RESEARCH SHOWS VITAMIN LACK

"Hidden hunger’ in the home

By DYSON CARTER

SCEENTIBTS have just taken a
\" “poll” of the people's health.
thousands of men, women
amd children were questioned.
Stramgely, the people didn’t know
a pell was going on. The doc
tors mever asked, “How do you
feel this morning?” The grown-
ups and children never got a
chanoe to tell what they though
was bothering them. ‘

The scientists were not after
opinions. They were out to get
facts. The “questions” were ask-
ed silently, by scientific instru-
ments and tests. When the “re-
plies” were put together, the
verdict was shocking beyond
anything eur doctors have sus-
pected.

Ona this rich continent of ours,
in some of the “best” regions,
almost 50 out of every 100 school
children are suffering from se-
rious vitamin deficiencies. Their

eyes reveal symptoms of disease
caused by fack of vitamin A.

DOCTORS ATTACK ACT

The terrible bone disease called
rickets, said to be vanishing, was
found to be prevalent through-
out the entire population.

The most complete scientific
information ever obtained in this
field showed that “prosperous”
North America’s people are rav-
aged by nutritional diseases
which science has long known
how to cure and prevent—with
reasonable amounts of good
food!

Three years ago I published a
little book called So You Can’t
Have Health? On the basis of
reports published in medical
journals, I said_ vitamin defi-
ciencies were widespread. But a
number of government experts
strongly attacked the book. They
accused me of exaggerating the
facts.

Now ‘new facts are coming in.
They are far worse than the
estimates I quoted. The vast ma-

jority of adults and children on

Britain plans for health

By PHYLLIS ROSNER |

—LONDON.

EY since the Labor goverm-

ment came to power in 1945,
the British people have been
fooking forward eagerly to en-
actment of its plan for a na-
tional health service which will
caver every medical expense
from minor prescriptions to
major surgery.

Wow, with the program sched-
uled to start’ July 5, the leaders
of the British Medical Associa-
tion have launched what Minister
Aneurin Bevan has termed “or
ganized sabotage of an act of
parliament.”

The BMA, headed by a group
of. wealthy doctors who don't
want to waste their bedside man-
ners om anyone who can't af-
ford fat fees, has organized a
referendum among its members
on whether or not they will ac-
cept posts under the projectec
National Health Service.

The National Health Service is
an all-inclusive soheme to be fi-
nanced by 1T7c a week contribu-
tions from workers and em-
ployers.

This will provide every man,

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601 Holden Building
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MArine 5746

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STANTON & MUNRO
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woman and child, without fur-
ther fee, with these services: 4
family doctor service, medicine
and drugs, maternity care, all
forms of hospital treatment, all
costs of operations, care of eyes
including glasses when needed,
dental services including dental
fittings, home health service, am-
bulance service, and health cen-
ters built and equipped by lo-
cal authorities.

General practitioners who en-
ter the plan will receive a base
salary of $1,200 a year. In addi-
tion, they will receive a mini-
mum of $3 for each patient they
treat. The doctors may also have
private patients, charging them
whatever they want. In all
eases, patients can choose their
own doctors and switch them
whenever they wish. '

In public, BMA bigshots try
to smear the plan as “red.” But
on several occasions they have
revealed their real fear: that
4 government-sponsored health
service will provide such superior
facilities at such low rates that
profiteering at the expense of

people’s health will no longer
be possible.

Nanaimo Office
Room 2, Palace Building

For Less

this’ continent are victims of
“hidden hunger.”
: ®
WE lack vitamin B. We also
lack vitamin A, as the poll
proved, We lack vitamins C and
D. To supply everyone, with all
the lacking vitamins, should cost
us a good deal less than 15
cents per month per person. Less
than one-half cent per day. At
today’s manufacturing costs, this
is perfectly feasible. If only the
making and distributing of vita-
mins were not in the hands of
the chemical monopolists! —

When I wrote that book, the
profit on most vitamins ran 100
percent higher. Today the cost
ef production is over, the prices
are higher, and vitamin profits
have soared beyond even the
fantastic levels of 1944.

The monopolists in the vitamin
A business are just now blam-
ing the fishermen. In the last
few years fish oil (containing
vitamin A) has sharply increas-
ed in prices. Some of that rise
went to the men who now sup-
ply 20 to 30 million pounds of
fish livers each year to the vita-
min processors. But most of the
rise went into more profits.

We can expect the price to
stay up in spite of the fact that
vitamin A can now be made
synthetically. A leading research
organization, announcing’ the
discovery last summer, said: “It
should bring vitamin A within
the reach of all who need it.”
But it won't. Bitter experience
tells us why.

All our vitamin D (anti-rickets
vitamin) used to come from fish
oil, too. Then chemists discov-
ered how to make it syntheti-
cally. At tremendous reduction
in cost. Vitamin D is now so
cheap to make that it is fed in
huge quantities, at reasonable
cost, to chickens, pigs, calves
and dogs. But the same vita-
min, for use by human beings,
is priced at fabulously higher
levels! Animals can get it, but
our children can’t.

We don’t have to read the pa-
tent-medicine ads or listen to
radio commercials. The latest
health poll tells us: “Yes, tens
of millions are tired, run-down,
pale, nervous, full of aches and
pains, suffering from dizzy
spells and eye troubles!” These
symptoms are real, not imagin-

ary.

And the real explanation
won't be found on the label of
any medicine bottle. It is to be
found only in the balance-sheet
of the drug monopolies—on the
financial pages of the papers, in
the profit columns. Add up the
profit billions for this year, and
the total is equal to mass pre-
ventable sickness, millions  suf-
fering from cureable diseases,
the most brilliant discoveries of
science confiscated by the bar-
barians of monopoly capitalism.

He'll need a pay boost now

Even more than most of us, Andrew Zavada needs a wage
boost—now that he’s the father of quadruplets. Here he watches
proudly as doctors show him his baby boy. The others are girls.
All dre doing well and mama’s in good shape, too.

KEEP

MONDAY —
MARCH 8th
OPEN

PENDER AUDITORIUM
339 W. Pender St.

—8:00 p.m—

WE HAVE heartening news on the prices front these
days. The pressure being brought to bear by Housewives’
Consumer Associations throughout the country is bringing a
response from merchants and finding an echo in municipal
bodies. From Toronto comes word that 1000 stores handling
fruits and vegetables will display streamers, Posters and peti-
tions demanding that Finance Minister Douglas Abbott lift
restrictions against the importing of fruits and vegetables

from the* United States.

“Abbott agreed to allow car-
ots to enter Canada, but carrots
are selling at hign prices in the
United States and would retail
at 16 cents a pound here, ott of
reach of the average family,”
writes Mrs. Luckock, president
of the Housewives’ Constimer
Association in Toronto.

“A much more sensible policy
would be to allow a variety of
vegetables such as beets, lettuce
and celery to be imported. Fruit
and vegetable dealers assure us
that if these vegetables were al-
lowed in, beets could sell at 9
cents a bunch, lettuce at 15
cents a head and celery at 8
cents a bunch for the next three
months at least, until Canadian
supplies are available.”

Housewives have tackled city
councils on prices, and in Niagara
Falls, Ontario, Stamford, Ontario,
Verdun, Quebec, and Medicine

Hat, Alberta, councils have en-
dorsed the campaign.

M. J. Coldwell, CCF national
leader, is giving his support to
the roll-back prices campaign of
the housewives and so is Premier
T. C. Douglas of Saskatchewan,
who states that he intends to
present a resolution on the
prices issue before the Saskat-
chewan legislature.

Might we again .remind the
government never to underesti-

mate the power of the women!
And, incidentally, if you haven't
got your petition form completed
you'd better get busy. It’s no
trick at all to get 200,000 signa-
tures in this province if we all
do our bit.

* * *

AN ITEM in an English news-
paper I received the other day
shows how far some price racket-
eers will go. As we all know,
fats are rationed stringently in
Britain and this condition has
been exploited in a most flagrant
manner. Tons of fats which nor-
mally are never used for human
consumption but only for ma-
chine lubrication, for external
application and medicinal pur.
poses, are being sold on the mar-
ket at exorbitant prices. Tripe
(offal) fat is being sold at ap-
proximately 80 cents a pound:
The tripe itself is sold retail at
15 cents a pound. “Solidified
paraffin” sells at nearly 60 cents
a& pound and housewives are
warned that it must not be used
for frying but that it is all
right for cakes and pastry. Its
Seneral use is as the basis for
face creams and hair oil.

Neat’s foot oil, obtained from
refuse of  horse-slaughtering
yards and formerly used as a
lubricant by atheletes, is also
being sold for frying, the price
being six times that of pre-war

" days.—B.G.

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