[HN Gopher] A National Evil - the curse of the goitre in Switzer...
___________________________________________________________________
A National Evil - the curse of the goitre in Switzerland
Author : _ihaque
Score : 372 points
Date : 2023-12-27 15:34 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.lrb.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.lrb.co.uk)
| Faaak wrote:
| A really pleasant to read story. It's funny because I live in
| Switzerland and some of my friends debate the "ioded salt", and
| prefer to consume "natural salt" without the additives. Funny how
| history can repeat itself.
|
| I'm always impressed with all these doctors that would question
| the approach, try new protocols, and end up by finding a cure
| k__ wrote:
| How come that the disease wasn't widespread earlier?
| marcinzm wrote:
| Why do you say it wasn't present earlier?
| k__ wrote:
| The article made that impression on me.
| zweifuss wrote:
| This might interest you:
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3169859/
|
| "The interests of people in the thyroid gland have always
| been immense because of the widespread prevalence of its
| diseases. Therefore the earliest references to the gland date
| back to 1st century AD. The Chinese, Egyptian, Indian, Greek
| and Byzantine medicines are especially rich in their
| knowledge on the subject."
| tekla wrote:
| I am always flabbergasted when people question incredibly
| effective public health initiatives.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goitre#History
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodized_salt#In_public_health_.
| ..
|
| > Worldwide, iodine deficiency affects two billion people and
| is the leading preventable cause of intellectual and
| developmental disabilities.[1][2] According to public health
| experts, iodisation of salt may be the world's simplest and
| most cost-effective measure available to improve health, only
| costing US$0.05 per person per year
| evanjrowley wrote:
| It may not be a question of the initiative itself, rather,
| what conditions in Switzerland at the time led to an uptick
| in iodine deficiencies.
| suchire wrote:
| Maybe they should just RTFA
| masklinn wrote:
| There was no uptick, CIDS was endemic to the alps as far
| back as roman times. Its consequences literally slipped
| into linguistic vernaculars (e.g. french as the insult
| "cretin des alpes", lit. "cretin from the alps", and
| "cretin" was the original term for CIDS-induced mental
| impairment).
| raverbashing wrote:
| Tiktok mind and some angry people can't comprehend how hard
| it was to actually get to the cause and solution to a lot
| of diseases
| k__ wrote:
| Can I get some benefits of doubt please? :D
|
| I don't question the initiative.
|
| The article just read like it was some strange illness that
| affected Switzers around a certain time.
| hef19898 wrote:
| The article mentions comments from the 19th century about
| the same subject.
|
| I think, that Switzerland, and especially those remote
| mountain regions, stayed more isolated than similar
| regions in France or Austria well into the early 20th
| century, making the issue stand out more in comparison.
| bbu wrote:
| The country: Switzerland The people: Swiss
|
| The word Switzer isn't in use since a very long time :)
| k__ wrote:
| Sorry, I was lazy and just translated Schweizer without
| checking :D
| concordDance wrote:
| > I am always flabbergasted when people question incredibly
| effective public health initiatives.
|
| I think it comes from a generalised distrust of
| governments/big institutions. Which comes from hearing
| (often heavily distorted) stories about things like
| Tuskegee Syphilis, MKULTRA, CIA vaccinators in Afghanistan
| and Thalidomide.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think it was.
|
| We just don't think about it because we've defeated it
| completely by putting iodine in the most popular spice, and
| also people in the past were afflicted by all sorts of
| horrible illnesses. It doesn't stand out from the noise of
| the past being generally a mess.
| k__ wrote:
| Ah, okay.
|
| The article just read like there were some unusual strange
| things going on around 1900 in Switzerland.
| jeffrallen wrote:
| Swiss geology (retreat of the glaciers 10000 years ago)
| meant that the normal local products that would give a
| population iodine (milk and eggs) were themselves iodine-
| poor. A few parts of Switzerland which were not glaciated
| (i.e. Jura) did not have iodine deficient populations.
|
| Other places in the world had different geology and this
| different levels of natural iodine.
| VintageCool wrote:
| The article referenced mentions of goitre in Switzerland
| from Victor Hugo in 1839, Mark Twain in 1880, a medical
| survey in 1883, and Roman authors like Vitrivius and
| Pliny the Elder. It also mentioned that the iodine idea
| had been going around for a hundred years before the
| activities of the heroes of our story.
|
| Iodine had not been seen as a successful cure before
| because excess iodine causes a horrible condition. The
| key difference here was that Hunziker proposed regular
| use in minute quantities, and then Bayard tested the
| hypothesis with careful measurements and convincing
| evidence.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Goethe wrote in 1779 about his travels to Switzerland:
| "Die scheusslichen Kropfe haben mich ganz und gar ublen
| Humors gemacht ("The horrible goiters have given me a
| very bad sense of humour"). Definitely plenty of earlier
| historic evidence.
| gpvos wrote:
| What makes you think it wasn't? The article doesn't claim so.
| nyokodo wrote:
| > How come that the disease wasn't widespread earlier?
|
| The article makes reference to the Madonna on the Albrecht
| Durer's Dresden Altarpiece having an obvious goiter. That was
| produced in the late 15th to early 16th century. That's
| evidence from the article that the problem was so common then
| that it was depicted in sacred art.
| kergonath wrote:
| It was. Cretinism was one of the manifestations of iodine
| deficiency. The trope of _cretin des Alpes_ (lit. cretin from
| the Alps) existed for a reason. The manifestation was goitres
| and stunted development, with people who seemingly stopped
| growing up around 14. Pretty much the story's subject. It was
| a public health problem before iodised salt.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congenital_iodine_deficiency.
| ..
| srott wrote:
| In Slovakia, another landlocked country with lack of natural
| iodine from rainfall or diet, dementia became part of the
| culture. 30% (!!!) of population suffered from dementia.
| Iodizing salt raised IQ by 10 point every 10~ years but the
| damage is irreparable...
| ufo wrote:
| It was widespread but has always been particularly worse in
| inland mountainous regions. To this day, efforts remain to
| eliminate iodine deficiency worldwide.
| https://ign.org/scorecard/
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| With the complex supply chains and processed/ready-made food we
| have nowadays I am wondering how much iodine makes its way into
| the diet of the Swiss today even without ioded table salt.
|
| I suspect that one of the issues was that most/all food used to
| be sourced locally, especially eggs and milk, which are good
| sources of iodine, with seafood probably mostly absent from the
| Swiss diet.
|
| Edit: apparently nowadays, and taking animal feed into account,
| Switzerland imports about 50% of its food.
| bombcar wrote:
| Most processed food uses uniodized salt iirc, which is
| actually becoming a problem in parts of the USA where
| populations eat nothing but processed food.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| My understanding is that in general there no need for
| supplements with a normal, balanced diet, especially with
| eggs, dairy products, grains, and others if iodine is
| naturally present in the environment.
|
| So if Switzerland imports a lot of those, raw, or in
| prepared/processed food, or even the animal feed for its
| hens and cows the Swiss today probably already get much
| more iodine in their diet than 100 years ago.
| dr_kiszonka wrote:
| I was curious about your point about normal diet and have
| just looked it up. According to tables 1 and 2 in this
| article [0], it may be hard for some people to get enough
| (RDA) iodine from normal, not fortified foods.
|
| 0. https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Iodine-
| HealthProfessional/
| oivey wrote:
| People have been struggling to get enough iodine for a
| hundred+ years. That's why it's added to salt. This isn't
| a 21st century problem.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Isn't that what the whole article is about?
|
| But the point is that Switzerland's environment is
| especially poor in iodine hence the specific health
| problems it used to have, and which were much less
| serious in neighbouring countries.
| eyphka wrote:
| While the cases were high in switzerland, they were not
| unique.
|
| Link to an academic article discussing how the USA is now
| in the dangerzone of iodine deficiency.
|
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12011-018-1606
| -5#....
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Of course they were not unique (though perhaps extreme).
| I must say I don't get how the replies in this thread
| relate to my comments...
| 082349872349872 wrote:
| Aromat uses iodised salt, so despite Zweifel the swiss have
| nothing to fear
| lostlogin wrote:
| What are the arguments used against iodised salt? Where would
| they get their iodine?
| emmet wrote:
| they're afraid it'll give them 5G or whatever shite they make
| up on the spot
| meepmorp wrote:
| Some people dislike the flavor of iodized salt. But what
| would you expect from future cretins?
| ch4s3 wrote:
| There's literally no way anyone can taste the difference
| between iodized and non iodized table salt blind to the
| source. There's just so little there, it seems the Swiss
| standard is something like 25 mg/kg. There's probably more
| plastic in the salt than iodine at this point.
| tonfa wrote:
| > There's probably more plastic in the salt than iodine
| at this point.
|
| Probably not in swiss salt tho (it's usually mountain
| salt, not sea salt).
| ch4s3 wrote:
| I thought it was clear that I meant that in jest. My
| point was that the amount of iodine is imperceptibly
| small.
| masklinn wrote:
| People almost certainly confuse iodine with anticaking
| agents.
| tonfa wrote:
| But microplastic in sea salt is a real thing (and might
| be a bit worrying, personally I now always go for
| mountain salt, deposited pre-anthropocene era)
| ch4s3 wrote:
| Sure. Even still you're talking about a highly abrasive
| product often packed in plastic. But none of that is
| material to my point.
| caymanjim wrote:
| What an absurd thing to fixate on. There are a million
| other things you consume that are going to have more
| microplastics in them.
| ufo wrote:
| Sadly, this is the argument that people give -\\_(tsu)_/-
| lostlogin wrote:
| The article mentions that blind taste testing couldn't
| detect it at 10x the strength.
|
| Surely people test before claiming such things?
|
| "Unicef, concerned about the sensitivity of children to odd
| flavours, commissioned a study in which rice was prepared
| with salt iodised at ten times the maximum recommended
| concentration. In double-blind taste tests, the iodine was
| undetectable."
| shakil wrote:
| Iodized salt is almost always the industrially produced
| variety, pure NaCL and much more salty than the natural
| varieties - either sea or mountain salts that typically
| include other minerals and are milder in flavor.
| kergonath wrote:
| We have iodised sea salt around here, and it's not more
| nor less industrial than standard sea salt. It's true
| that the flavour is different than hand-processed sea
| salt or _fleur de sel_ because of those impurities (which
| include microplastics and other less-than-ideal
| compounds, though, even though I love and use mostly
| barely-processed sea salt), but it is neither more nor
| less salty.
| pixl97 wrote:
| That is more about crystal size and roughness than
| anything else. Some companies are working on nanoscale
| crystals of salt that allow you to use significantly less
| salt for the same saltiness profile based on these
| properties.
| mosburger wrote:
| FWIW, that was addressed in the article:
|
| > Whatever chefs might claim, this fact is well
| established: in 1995, Unicef, concerned about the
| sensitivity of children to odd flavours, commissioned a
| study in which rice was prepared with salt iodised at ten
| times the maximum recommended concentration. In double-
| blind taste tests, the iodine was undetectable.
| meepmorp wrote:
| I'm just repeating what people have told me.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| In this instance it seems you should avoid this habit.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| Depends on the salt, there are few that hardly contain more
| then dairy, but some salts contain enough to make it make
| sense.
|
| My main issue with normal salt is the anti-caking ingredient
| needed to not have it stick together, in general not needed
| with sea salt and a real grinder.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| You hate sand, huh.
| morsch wrote:
| The anti caking I commonly see in salt is potassium
| cyanide [ferrocyanide, actually, see below].
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_ferrocyanide
| brilee wrote:
| I'm sure you're aware that ferrocyanide is not the same
| thing as cyanide - the cyanide is bound so tightly to the
| iron center that it is nontoxic.
| oynqr wrote:
| That is not potassium cyanide.
| morsch wrote:
| Yes, sorry, shouldn't post in a hurry. I amended my post.
| I'm not worried about the stuff at all, I buy salt with
| it all the time. But it's not sand, that's all I wanted
| to say.
| tekla wrote:
| Skipped High School Chemistry huh? Read the Wiki
|
| >Potassium ferrocyanide is nontoxic, and does not
| decompose into cyanide in the body. The toxicity in rats
| is low, with lethal dose (LD50) at 6400 mg/kg.[2] The
| kidneys are the organ for ferrocyanide toxicity.[11]
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| Most common one used here is Sodium Ferrocyanide :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_ferrocyanide
|
| Also used as a coating in welding among other things. And
| like other commentor said, a nephew of cyanide.
|
| Now Im sure most of us will be fine, but I prefer not to
| eat that a few times a day. If you think that makes me
| foolish, be my guest.
|
| It's also not needed, there are plenty of other sources
| of Iodine, and sea salt from the grinder is perfectly
| fine.
| jghn wrote:
| I've 100% switched to kosher salt & various sea salts with my
| own cooking. Not because I'm anti-iodine, but because I like
| those salts better for cooking purposes. Given how much
| attention was paid to using kosher salt in cooking by people
| like Alton Brown over the last 20 years I would expect I'm
| far from an outlier.
| ramraj07 wrote:
| Isn't kosher salt literally just regular salt but in a
| particular particle size? I also use Himalayan and kosher
| salt but thats because I eat a ton of junk food which has
| iodised salt. If you're health conscious and don't do that,
| it's probably not a bad idea to keep iodised salt and add
| it in times it's not that important you need to pinch the
| exact right amount in your fingers or whatever.
| kergonath wrote:
| You pretty much cannot have too much iodine. It is a good
| idea to use iodised salt in general.
|
| [edit] fair enough, I need to qualify that. You pretty
| much cannot get too much iodine with something that looks
| like a normal diet, and in any case iodised salt is not
| what push iodine levels over the top. And in a normal
| diets, iodine deficiency is much, much more likely than
| iodine overload.
| saturn_vk wrote:
| The article states otherwise
| manymatter wrote:
| Well, the article brings up iodine overdose from popular
| medications at the time, but you pretty much can't get
| too much iodine from iodized salt without having consumed
| way too much salt.
| romwell wrote:
| >The article states otherwise
|
| No it doesn't. You're ignoring the context.
|
| You _can 't_ have too much iodine when it's obtained from
| iodized salt.
|
| ...because you can't handle that much salt.
|
| From the article: 10x'ing the concentration of iodine in
| salt had no adverse effects. You'd have to eat salt by
| the pound daily to reach levels where iodine is harmful,
| but at that point, that'll be the least of your worries.
| tomrod wrote:
| To be fair to the interlocuters, kergonath left the salt
| out of his or her or their comment.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| > You pretty much cannot have too much iodine.
|
| Based on what reasoning?
| kashunstva wrote:
| > You pretty much cannot have too much iodine
|
| You may wish to research the Wolff-Chaikoff effect.
| kergonath wrote:
| That's fine for people who have a balanced diet rich enough
| in iodine. Which, to be fair, should be most people
| bothering about sea salt in the first place. For those who
| do not, it's unfortunate, though. There is a reason why
| adding iodine is a good idea in the first place.
| kergonath wrote:
| Pretty much the same as against fluorine in water in the
| States: it's unnatural/a globalist conspiracy/killing our
| traditional way of life/a plot to subdue the people for
| <reasons>.
|
| There is no scientifically sound reason against it.
| tourmalinetaco wrote:
| There's scientifically sound reasons for not wanting to
| drink fluorine, namely that the science is still out for
| whether it's useful when used alongside regular topical
| applications. Not to mention excessive fluorine can stain
| or pit the teeth, and that it may even destroy nerve
| tissue.
|
| https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/magazine/magazine_article/fluo
| r...
| kleton wrote:
| Only the measurable decrease in IQ from municipal water
| fluoridation, which can seen when comparing Portland,
| where they do not fluoridate, to similar large cities in
| the PNW where they do.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > the science is still out for whether it's useful when
| used alongside regular topical applications.
|
| That's a meaningless comparison. The whole point is that
| people aren't doing topical application.
|
| A similar debate to this is the adding folate to flour or
| bread.
| Cockbrand wrote:
| Well, fluoridated water tastes really... well, _special_ ,
| and it almost feels like an indirect subsidy for the water
| filter industry. Iodine in salt is (to my taste) pretty
| neutral in comparison.
|
| [EDIT: as pointed out in a child comment, the taste
| actually comes from chlorine, not fluoride.]
| naremu wrote:
| Isn't that taste chlorine from the sanitation process?
|
| Either way I actually do assume water filter companies
| lobby to keep public water as subpar an option as
| possible, there's certainly no incentive not to.
| Cockbrand wrote:
| Yes, you're right, I mixed up fluoride and chlorine. And
| thus my previous comment doesn't make sense any more. My
| apologies!
| colechristensen wrote:
| There is scientific reason against it, just not matching
| many of the conspiracy nuts' rhetoric.
|
| Most of Western Europe bans fluoridation. It can make your
| bones a little less elastic and a little more brittle, and
| there are a few other known or potential negative effects.
|
| There are also just better ways to prevent cavities.
| naremu wrote:
| This seems like the sane, boring reality. People with
| modern dental routines probably don't benefit from the
| original purposes of fluoridation the same way people in
| the early 1900s only just getting electricity did.
|
| But people only just getting electricity in the early
| 1900s easily benefited more than were harmed by such
| things. Poor dental health gets scary quick.
|
| I guess the question becomes how low do you lower the bar
| for those who would willingly devoid themselves of sane
| things to include in their lives. How much freedom does
| one man have to harm his self, though he thinks as a
| self, costs to him are more often than not also costs
| incurred to society (and usually a society that'd prefer
| to not see people do self harmful things)
|
| At least in the US though, it seems that popular
| opposition to fluoridation started with cold war era
| conservative conspiracies (precious bodily fluids). So,
| you know.
| palemoonale wrote:
| This from a country where tapwater unfortunately typically
| tastes like crap?
|
| (b/c it is chlorinated)
| pixl97 wrote:
| Unless it is significantly over chlorinated tasting like
| crap isn't because of the chlorine, in general the
| causation will be reversed here. Places that use a lot of
| chlorine are typically trying to kill off things that
| both taste bad and will try to kill you.
| dllthomas wrote:
| You forgot "sap and impurify all of our precious bodily
| fluids"
| TheCleric wrote:
| I deny them my essence.
| kleton wrote:
| In Deutschland, the iodized salt is nearly always
| iodized+fluoridated, whereas the only other option is plain
| salt with neither.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| I always heard if you eat seafood, you get enough iodine and
| can stick to plain salt. It looks like milk and eggs are a
| good source as well.
|
| https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/iodine-rich-foods
| analog31 wrote:
| They probably get plenty of iodine from packaged food since it
| doesn't all come from the same region any more.
| wahern wrote:
| The salt used in processed and prepared foods usually isn't
| iodized, contributing to declining iodine intake given the
| increasing consumption of these foods.
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| industrially farmed cattle are often fed iodized salt,
| which can make their dairy products a good source of
| iodine. depends on the farm's practices though
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29221567/
| ufo wrote:
| Depends on the country. That's the case in the USA but I'm
| not sure if it applies in Europe.
| analog31 wrote:
| Good point. I'd hope that there are other sources of iodine
| than salt in regions that have higher iodine content --
| after all, salt was just the vehicle chosen for the
| supplement. But I can also see what you say about prepared
| foods.
| chasil wrote:
| One interesting use of iodine supplementation is during
| nuclear accidents, where it is given to flood the thyroid and
| prevent unstable iodine isotopes from being taken up.
|
| "Iodine-131 (usually as iodide) is a component of nuclear
| fallout, and is particularly dangerous owing to the thyroid
| gland's propensity to concentrate ingested iodine and retain
| it for periods longer than this isotope's radiological half-
| life of eight days. For this reason, people at risk of
| exposure to environmental radioactive iodine (iodine-131) in
| fallout may be instructed to take non-radioactive potassium
| iodide tablets... Ingestion of [a] large dose of non-
| radioactive iodine minimises the uptake of radioactive iodine
| by the thyroid gland."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iodine#Other_formulations
| ufo wrote:
| I-131 also has some interesting history as the very first
| application of radioactive isotopes in a medical setting.
| It's used to treat hyperthyroidism and thyroid cancer.
| the_mitsuhiko wrote:
| Unclear but Germany is monitoring iodine intake and
| insufficiency is on the rise.
|
| https://www.klartext-
| nahrungsergaenzung.de/wissen/lebensmitt...
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Lovely article. It reminds me of the relationship of scurvy and
| Vitamin C. Despite scurvy being largely understood around 1750
| the knowledge was forgotten or replaced with wrong theories as
| late as 1911. https://idlewords.com/2010/03/scott_and_scurvy.htm
| routerl wrote:
| Lovely. Thanks for posting that.
|
| With all our popular narratives about the inevitability of
| scientific progress, it's always refreshing (from a historical
| point of view) and important (from a personal, ethical
| perspective) to remember that there's no guarantee that
| chronologically later developments will necessarily be
| improvements on earlier conclusions.
|
| It brings to mind our current replication crises in science.
| vladms wrote:
| Depends what you mean by "development", as the article does
| not describe developments on treating scurvy, but rather
| somehow random actions based on wrong assumptions (ex: limes
| are the same as lemons; acidity is all that matters).
|
| And even if in this case the initial solution was correct, it
| was still observing a correlation, as they had no clue why
| lemons do the job.
|
| My conclusion based on the article is that just experimenting
| is not enough, you also need to develop and test a complex
| understanding of the system. We probably don't cherish enough
| as a society, that some of us (as in: trained researchers,
| etc.) have a mindset that expects both replication and
| understanding, even if being humans we don't always reach
| this ideal.
| chihuahua wrote:
| The article you're linking to is one of my favorite pieces of
| writing ever.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Maciej has a real gift for writing. His three part travelogue
| of visiting Yemen has been on my mind a lot recently. He
| published the first installment just a few months before the
| civil war started. https://idlewords.com/2015/05/ta_izz.htm
| pixl97 wrote:
| Before the internet I was like "how could we lose information
| like that and replace it with junk", but now I'm like "oh, I
| see exactly how that happens"
| Kalium wrote:
| It's worth noting the critical details: how to prevent scurvy
| was understood, but the underlying mechanisms were not. This
| mattered because it meant _why_ the treatment worked was not
| understood, with the result being a resurgence when a
| supposedly effective treatment turned out to be ineffectual.
|
| Basically, it's easy to think we understand something when we
| have a solution to it, but the two should not be automatically
| conflated.
| bill38 wrote:
| Goitre and cretinism was present in French Alps too.
| eep_social wrote:
| > In the last ice age, a permanent ice sheet formed over the
| Alps. Up to one kilometre thick, its tremendous weight ground
| against the terrain. It thawed and refroze in stages, and with
| every thaw, meltwater washed out the rubble. Over the course of
| 100,000 years, this ice sheet tore the top 250 metres of rock
| and soil from the surface of the Swiss Central Plateau. At its
| peak, about 24,000 years ago, it extended across all the
| northern cantons. It did not reach the Jura or Ticino. In 1964,
| Dr Franz Merke, a Basel surgeon, showed that the extent of the
| ice sheet 'corresponded precisely' with the prevalence of
| goitre: Switzerland had been stripped of its iodine.
| skrebbel wrote:
| Nothing in the article suggests it magically stopped at the
| border.
| catgary wrote:
| That was a fascinating read - there's even a great villain in
| Eugene Bircher (not to get into politics, but he definitely seems
| to have trailblazer the "right wing populist attacks successful
| public health measures" strategy).
| karmakurtisaani wrote:
| Not to be confused with Max Bircher-Benner, the inventor of
| Birchermuesli.
| rdevsrex wrote:
| It's so sad how many people's heath is affected by assholes
| trying to protect their ego.
| Shacklz wrote:
| I always find it fascinating that we don't "anti-celebrate"
| such obvious failures in history more. I remember reading the
| original article of the author (linked in another comment in
| here) in German and I haven't ever heard of Bircher before.
|
| Peddling nonsense against better knowledge that causes this
| amount of suffering deserves ridicule in posterity. We
| shouldn't just celebrate those who do great things for
| humanity, but also "anti-celebrate" those who do great harm.
| throwaway8877 wrote:
| National shaming day.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I am affraid some people would take this and turn it into a
| day of celibration...
| lostlogin wrote:
| If be more in favour of anti-celebrating the bad idea than of
| pillorying the individual. Though there is the odd individual
| who needs more criticism.
| hef19898 wrote:
| My first thought when Bircher's political, and other, actiobs
| where mentioned in the article, was: Why am I not surprised?
| lostlogin wrote:
| Opposition to public health measures doesn't seem to be
| related to left or right politics as far as I can tell -
| there are numerous examples in both directions and the
| history is long. Early examples that come to mind include
| opposition to sewers and small pox vaccines.
| Vespasian wrote:
| It feels like occasional people have to be reminded of
| consequences.
|
| Otherwise polio, measles and the like are still as dangerous as
| they ever were and are ready to make their big return if
| vaccination rates drop too much. I'm certain even small pox is
| lurking somewhere out there.
|
| It seems like, unfortunately, humanities book of learned
| lessons gets reprinted in pain and suffering once in a while.
| catgary wrote:
| He was reminded every day as his home canton still had high
| rates of gout and children being born deaf/mute.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Since he offered treatment packages, that meant a larger
| customer base?
| catgary wrote:
| Like dentists who are against fluoride in water, I guess.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Fluoride in water is different so, as the better
| alternative is adding it to tooth paste.
| btbuildem wrote:
| That jumped out at me as well -- the parallels (and political
| alignments) are unmistakeable. We see the same today with the
| current plague.
| k33n wrote:
| I don't understand why tacit support of leftism is allowed but
| if I counter it, I am immediately flagged.
|
| Very unfair that this is still happening on a site with so many
| smart people on it.
| attachedhead wrote:
| This seems to be a slightly shortened version of an earlier
| article by the same author. The swiss weekly magazine "Das
| Magazin" published a german translation of this longer version in
| 2019 [1]. It is an absolutely fascinating read.
|
| Since the article from OP is relatively short on images, the
| following are links to more images from the german article, with
| captions translated into english. Warning: images contain
| depictions of the medical condition discussed in the article.
| YMMV, but i don't consider them 'gross' or NSFW.
|
| Image 1:
| https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/EzdPT4pM4HAAzsQiwi_L2d.jpg
| Caption: Woman with goitre in Frienisberg, 1921.
|
| Image 2:
| https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/5PhByWEba4W8L0W1EnHXiE.jpg
| Caption: Woman with cretinism, 1928. (Today the word has a
| derogatory connotation, but primarily describes an illness of
| great cruelty).
|
| Image 3:
| https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/Bu0SX8WY4gK8jMZgebpyss.jpg
| Caption: Six women with cretinism, ca. 1920.
|
| Image 4: https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/8qBQEgsuqq-
| BMdsEAPN63U.jpg Caption: Found the solution to Switzerland's
| original curse: Heinrich Hunziker from Adliswil ZH, drawn by
| Marianne Zumbrunn in 1977.
|
| Image 5:
| https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/7tdlChuPq-3AIeFiSvh5U1.jpg
| Caption: Experiments with the snow shovel: the Valais country
| doctor Otto Bayard, 1937.
|
| Image 6:
| https://cdn.unitycms.io/images/5JGFFaXN48BA4xOsHXf0Zu.jpg
| Caption: Sun-tanned outdoorsman: the Herisau general practitioner
| and later chief physician Hans Eggenberger, undated.
|
| [1] https://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/wie-drei-heldenhafte-aerzte-
| die... or https://archive.is/rHzSV
|
| edit: formatting, removed german caption texts
| zwirbl wrote:
| For German speakers there's also this 'Geschichten aus der
| Geschichte' Podcast episode on the matter which does a fairly
| good job telling the story IMO.
| https://www.geschichte.fm/archiv/gag368/
| Vespasian wrote:
| Can absolutely recommend that one.
|
| A fascinating story overall and a reminder of just one of a
| number of everyday sicknesses we (as a society) have been
| able to overcome through science and understanding, despite
| the occasional step backwards.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think, outside Europe, this afflicted lots of places away from
| the coast, right? Like the middle part of the US.
|
| I've always wondered if the iodine in the air is part of the
| allure of the seaside.
|
| Coastal areas of course have produced a huge number of successful
| countries. Most of that must be the trade and logistics
| advantages. I wonder if getting the iodine right out of the air
| was another hidden major advantage though.
| ajuc wrote:
| There are health resorts here in Poland where the whole reason
| is for them to exist in these particular places is because air
| there has a lot of iodine and other minerals from sea salt.
| I've been to one in Kolobrzeg as a child because of my asthma.
|
| There are also inland health resorts where they build huge salt
| evaporation walls so that people don't have to drive all the
| way to the sea to breath sea air- for example in Ciechocinek.
| And it's not modern technology - they have been built in early
| 19th century already.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciechocinek_graduation_towers
|
| https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ciechocinek#/media/Plik:Teznie...
| jongjong wrote:
| Sounds similar to many parts of eastern Europe and Russia.
| People go to health retreats to drink water from specific
| natural springs that are high in minerals.
| ajuc wrote:
| Yeah we have that too, but this is about evaporating it to
| make the air healthy to breathe. Different benefits
| compared to drinking.
|
| Here's more about the mechanism:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graduation_tower
|
| Apparently the first such towers were built in 1600s.
| contingencies wrote:
| Yes. It was also common in mountainous areas of western China
| and Tibet.
| l5870uoo9y wrote:
| To broaden the question; is it proven that sea air is
| healthier? The top search results point in both directions.
| kergonath wrote:
| It is not. This kind of ideas is the remnant of the "bad air"
| theory of diseases propagation, which is not actually a thing
| and was displaced by germ theory at some point in the 19th
| century. People clung on to this belief because why not (and
| there was money to be made bringing rich people to
| countryside or seaside resorts) but there is no real rational
| justification. That's not to say that the atmosphere cannot
| be harmful locally, but the seaside is not particularly
| healthy.
| masklinn wrote:
| > I think, outside Europe, this afflicted lots of places away
| from the coast, right? Like the middle part of the US.
|
| That's exactly where it afflicted people in europe as well,
| mountainous regions tend to be inlands, and from their
| remoteness don't have the opportunity for incidental iodine
| through trade, so they worsen the odds, but historically
| distance from the sea (and thus lack of sea products) has
| absolutely been the primary issue. CIDS was also endemic to the
| english midlands for instance.
|
| > I've always wondered if the iodine in the air is part of the
| allure of the seaside.
|
| No, intake from air is considered insignificant.
| wirrbel wrote:
| In my family there is definitely memory of this . My
| grandmothers generation has seen the old folks with the
| enlarged neck
| hef19898 wrote:
| I remember it from my grand-grandparents. It wasn't common-
| common like in late 19th century Switzerland, but there was
| at least one case close enough to come across yourself.
| simtel20 wrote:
| This brought back memories of being told that my grandfather had
| invested in a factory to make iodized salt in china - probably in
| the Shanghai area, pre-ww2. I do not believe it was a good
| business for him, but that is how these things go sometimes. My
| mother didn't have the visual or historical resources to really
| show me, as a child, what goiters were.
|
| I never really got it until reading this article. But I've always
| made sure to have some iodized salt as I cook just to make sure
| we don't end up deficient, understanding that there was some
| easily avoided consequences at basically no cost.
| hsuduebc2 wrote:
| Very nice story. Love this stories of scientific progress. Thank
| you.
|
| And after reading it whole I must say. Fuck you Bircher.
| pkdpic wrote:
| Great read, but I'm wondering why this began in the 1920's? Or
| was it always an issue for human beings living in Switzerland?
| samus wrote:
| The condition has been described since Roman times, but not
| only in Switzerland. The problem also exists in other regions
| in the Alps and other mountain chains across the world.
| masswerk wrote:
| Speaking of the Alps and related regions, this was also
| considered a condition typical for Styrians (inhabitants of
| the country of Styria) in Austria.
| masklinn wrote:
| > The problem also exists in other regions in the Alps and
| other mountain chains across the world.
|
| As well as in the lowlands, far enough away from the sea to
| not have easy access to produces or sea salt through trade.
| It used to be common in the english midlands and the US
| midwest (as well as the appalachia and rockies).
| dougmwne wrote:
| The Victor Hugo quote in the article was from 1839.
| Biologically speaking, this must have always been an issue. The
| iodine had washed away from the area long before human
| settlement. Before modern medicine, it would have been
| difficult to collect the data and even establish the pattern.
| People did not travel much in pre-modern times and many of
| these mountain villages would receive highly educated visitors
| very infrequently. They may have been barely aware that their
| situation was anything other than normal. The world was beset
| with maladies and this was just one medical mystery among all
| the others. In 1875, life expectancy in Switzerland was just
| 38, so life must have been harsher than any modern person can
| imagine.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > In 1875, life expectancy in Switzerland was just 38
|
| As is usually the case with numbers like this from the past,
| this is a mean value, not a median value, that is massively
| skewed downwards by having upwards of 50% child mortality by
| age 4.
|
| A typical Swiss person in 1875 who had already turned 30
| could be expected to live to be 70.
|
| Here's an article talking about this phenomenon [0]. They
| term it "adult modal age at death", i.e. at what age do
| people tend to die once they have survived childhood? In
| Sweden, in 1875 an adult woman could be expected to live to
| be 72, and an adult man to be 69. But the average life
| expectancy in Sweden in 1875 was only 44.
|
| Per the same article, the modal age at death for adults in
| Switzerland in 1875 was 70 for both men and women.
|
| [0] https://www.cairn-int.info/article-E_POPU_1204_0683--the-
| mos...
| phkahler wrote:
| I am increasingly convinced that the "thyroid hormones" T1, T2,
| T3, and T4 are simply a place to store iodine. When iodine is
| needed somewhere in the body it can be taken from T4, converting
| it to T3. But it's not the case that "T3 is the active form" as
| you'll read in the literature, it's that the removed iodine is
| the active or useful thing.
|
| Changing the ratio of T3/T4 does cause a change in TSH (thyroid
| stimulating hormone) but that's IMHO simply a signal that the
| iodine is getting used, so please send us more.
|
| There are other tissues in the body that need iodine, as
| evidenced by the sodium-iodine symporter present on those cells,
| so to set the recommended daily iodine intake based solely on
| what the thyroid can use is IMHO a huge mistake.
|
| Some things with interesting iodine research: skin cancer, breast
| cancer, type 2 diabetes, asthma, polycystic ovaries, fibrocystic
| breast disease, other cancers. But yeah, it cures goiter...
| samus wrote:
| ... and congenital deafness, low length growth, neurological
| impairment, and other symptoms known as Congenital iodine
| deficiency syndrome.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > Some things with interesting iodine research: skin cancer,
| breast cancer, type 2 diabetes, asthma, polycystic ovaries,
| fibrocystic breast disease, other cancers. But yeah, it cures
| goiter...
|
| When I search for breast cancer and iodine, I find links that
| suggest iodine may help prevent that disease - and Japan's low
| rate of the condition is potentially related to high
| consumption of iodine.
|
| Are you saying that all those conditions are due to excess
| iodine?
| vulcan01 wrote:
| Based on their third paragraph, I assume they mean that
| people are not eating _enough_ iodine.
| lostlogin wrote:
| I interpreted that as the opposite - just because the
| iodine is getting used, it doesn't mean it should have
| more.
|
| I certainly find more on positive effects of iodine so I
| think I've misunderstood OP.
| philwelch wrote:
| If this were true, it would mean that people with
| hypothyroidism could simply supplement iodine rather than
| needing to replace the hormones.
| cperciva wrote:
| _But it 's not the case that "T3 is the active form" as you'll
| read in the literature, it's that the removed iodine is the
| active or useful thing._
|
| Supplementation with T3 yields a rapid correction in
| bradycardia and hypothermia caused by hypothyroidism. We treat
| with T4 because it has a longer physiological halflife and thus
| yields more consistent serum levels; but the evidence is
| incredibly clear that it's T3 which is having an effect, not
| T4.
| ufo wrote:
| The thyroid is by far the largest consumer of iodine. It stores
| iodine in thyroglobulin, which is the precursor to thyroid
| hormone. I don't know the numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised
| if the thyroid released more iodine by breaking down
| thyroglobulin than breaking down thyroid hormone.
| jazzkingrt wrote:
| I'm Swiss. My grandfather has stories of family members afflicted
| with Goitre. What a great read!
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| The use of the term cretin for those with stunted growth due to
| iodine deficiency was not a pejorative. Cretin is a different
| spelling of Chretien, French for Christian. It was short for
| "poor Christian", a term for those suffering misfortune.
| philwelch wrote:
| This whole time I thought it was an ethnic slur against the
| people of Crete.
| tim333 wrote:
| Paywall free https://archive.ph/3wrzh
|
| > in 1921, in the city of Bern, 94 per cent of schoolchildren had
| some swelling of the neck and almost 70 per cent had a goitre.
|
| Gosh - it's surprising that years after discovering relativity
| and the like they were still figuring that out. (Einstein lived
| in Bern from 1903 to 1905 and developed his Theory of Relativity
| there).
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| I wonder if this was at least a factor in Switzerland remaining
| neutral in both world wars. If a significant portion of your
| military age men are unfit for military duty due to goiters, that
| would certainly affect your ability to conduct a war.
| ng12 wrote:
| Switzerland had a very active and well trained military during
| both World Wars. In fact Swiss neutrality is at least partly
| rooted in the historical role of Swiss mercenaries -- it was a
| lot easier to sell your mercenaries if you weren't involved in
| the war.
| tonfa wrote:
| > I wonder if this was at least a factor in Switzerland
| remaining neutral in both world wars
|
| probably has more to do with 1515 (Marignano) and 1815
| (Congress of Vienna, which secured Switzerland as an
| independent state, while enforcing neutrality).
| btbuildem wrote:
| What an interesting read! Fascinating to see how the theory was
| conceived, tested, and put into practice -- and all that in the
| backdrop of other approaches, even with the spectre of iodine as
| a poison!
| boobsbr wrote:
| Happened in the French Alps as well.
|
| Captain Haddock, from Tin Tin used to call people 'cretin des
| Alpes'.
| rmason wrote:
| My father told me that goitre's were quite common when he was
| growing up as a boy in Detroit in the 1920's. In my generation it
| was totally unknown. Yet I remember people affected by polio as a
| boy quite well. But I bet that millennials have no personal
| experience with it at all. Each generation moves forward and I
| can only hope there is a day when no one has any first hand
| experience with either cancer or Alzheimer's.
| masklinn wrote:
| > But I bet that millennials have no personal experience with
| it at all.
|
| Mass vaccination started in the late 50s and especially early
| 60s (with Sabin's oral vaccine).
|
| Millennials start in 1981, so they would / could well have
| known affected adults.
| MBCook wrote:
| The an entire area of the US that was called the Goiter Belt.
| Basically the top half. It was _really_ common.
| hankman86 wrote:
| Only if sensible people continue to run the public health
| authorities.
|
| You now have people that refuse to vaccinate their children
| against measles, COVID vaccine hesitancy is a widespread
| phenomenon with some people resorting to heresay remedies like
| horse dewormers instead, an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist is
| running for US president and polling with double digit numbers.
|
| Health-related insights are particularly susceptible to
| targeted misinformation. And in an era of social media, this
| can quickly become a majority opinion.
| dghughes wrote:
| I had to start taking synthroid since about 5 years in my mid
| 40s. In my mid 20s I was into Tae Kwon Do and while sparring a
| guy taller and much heavier punch my in my neck. I have to wonder
| if he damaged my thyroid.
| ufo wrote:
| I'd assume that the null-hypothesis is that it's unrelated. The
| most common cause of hypo is Hashimoto's thyroiditis, an
| autoimmune condition. More likely to appear the older you get.
| more_corn wrote:
| Iodine deficiency for everyone not willing to wade through the
| story.
| speeder wrote:
| This article made me a little sad.
|
| The article is about how people with a fear of iodine overdose
| resisted the idea of adding it to salt on first place.
|
| I spent my childhood in Brazil, a country where there are a good
| amount of natural iodine. Yet the government decided to ignore
| the risks, seemly well known for more than a century, and jack up
| the iodine in the salt to levels beyond what any international
| standard recommend or tested. And now I hypothyroidism caused by
| iodine overdose.
| tweetle_beetle wrote:
| For anyone interested in this area, I would highly recommend
| following the work of Iodine Global Network (and donating if
| possible).
|
| They work with politicians and industry in a very targetted way
| to increase the use of iodised salt in food production where it
| is most needed in the world. They don't directly fund any of the
| activities, but create the relationships, conditions and
| understanding for it to happen - meaning they are an extremely
| effective charity, creating population scale change with very
| modest funding.
|
| They also do lots of work to try to map the global picture of
| iodine intake from the very varied data available. Some of the
| results might surprise you - https://ign.org/scorecard/
| timClicks wrote:
| It's fascinating how determined people are with their positions,
| even in the face of overwhelming evidence that their position
| causes harm. We see similar arguments today against folate
| fortification of bread and fluoridation of water.
| AlbertCory wrote:
| I'll always be grateful to the doctor who just noticed my throat
| being very _slightly_ enlarged, even though I wasn 't
| complaining. I had my TSH tested and found that I needed the
| synthetic thyroid hormone. It's cheap and you just take it once a
| day.
|
| Iodine deficiency is ONE cause of goiter, but not the only one.
|
| https://www.healthline.com/health/hypothryroidism/hashimotos...
| agnosticmantis wrote:
| Reminds me of John Snow's discovery and demonstration of the
| cause of cholera, which I learned about in the context of casual
| inference in this excellent paper by statistician David Freedman:
|
| https://psychology.okstate.edu/faculty/jgrice/psyc5314/Freed...
|
| Actual science looks nothing like the shoddy paper churning that
| we see in much of econ and social science using questionable and
| assumption-heavy casual inference methods.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-12-27 23:00 UTC)