Question

Christiaan Eijkman shared the Nobel Prize in 1929 for the discovery of vitamins. Eijkman went to Java to isolate the pathogen causing beriberi, an illness that appeared to be contagious as it was common in prisons and among ship crews. Eijkman noticed that chickens fed a diet of white rice also suffered from a similar disorder. When the chickens were fed a diet of red rice, the chickens quickly recovered. What can Eijkman safely infer at this point from his observations? (5 points)

a
Diet may be the cause of beriberi, but more research is needed.
b
Humans with symptoms similar to those of chickens should change their diet.
c
White rice contains little nutritional value for humans and chickens.
d
Beriberi is most certainly not a pathogen.

Answer 1

a. Diet may be the cause of beriberi, but more research is needed.

Step-by-step explanation:

As you can see in the question above, when the hens' diets were changed, they no longer showed signs similar to those caused by beriberi. Which means that there may be a relationship between the incidence of beriberi and food. However, this result may be just a coincidence, or it may not occur in humans in the same way that it occurs in chickens, which leads to the need for more scientific research carried out to test the relationship between the incidence of beriberi and the food of humans.

These researches have already been carried out and currently, it is already known that beriberi is indeed related to vitamin B1 deficient food.