A note on the biology of copper - JAR02-03-01.pdf

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• we contend that the so-called ‘biological need for copper’ is a gratuitous and unfounded commonplace medical belief that is responsible (1) for the current lack of interest in researching the real biological effects of copper - which, in fact, are detrimental to health - and, likely, (2) for the slow and unwitting poisoning of people that consume such ill-advised supplements, placing them at risk for insidious neurological and sclerotizing diseases like Alzheimer’s disease or atherosclerosis. Indeed, no studies exist of the real effect of intake of copper via these supplements, and it is likely that copper is not the only heavy ion to which a caution of this nature applies.

• A note on the biology of copper

• There is a class of anemias that is often cited as evidence for the biological need for copper; they are referred to as copper-deficiency anemias precisely to indicate this assumed fact. However, the presumed etiology of these anemias stands upon an “inductive deduction”; and it happens to be the wrong one. For, in fact, what is assumed to be a lack of copper needed for nutrition has never been proven; it is inferred as such, when the evidence only permits one to state that lack of the proper cop- per-binding proteins needed to keep blood free of copper, leads to such anemias. They are, for the most part, and in effect, anemias caused by the resulting lack of defense - or protection of blood marrow - against poisoning by copper. Thus, the false notion that there is a nutritional requirement for copper is proof of the bogus nature of the national dietary requirements of the USDA. There is no such nutri- tional requirement. As an example of insidious pseudoscience, this imaginary requirement is inferred from in vitro studies of the electron transport chain in oxidative phosphorylation. There - in the test tube and not in a cellular system - completion of the respiratory chain and the remainder of the

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