5 - The Science of Vitamins and the Construction of Ignorance

Summary

In 1918, the executive members of the Internal Medicine Association of Japan, all of whom were Tokyo Imperial University professors, came under fire when a member of their own Faculty of Medicine, Tazawa Ryōji (1883–1967), was accused of allowing ideological bias to skew the research findings he presented. When working in the laboratory of Professor Hayashi Haruo, Tazawa had argued, in line with the thinking of the professor, that rice bran extract had no effect on those suffering from beriberi. But upon taking a position in the lab supervised by Irisawa Tatsukichi (1865–1938), Tazawa suddenly declared that rice bran extracts were effective. The medical press reported that “there are countless people who question the consistency of Tazawa.” In the face of popular criticism, the Faculty of Medicine coterie “tried to hide Tazawa and his shame in their sleeves.”

From the 1910s, research based on clinical data as well as human-based experiments tied white rice diets to disease etiology, and rice bran extracts, referred to as vitamin treatments, to disease prevention. The bacteriological approach that had been championed by Faculty of Medicine professors like Hayashi and Aoyama Tanemichi became harder and harder to defend, and consequently younger members of the Tokyo faculty, like Irisawa and Tazawa, moved to take over the field of beriberi research. Protecting their privileged position at the top of the Internal Medicine Association, they could not endorse the diet-deficiency theory and the use of rice bran extracts. To do so would have been tantamount to admitting that members of the Tokyo faction had been erroneous in their approach to this disease and that their resistance to the diet theory had been wrongheaded since the 1880s. Instead, they assured their hold over elite medical associations by slowly confirming, through their own research, that indeed beriberi and diet were causally connected and that initial evidence suggested that rice bran treatments had some effect in halting the disease's progression. Modern medicine in Japan followed a literal pattern of imperialist centralization. The new generation, as represented by Irisawa and Tazawa, continued to practice science at the center of an established, powerful network that gave their work credibility and acceptance.