Do you have a reference for any of that? It sounds reasonable that vitamin deficiencies are the result of farming, but the loss of synthesis to the specific demand of increasing brain size seems like a too specific hypothesis. In particular, almost no primates synthesize C, while almost all mammals do. Britannica lists six vitamins that no vertebrates synthesize (though it includes D, which all land animals synthesize by sunlight). Other than C, I was unable to track down claims about variation across species. Britannica claims that "more highly evolved" animals need more vitamins.
We don't have much information about disease among hunter-gatherers. Intermediate pastoralists are more accessible. The book Diseases in Human Evolution seems relevant. Chapter 19 lists many historical accounts of vitamin deficiency. Many were not the result not of all farming, but of the wrong grain. Scurvy was seasonal.
In a different forum I frequent ( The Ornery American ), a regular member there (LetterRip) has recently been making an extraordinary claim - a new theory of medicine he has devised that relates and can contribute in the cure of several neurological-related conditions.
I understand that the prior probabilities for him being a crank are much much higher than him being a new Louis Pasteur. Still I was wondering if there is anyone here with sufficient medical/medicinal knowledge that they can easily determine if there's something obviously ludicrous in LetterRip's theory, or even the opposite: if indeed there's something there that makes sense and is worth investigating.
Here are some of the relevant threads he began:
- where he requests contacts
- where he publishes portion of his theory as a Kindle book
- where he announces more "breakthroughs" and insights and offers to cure or at least alleviate simple ailments
Once again: I understand it's highly unlikely there's anything in his theory; still, I felt a cost-benefit analysis justified my making this post here.
So... anyone with enough understanding of biology/medicine to evaluate these claims of his?