34 THE CHINA STUDYmake their children well, they would not have to rely on scarce medicines
and the mostly nonexistent doctors. Engel started the program in 1967
and invited me to be his Campus Coordinator and to come for extended
stays in the Philippines while he resided full time in Manila.
Consistent with the emphasis on protein as a means of solving mal-
nutrition, we had to make this nutrient the centerpiece of our educa-
tional "mothercraft" centers and thereby help to increase protein con-
sumption. Fish as a source of protein was mostly limited to the seacoast
areas. Our own preference was to develop peanuts as a source of protein
because this was a crop that could be grown most anywhere. The peanut
is a legume, like alfalfa, soybeans, clover, peas and other beans. Like
these other nitrogen "fixers," peanuts are rich in protein.
There was, however, a nagging problem with these tasty legumes.
Considerable evidence had been emerging, first from England^7 -^9 and
later from MIT (the same lab that I had worked in) 10, 11 to show that pea-
nuts often were contaminated with a fungus-produced toxin called af-
latoxin (AF). It was an alarming problem because AF was being shown
to cause liver cancer in rats. It was said to be the most potent chemical
carcinogen ever discovered.
So we had to tackle two closely related projects: alleviate childhood
malnutrition and resolve the AF contamination problem.
Prior to going to the Philippines, I had traveled to Haiti in order to
observe a few experimental mothercraft centers organized by my col-
leagues at Virginia Tech, Professors Ken King and Ryland Webb. It was
my first trip to an underdeveloped country, and Haiti certainly fit the
bill. Papa Doc Duvalier, president of Haiti, extracted what little resourc-
es the country had for his own rich lifestyle. In Haiti at that time 54%
of the children were dead before reaching their fifth birthday, largely
because of malnutrition.
I subsequently went to the Philippines and encountered more of the
same. We decided where mothercraft centers were to be located based
on how much malnutrition was present in each village. We focused our
efforts on the villages in most need. In a preliminary survey in each vil-
lage (barrio), children were weighed and their weight for age was com-
pared with a Western reference standard, which was subdivided into
first, second and third degree malnutrition. Third degree malnutrition,
the worst kind, represented children under the 65 th percentile. Keep in
mind that a child at the lOOth percentile represents only the average for
the u.s. Being less than the 65 th percentile means near starvation.