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Abram Hoffer (November 11, 1917 – May 27, 2009) was a Canadian biochemist, physician, and psychiatrist known for his "adrenochrome hypothesis" of schizoaffective disorders. According to Hoffer, megavitamin therapy and other interventions are potentially effective treatments for cancer and schizophrenia. Hoffer was also involved in studies of LSD as an experimental therapy for alcoholism and the discovery that high-dose niacin can be used to treat high cholesterol and other .
Hoffer was hired by the Saskatchewan Department of Public Health in 1950 to establish a provincial research program in psychiatry, and joined the Regina Psychiatric Services Branch, Department of Public Health in 1951. He remained the Director of Psychiatric Research until entering private practice in 1967. Critical of psychiatry for its emphasis on psychosomatic psychoanalysis and for what he considered a lack of adequate definition and measurement, Hoffer felt that biochemistry and human physiology may be used instead. He hypothesised that people with schizophrenia may lack the ability to remove the hallucinogenic catecholamine metabolite adrenochrome from their brains. Hoffer thought niacin could be used as a Methyl group acceptor to prevent the conversion of noradrenaline into adrenaline and that Vitamin C could be used to prevent the oxidation of Adrenaline to Adrenochrome. Hoffer called his theory the "adrenochrome hypothesis".
In 1967, Hoffer resigned some of his academic and administrative positions, entered into private psychiatric practice in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and created the Journal of Schizophrenia (renamed the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine in 1986). Hoffer used the journal to publish articles on what he called "nutritional psychiatry", later orthomolecular psychiatry, claiming his ideas were consistently rejected by mainstream journals because they were unacceptable to the medical establishment. In 1976, Hoffer relocated to Victoria, British Columbia and continued with his private psychiatric practice until his retirement in 2005. In 1994, Hoffer founded the International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine, holding its inaugural in Vancouver in April of the same year. Hoffer continued to provide nutritional consultations and served as editor of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine. He was also President of the Orthomolecular Vitamin Information Centre in Victoria, BC.
Hoffer died at the age of 91 on May 27, 2009, in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. His remains were buried in the Jewish Cemetery of Victoria.
While working at the Regina General Hospital in the 1950s, Hoffer and James Stephen examined the effects of large doses of niacin on various diseases, including schizophrenia; Hoffer theorized that Epinephrine, when oxidized to adrenochrome was an Endogeny neurotoxin that could cause schizophrenia. At the same time, another Canadian working in Saskatoon, Pathology Rudolf Altschul, was exploring the use of high doses of niacin to lower cholesterol in rabbits and patients with degenerative vascular disease. The three combined their work, and in 1955 produced a paper entitled "Influence of nicotinic acid on serum cholesterol in man." The paper summarized their research showing high-dose niacin significantly lowered cholesterol in both high cholesterol patients as well as low cholesterol control subjects. The results were replicated by researchers at the Mayo Clinic and in Germany the following year. High-dose niacin has since become a treatment option for individuals with high blood cholesterol and related hyperlipidemia.
At such high doses niacin acts like a drug rather than a vitamin and may have adverse effect of intense flushing of the face and torso and, rarely, liver toxicity. Hoffer continued to promote niacin as a treatment for schizophrenia, though this approach was not accepted by mainstream medicine. Subsequent research suggested that Hoffer's adrenochrome theory had merit as people with schizophrenia have defects in the genes that produce glutathione S-transferase, which eliminates the byproducts of from the brain. Though Hoffer and Osmond reported nicotinic acid could help with the treatment of schizophrenia, others reported that they could not replicate these results. Despite the apparent face validity of Hoffer's "transmethylation hypothesis" (in which it was thought that the production of could sometimes go awry and produce a hallucinogenic neurotoxin), it was ultimately rejected for two reasons: the alleged neurotoxins were never identified and the cause of schizophrenia became attributed to dysfunctions in .
Multiple additional studies in the United States, Canada, and Australia similarly failed to find benefits of megavitamin therapy to treat schizophrenia. The term "orthomolecular" was labeled a misnomer as early as 1973. Psychiatrist and critic of psychiatry Thomas Szasz, author of The Myth of Mental Illness (1961), believed Hoffer's view of schizophrenia as a physical disease treatable with vitamins and self-help therapy to be "pure quackery".
Research
Working in Saskatchewan with Humphry Osmond (who coined the term "Psychedelia"), Hoffer and other scientists sought to find medicinal uses for drugs. Part of the research involved Hoffer, Osmond and their wives consuming LSD in an effort to become better acquainted with, and better understand its effects, later joined by other experimenters and their wives.Dyck, 2008, p. 37. Their work began attracting notoriety within professional, provincial and federal and political circles, and they were courted by the emerging movement to restrict peyote as well as Native American groups that used the substance in religious ceremonies.Dyck, 2008, p. 84-5. Hoffer, Osmond and others treated alcoholics with LSD. Canadian scientists reported a fifty percent success rate in one study, although Hoffer speculated that it was more likely the psychedelic experience of LSD, rather than simulated delirium tremens, that convinced the alcoholics to stop drinking.
Controversy
Hoffer's claims regarding schizophrenia and his theories of holistic orthomolecular medicine have been criticized by the mainstream of psychiatry.
Publications
(1996). 9780879836337, Keats Pub. ISBN 9780879836337
Further reading
Footnotes
External links
Categories: 1917 Births, 2009 Deaths, Alternative Cancer Treatment Advocates, Jewish Canadian Scientists, Canadian Psychiatrists, Orthomolecular Medicine Advocates, University Of Minnesota Alumni, University Of Toronto Alumni, Pseudoscientific Diet Advocates, Canadian Psychedelic Drug Advocates, Academic Staff Of The University Of Saskatchewan, Scientists From Saskatchewan, Psychedelic Drug Researchers, Schizophrenia Researchers
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