In one of the final sessions, Herman Baker, PhD, professor of preventive medicine and community health and medicine, director of nutrition and environmental medicine, New Jersey Medical School, Newark, talked on the role of vitamins in metabolic imbalances, the vital question being, are vitamins being absorbed? Though it is hard to test for vitamin deficiencies and though long-term effects of vitamin deficiencies are unknown, such tests are important. A B6 deficiency, for example, can cause seizures in infants. 

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A 1965 randomized study of hospital admissions in New York found 32 percent with one vitamin deficiency and 38 percent with two deficiencies.

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(In the question-and-answer period, AAEM Past President William J. Rea, MD, First World Professorial Chair in Environmental Medicine, Robens Institute, University of Surrey, England, said that B6 deficiency is the most common deficiency in his chemically sensitive patients.) A 1965 randomized study of hospital admissions in New York found 32 percent with one vitamin deficiency and 38 percent with two deficiencies. The main deficiency was folic acid (45 percent), then thiamine (31 percent), nicotinic acid (29 percent), and B6 (27 percent). We are now at crossroads, said Dr. Baker – from vitamins as nutrients we are moving to vitamins as pharmacologic agents.