November 21, 2002
By PAUL LEWIS
Dr. Victor D. Herbert, whose experiments
on himself 40 years ago showed that a shortage of folic
acid found in leafy
vegetables and fruits caused a type
of anemia, died on Nov. 19 in New
York City. He was 75.
The cause was cancer, said his wife, Marilynne.
His discovery led to the realization that the anemia once common in pregnant
women was due to a dietary deficiency. As a result, many today take folate,
as folic acid is also called, to help the
fetus develop.
Folic acid was also found to be effective in preventing a birth defect, spina
bifida. In 1998 the United States Food and Drug Administration required
that folic acid be added to all American
food grains.
While doing research at Harvard
University's Thorndike Laboratory from 1959 to 1962, Dr. Herbert began to
doubt
the prevailing view that anemia induced by shortage of folic acid was rare and
largely confined to alcoholics
who did not eat properly and to people with digestive
disorders.
His doubts were aroused when he found a deficiency of folic acid in a Boston
man who developed megaloblastic
anemia on a diet of hamburgers
that had lost most of their folic acid by being overcooked.
To prove his theory that the anemia was far more common than thought, he tried
to talk a colleague into a diet that included no folic acid. The would-be guinea
pig declined, though, so Dr. Herbert decided to do it himself.
On October 1961, he started eating nothing fresh or uncooked and only foods
that had been boiled
multiple times to remove all trace of folic acid.
On Christmas Day that
year, Dr. Herbert found that his legs had become so weak that he could barely
move, a result of having deprived himself of enough potassium.
That problem was quickly corrected, though, and then, after 133
days of ingesting no folic acid and losing 26 pounds, Dr. Herbert developed
a mild megaloblastic anemia, with its symptoms of fatigue, headache and diarrhea.
His experiment is credited with proving the tie conclusively, and today such
anemias are recognized to be widespread throughout the world.
Victor Daniel Herbert was born in New York City on Feb. 22, 1927. He was named
for the famous operetta composer,
his father's cousin.
When Dr. Herbert was 10, his father was killed fighting in the Spanish
Civil War, and his mother died three years later. After living in a succession
of foster homes and boys' clubs, he studied chemistry at Columbia University
and then bluffed his way into its medical school by pretending to be richer
than he was. Once in the school, he maintained the ruse by selling life insurance
to his teachers. He also earned a law degree.
After an internship at the Walter
Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, Dr. Herbert was a medical officer
in the Army in Germany after World War II.
He returned to pursue his career as a research biochemist in nutrition and blood
disorders. The institutions where he worked included the Albert
Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, Mount
Sinai Medical School, Harvard, SUNY
Downstate Medical Center and the Department
of Veterans Affairs' Medical Center in the Bronx.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by his sons, Robert, of Los Gatos, Calif.,
and Steven, of New Jersey; and his daughters Kathy Rose, of Brooklyn, Alissa,
of Bronxville, N.Y., and Laura, of Manhattan.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
9:51:54 PM 
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