Iron deficiency in Russia

Iron deficiency crisis in Russia

reduces the learning capacity in children

This is a story by retired scientist/entrepreneur, aged 74 (2014) from Holland.

 

Dear xxx,
Thanks for your confidence in me! I do have a PhD in Chemistry and I even own a pharmaceutical company, but I am no medical doctor! Even without knowing the name of your medication, I can tell you that there is no medication to make you smarter. However, if you take this "medication" long enough, you will get smart enough to realize that somebody managed to have you pay for something that is not a medication and that does not do what it was promised to do!

It would be great if there was a cure for Alzheimer! Thousands of scientists all over the world are engaged in research to find a medication that would prevent it, or slow it down! However, when you have Alzheimer, your brain is damaged by this terrible disease. I hope that some day, we will find a medication that might repair the damage, but it will never restore your memory!

I was involved in a project in Russia, that fights iron deficiency. This deficiency was caused by the fact that in Russia they no longer had money to feed their cattle. As a result meat became too expensive for the common people to buy it. The result was that an entire generation suffers from iron deficiency!

One of the negative results of this is that it reduces the learning capacity in children. By supplementing the iron, you can remedy that, but you cannot place these children back to the first grade and have them start school all over again!

A Russian friend of mine developed a way to supplement iron for school kids. He used a candybar filled with hemoglobin, a by-product from slaughterhouses. The product worked wonders, but I realized that because there was less and less cattle being slaughtered, the base material would get ever more expensive, if only for the transport costs!

My idea was import hemoglobin from the Netherlands. I was able to offer him hemoglobin with superior quality at a fraction of the cost and still make 50% profit! At that time I thought that I had made it and that I would soon be filthy rich, while helping the Russian children!
Then things started to go terribly wrong! The Russian Government was interested in purchasing the product for all primary schools in Russia, because a pilot experiment involving several primary schools had given excellent results. However when my Russian counterpart tried to get a government contract, he was faced with the requirement that he should have an adequate production capacity!

My Russian counterpart found a financier who was willing to invest in a pilot plant, provided that he could show a government contract. He could not get this contract because he did not have the pilot plant! In the end the financier invested the money but "fired" my counterpart, because he thought he would be able to manage the business without my counterpart.

A juridical fight resulted in which my Russian counterpart tried to block the efforts of the financier, by stating that he infringed on patents, filed by my counterpart. The battle that resulted was lost by my counterpart, simply because he lacked the finances to continue the battle!

Well, I hope I did not bore you to much with this history! I know that loss of memory is sometimes caused by vitamin B deficiency. You can remedy that by using vitamin B supplements, but your memories are lost forever!

Warmest regards,
xxxxxx.

Related keywords: Iron deficiency in Russia, Anemia, Candybar filled with Hemoglobin.