SOIL DEFICIENCY.

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20624, 13 August 1932, Page 6

SOIL DEFICIENCY.

AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH. LORD BLEDISLOE'S LEAD. ITBOIt OUR OWJT CO&BESPOXDEMT.) LONDON, June 21. "Nature"' mentions in a leading article that, at a meeting of the New Zealand branch of the British Medical Association held in March, a 'resolution was approved urging the necessity for further research regarding the "factors which govern the incidence of goitre, in particular its relationship to the nature of the soil and the food of the people," and recommending that arrangements should be made to coordinate medical research with soil and animal research.

"The resolution to co-ordinate workon soils, domestic animals, and human beings," "Nature" comments, "is undoubtedly sound. "Investigations on these lines have been carried out in Great Britain in recent years. The greatest obstacle to progress is the difficulty of determining with accuracy the amounts of iodine present in soils and foodstuffs. A committee of the Medical Research Council, with the assistance of Sir Robert Robertson, of tho Government Chemical Laboratory, is at present trying to evolve a method which will give trustworthy data and can be used as a standard method throughout the world. If such a method be found, the advance in our knowledgo will certainly be along the lines suggested by the New Zealand Medical Conference. It is probable that through the Imperial Agricultural Bureaux, the Medical Research Council, the Public Health Departments, and the Agricultural Research Council, cooperative research not onlv between medical, veterinary, and agricultural research workers, but also between institutions in different parts of the Empire, may be arranged. It is by such co-operative work that the goitre problem is most likely to be solved: Lord Bledisloe's Message.

'That such co-operation should not be limited to the questiou of goitre is emphasised by a message from Lord Bledisloe to the New Zealand Medical Conference. Lord Bledisloe has, for many years, shown a deep interest hi veterinary and agricultural research, and in his message he directs attention to the inter-relation of human and animal food deficiency diseases. He

refers specially to diseases traceable to lack of iron, calcium, iodine, phosphates, vitamins, or other essential food factors," and points out that these diseases, which have a common etiology in both human beings and farm animals, require further investigation. "A number of deficiency diseases, for example, "Waihi disease in cattle due to phosphorous deficiency, bush sickness to iron deficiency, goitre believed to be associated with iodine deficiency, and several diseases in sheep which" may be due to lack of either calcium or' phosphorus or both, are already being successfully investigated in New Zealand. There is evidence that similar mineral deficiencies occur under certain conditions in the food of human beings, and there is no doubt that lack of some of the vitamins is of common occurrence in large sections of the world's population. "The wealth of knowledge which research in nutrition has accumulated in the past few years, perhaps on account of its very newness, has not yet been fully applied to the prevention of disease in human beings and domestic animals. The lead given by Lord Bledisloe for the combination of medical, veterinary, and agricultural research resources for an attack on diseases the incidence of which is influenced directly or indirectly by nutrition is, therefore, timely, and deserves the attention of those responsible for the direction of medical and agricultural research in other countries as well as in New Zealand.