Medicine: The Case Against Mineral Oil

Like a mother fretting over a willful child’s diet, beagle-eyed Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor of the American Medical Association Journal, keeps a sharp watch over the nation’s food & drug habits. Last fortnight Dr. Fishbein was worrying about mineral oil, of all things.

For years, doctors have been recommending mineral oil for constipation and in weight-reducing diets. Because of animal and vegetable fat shortages, it has also been widely used in salad dressings. What worries Dr. Fishbein: recent research seems to prove that a steady diet of mineral oil is none too good for the human organism.

One study showed that three teaspoons of mineral oil a day cuts in half the human body’s ability to absorb carotene, which is converted to vitamin A. Vitamin A deficiency causes night blindness, various skin and internal disorders. What’s more alarming, fine droplets of mineral oil can go through the intestinal wall and reach the liver and lymph nodes, where, doctors suspect, they may cause dangerous lesions. Autopsies have revealed such droplets in patients’ tissues.

In the opinion of no less an authority than Dr. Walter C. Alvarez, famed Mayo Clinic internist, doctors should take a long, suspicious look at mineral oil. Said Fishbein, quoting Alvarez: “These observations raise the grave question . . . whether mineral oil can be used safely, year in and year out, as some persons use it; they also raise the question whether purveyors of food should ever be allowed to substitute mineral oil for the edible fats.”