Intolerance To Milk Among Non-whites

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31658, 19 April 1968, Page 17

Intolerance To Milk Among Non-whites

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuterl NEW YORK. The bulk of the world’s non-white population is probably intolerant to milk, studies by United States and Australian scientists indicate.

The scientists said that their findings raised serious questions about the advisability of shipping powdered milk to nutritionally deprived persons in Africa and Asia. They said that although non-white children seemed to be able to digest milk, intolerance often started to develop during adolescence and became well-established by adulthood. In a report in the journal “Science,” Drs Shi-Shung Huang and Theodore M. Bayless of Johns Hopkins University Medical School said that milk intolerance was

apparently due to the lack of an enzyme, lactase. The enzyme is needed to digest the milk sugar, lactose. Lactase is produced by the lining of the small intestine. Method Questioned The consequence of milk Intolerance vary somewhat from person to person, but they usually include abdominal bloating, eramps and diarrhoea after drinking more than a glass of milk, the doctors reported. According to the Australian scientists, Drs A. E. Davis and T. Bolin of the University of New South Wales, “it could be” that sending milk and milk products to underdeveloped Asian countries “with the subsequent induction of diarrhoea is not the most efficient method of helping a malnourished community.” .The Australian* reported in a recent issue of the British journal “Nature” that in their studies all of 20 students from Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia, and four or five from India were found to be intolerant to milk. None of 12 white Australian students showed this intolerance. In the studies at the Baltimore university, 19 of 20 healthy Oriental adults living in the United States were unable to digest sizable quantities of lactose. But only two of 20 white persons tested were intolerant to milk and lactose. Earlier Study Cited An earlier study by Johns Hopkins scientists indicated that about 70 per cent of adult American Negroes were unable to digest milk. A similar percentage of milk-intoler-ant persons was found among African Negroes in Uganda. In an interview Dr Bayless said that an adult deficiency of lactase resulting in milk intolerance was most likely a genetic. phenomenon that evolved among peoples who never drank milk as adults. He related a comment from one Nigerian health official: “It’s not we who have * deficiency of lactase, it’s you who have an excess. Adults are not supposed to drink milk.” Dr Bayless said that he hoped the findings of a high percentage of milk intolerance among non-white adults would be a warning to doctors

who prescribed large quantities of milk to pregnant women and ulcer patients.

“If the patient is intolerant to milk, the prescription may do more harm than good,” the doctor noted. Copyright, 1968. "New York Times” News Service.