A Perspective on Prevention of Wars and Pandemics with Lessons from the Case of Pellagra

Abstract

Pellagra is caused by nictotinamide, the precursor to NAD, dietary deficiency. Pellagrins suffer from poor cognitive and social skills and was cured with nicotinamide (vitamin B3). Before then pellagrins were considered inferior and dangerous degenerates known as the “Butterfly Caste” after the diagnostic sunburn rash—Casal’s necklace. Subclinical pellagra is an effect and a cause of poverty, social inequality gaps and friction. Dehumanising diets becomes a justification for ostracising or killing people paving the way to an even worse diet in vicious cycles that lead to war and pandemics. Livestock farming and meat for the rich has been an enduring “megatrend” over the last 6–8000 years and acquiring the necessary resources, such as pastureland, is behind colonisation and trade wars. A consequence is NAD—disadvantaged “inferior” people. This would be cost-effective to correct and create a safer world by reducing (civil) war, and migration, and by improving health and wealth reducing risk of pandemics in a more ecologically sustainable world.