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Letter to the Editor, New York Times, submitted May 2, 1999. Vegan Diets Are Lethal To the Editor: Re: "Hold the Eggs (letter, April 30): The author writes that, "Anyone striving for the healthiest possible diet should drop animal products...and stick with the good foods of a vegan diet". As the creator (in 1959, here in New York City) of radioassay for vitamin B12, now used in nearly every vitamin B12 assay laboratory in the Western World, I here reiterate the much-published fact, including at the International Conferences on Vegetarianism, held by the vegetarian, Seventh Day Adventist, Loma Linda University School of Public Health, Loma Linda, California, and subsequently published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, that, while there is vitamin B12 in all animal protein (including eggs), there is no vitamin B12 in any vegan diet. All vegan diets are, by definition, devoid of animal protein. This lack of animal protein distinguishes vegan diets from vegetarian diets. The latter contain milk and/or eggs and /or their products and/or modest amounts of meat, fish, or poultry.As we, and many other nutrition scientists in just about every country in the world, have reported, every vegan, and their newborns, unless treated with B12, gets progressively worse vitamin B12 deficiency, with slowly progressive destruction of their blood cells, nervous and immune systems, brain, and all other living cells, with eventual death from a total shut-down of DNA synthesis. All DNA synthesis, as we and many others who study the biochemistry of DNA have shown, requires vitamin B12.That is one reason why our Dietary Guidelines for Americans, published jointly by our Department of Health and Human Services and our U.S. Department of Agriculture, require that modest amounts of meat and/or fish and/or poultry and/or eggs be eaten daily by everyone. Victor Herbert, M.D., J.D., M.A.C.P
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