proven" benefits,
meaning proofs that had required vast quantities of FDA
man-hours. It was not sufficient that something worked; it had to
enhance the FDA bureaucracy by requiring thousands or millions of
pages of documentation. The mineral water industry, lacking
patents to protect any investment, and prohibited from any health
claims, was slowly strangled and replaced with companies peddling
"pure" water.
As the decades rolled along, it became increasingly evident
that water-borne Mg plays a major role in the prevention of all
kinds of cardiac disease and cardiac death, and a hundred other
ailments. But by 1980, magnesium had become an embarrassment to
the American medical establishment as the magnitude of the
blunder and cover-up became evident, so an even stronger,
informal campaign of denial and suppression began. Numerous
blue-ribbon committees stated that magnesium deficiency had no
connection to any chronic diseases, etc, etc.
In the 1950's through the present, Dr. Mildred Seelig has
carried the banner of magnesium in the U.S., but she has been
ignored, and has received negligible funding. In the 1970's
through 1994, Doctors Bella and Burton Altura have carried the
banner of magnesium, and the evidence has become overwhelming,
but the FDA, NAS, NIH, and others have simply ignored or denied
the evidence. By then these agencies could not bear to
acknowledge that they had blundered, covered up, and killed
millions in the process.
And so things stand: overwhelming evidence, mostly foreign,
that magnesium can prevent much heart disease and cardiac death;
and a huge heart-disease industry loathe to destroy itself by
admitting that much heart disease is easily and cheaply
preventable with magnesium; thousands of heart specialists who
will be out of work if magnesium intakes are increased to 10 mg
per Kg of body weight; dozens or hundreds of cardiac hospitals
that will go bankrupt if magnesium intake is increased to 10
mg/Kg; and a host of guilty government health agencies who don't
wish to admit their bad advice has killed millions; and all the
brave intelligence agencies who don't want to be involved, and
would rather let millions die than get into a turf war with the
FDA and AMA, et al.
So what to do now? BLOW THE WHISTLE!
Paul Mason, P.O. Box 1417, Patterson, CA 95363
July 4, 1994
For Further Research
Dr. John Zwicky, MD, of The Association of Librarians in the
History of the Health Sciences (ALHHS) has provided the following
outline of how to research the history of the magnesium
catastrophe more thoroughly. Dr. Zwicky has been an archivist for
the AMA.
The AMA archives has a fair amount of material on the
mineral water industry in their historical health fraud
collection. Most of the material concerns specific companies.
The material consists of circulars and other advertisements by
the companies, correspondence between members of the public and
the AMA Bureau of Investigation regarding the products,
chemical analyses of the products themselves (the water was
usually anything but pure, clean water), and notices of federal
judgements against the companies. The historical health fraud
collection also has some records of federal agencies such as
the Federal Trade Commission, which prosecuted companies for
misbranding or other offenses. You can contact the AMA archives
at (312) 464-4083. The archivist is Jane Kenamore. They do
charge for any archival services. However, you may want to
start with them.
If I were in your position, I would start with the AMA and
take plenty of notes, then move on to the federal agencies.
Some major libraries, especially univerisities, may have
government publications sections going back that far. They may
have the published notices of enforcement actions by these
agencies. For other records of federal action against
individual companies, you may contact the FDA to see if they
have an archives or if their records are in the National
Archives. Likewise with the Federal Trade Commission.
The Department of Justice is another matter. If the
Department or any other department went into federal court to
prosecute a company, the records would end up in the court
records for that federal district. You would need to find out
which federal district court it went to and which branch of the
the National Archives has those court records. Speaking from
experience, court records are often voluminous, but very
interesting and informative. You will need to check the docket
books first and then identify the case that you want to look
at.
The National Archives has records centers in major cities
all over the country, including Chicago, Kansas City, Atlanta,
Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, and a number of
places in between. Holdings will roughly correspond to the
boundaries of the federal court districts. For example, the
Chicago records center has court records for all federal
district and appellate courts in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan,
and Indiana. I think Ohio's are in Columbus, Ohio.
If the FDA and FTC have records in the national archives,
some may have been regionalized, which means that the records
centers noted above will have these records as well. In this
case, you will need to know the regional boundaries for the
field offices of these agencies.
Finally, you might check to see if anything else has been
published. A few years ago, there was an article in the Journal
of American History on the promotional activities of Crazy
Water Crystals, a mineral water product promoted in the South
where the local diet of fatback and "good home cooking" created
problems of indigestion, constipation, obesity and other
ailments.
Editor's Note:
All the historical sources cited above are the records of the
AMA, FDA, and the Dept. Of Justice. For the other side of the
Mg-deficiency story, historians may benefit from the following
books, and the wealth of references and bibliographies found in
them:
The Dictocrats, by Omar Garrison (an old
exposé of the FDA).
Crazy Water -- The Story of Mineral Wells and Other Texas
Health Resorts, by Gene Fowler, Texas Christian University
Press, 1991.
This page was first uploaded to The Magnesium Web Site on
September 30, 1995
http://www.mgwater.com/
Healthy Water
Association--USA