Dr. Marjorie Grant Whiting: 1908 – 1995

Marjorie Grant Whiting, 87, well-known anthropological nutritionist, died on April 4, 1995, in Sacramento, CA. Whiting was best known for her theory linking cycads, a traditional food of the Chamorros of Guam, to the high incidence of amytropic lateral sclerosis and parkinsonism-dementia on the island. She developed the theory in the late 1950s, after living for some time in Umatec, the village most heavily affected by the disease. Her theory remains the leading one and has enjoyed renewed interest in the 1980s with the research of neurotoxicologst Peter Spencer. Her work on the disease was featured in a BBC TV documentary (“The Poison That Waits”). She published many scientific articles on the toxicity of cycads and, at age 83, published her last book, Neurotoxicity of Cycads: An Annotated Bibliography for the Year 1829 – 1989.

Born in Indian Crossing, NY, Whiting earned degrees from Harvard (PhD 1958; MPH 1951), Columbia (MA 1940) and Cornell (BS 1927). From 1943 to 1949 she lived in China, where she served as a nutritionist for the UN Refugee and Relief Association and American Red Cross, and was a commissioned officer in the US Public Health Service. She served as an anthropological nutritionist at the National Institutes of Health, Geographic Pathology Section and Epidemiology Branch, and at the US Department of Agriculture (1959-66). She later worked with the Food and Drug Administration and the Emergency Food and Medical Series of the Office of Economic Opportunity (1968-71). After retiring from government service, she was a lecturer and adjunct professor at Pennsylvania State University, Catholic University and the Smithsonian Institution. Whiting participated in the World Food and Nutrition Study by the National Academy of Sciences and was a panelist in the World Food Confernece of 1976. That same year, she moved to Honolulu where she was affiliated with the Lyon Arboretum.

Throughout her career, Whiting studied the diets of many cultures, including the Kung Bushmen of Botswana, and local people of Ponape and other islands of the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Trinidad, Dominican Republic, Europe, Tunisia, Grace, Lebanon, Israel, Pakistan, Japan and Mexico. She also studied toxic plants, toxic foods and native medicines around the world. She continued her research through her life and, at age 75, visited several Indonesian villages to study local methods for processing tempeh.

In addition to her scientific accomplishments, her many friends will remember Whiting for her relentlessly inquisitive mind, her ability to connect people who had similar interests, her success at inspiring others to successful academic studies and careers and her gracious hospitality and stimulating conversations. Her personal interest were wide ranging, including geographic botany, art, music and Chinese medicine. Whiting is survived by 9 nieces and nephews and numerous great nieces and nephews.

   -- From Marjorie Grant Whiting Obituary, Anthropology Newsletter, September 1995


A professional colleague, Howard J. Teas, wrote the following tribute on April 8, 1995:

In Memory of Dr. Marjorie G. Whiting

Dr. Marjorie Whiting’s life was dedicated to people and their cultural and nutritive uses of food. Her work took her worldwide, including China, West Africa and Latin America. Her interest in the role of food in the etiology of ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) in Guam resulted in her authoring a truly outstanding paper on the toxicity of cycads and led to her role in organizing meetings and publications for the international “Cycad Group” over a period of many years.

In Washington and Honolulu she frequently hosted visiting scientists and at her parties she carefully brought together people “who should get to know each other”.

Marjorie’s enthusiasm for knowledge and lore and tasting unusual foods was memorable. If fondly recall having breakfast with her on the open porch of her penthouse in Honolulu with the plaintive calls of the mourning doves as a background. She always had special things to try. And I remember the barbecued chicken she prepared in the little garden at her Georgetown house. And her excitement at trying fajitas for the first time in San Antonio, Texas.

And taking her to the University of Miami Library to work with specially ordered volumes of proceedings of food conferences.

And shopping with her for fish and seaweed and oriental vegetables in Honolulu markets.

I miss Marjorie’s friendship and spirit and enthusiasm. She was unique.

Howard J. Teas

In describing the contributions of Dr. Whiting, Peter S. Spencer, a professional colleague, said:

Current interest in the possible etiologic role of neurotoxic plants – cycads in particular—in western Pacific ALS/PDC, can be traced to the seminal observations on Guam of Dr. Marjorie Whiting, a distinguished ethnobotanist who died in 1995. Between 1962 and 1972, six international conferences instigated by NIH were held to consider the possible relationship between Guam ALS/PDC and the traditional Chamorro practice of employing the toxic seed of the false sago palm, Cycas circinalis, for food and medicine. Eight years prior to the first NIH cycad conference, Donald Nulder and Leonard Kurland (who discovered high-incidence ALS in the Marianas) had encouraged Marjorie Whiting, who was visiting Guam, to carry out a dietary study of communities affected by neurodegenerative disease. Kurland’s interest in dietary issues, and in particular with the possible relationship between Guam ALS and the neurotoxic and collagen disorders lathyrism and odoratism [vide infra], had been stimulated by the observation of skin collagen abnormalities in Guam P-D and ALS, and the demonstration on Guam of the world’s highest incidence of diaphyseal aclasis (multiple exostoses). As Kurland states at the first NIH conference on February 28, 1962:

“Consequently, it was suggested that there might be a basis for intensive studies of some of the natural products and known toxic materials to which the population of the island were exposed….Following her field studies, Dr. Marjorie Whiting suggested a relationship between this disease and ingestion of Cycas circinalis, an important indigenous source of food for this population….Dr. Whiting, who has been responsible for much of the pioneering work in the area, is going to report to us this morning on the uses of cycad in various populations and the reported toxic effects in animals and humans.”

Whiting: “Thank you. I wish to present some of the findingswhich led to our choice of the cycad for intensive investigation in connection with medical research on Guam. I should remind you that it is only one of several toxic plants indigenous to the island and community ingested as food, a chew, or medicine.

...it was decided I should live a month [during 1954] in each of two villages, Umatac and Yigo. Umatac, until recently had been geographically isolated and at that time had the highest incidence of ALS [and P-D] of any Guamanian village...During World War II, the residents of Umatac, because of their isolation, were perhaps better able to resist the demands of the Japanese and to make use of food obtained from fishing and from jungle farming.

...As a basis for the research, I felt that a nutritional factor or toxic substance implicated in the causation of a neurological disease on Guam would have to be associated with some peculiarity of the Chamorro cultural pattern...the substance would either have to be used by Chamorros and not by the native populations of other Pacific islands or be commonly found in other areas but prepared or treated by Guamanians in a manner somewhat different from that of other groups...With these points in mind, I became an avid collector of recipes for native dishes paying close attention to each step in the preparation and to all possible variations of a recipe. I used such leading questions as “What do you use as a substitute when you have no store flour...? How did you manage to survive during World War II?...I checked reports of sudden illness and of a few deaths which reputedly followed consumption of a particular food item...Some followed consumption of bitter cassava [vide infra]…generally, they were recognized as due to inadequate soaking or preparation of a known toxic plant...

Some persons can never eat the federico (cycad). They get a headache even though they like it. When I enquired about the cause of ALS (or, in the vernacular, ‘leetiko’) several persons suggested the cycad...Some people like to eat and...go to considerable lengths to obtain and process it. Because of its peculiar mucilaginous property, it is highly desirable for making tortillas and as a thickener for other dishes...On the other hand,” everyone” knows of the toxic property of the plant. Dogs and chickens reputedly die if they drink the wash water...Animals grazing in areas where the cycad plant grows eat the sprouts and young leaves...Reports of toxicity in animals describe two different conditions – an acute illness characterized by gastroenteritis, and [a] chronic condition characterized by a peculiar paralysis of the hindquarters which, from all accounts appears to be progressive and irreversible. Preparation [for human consumption] is laborious. Directions vary but soaking is required for “several” days with “frequent” changes of water. During the process of beating off the husks, some persons become dizzy [liberated cyanide”] and have to leave their work for a time to recover. Children are not allowed to participate in this stage of the processing. Only small amounts [of the processed flour product] are given to children because many become ill when they first eat a dish made with cycad starch...During the [Second World] war, many women [of Umatac] have told me that their chief occupation throughout the day, day after day, was preparation of cycad starch for their family, breaking the nuts, soaking them, grinding them...During this period, which lasted for two or three years, there was practically no import of rice. The Japanese controlled much of the shoreline. The people were in the hills and had to depend pretty much on native food, on what they could get through night fishing expeditions, or through some trading with the Japanese...

The only medical use I ever found on Guam for the cycad is what is called ‘tropical ulcers’, which frequently occur on the leg or foot. The fresh fruit is grated and spread on as a fresh poultice for two or three successive days. Reputedly this remedy is effective when all other treatment fails.”

Western Pacific ALS/PDC: Is the Cycad Responsible?

While Whiting suspected the etiologic role of foodstuffs prepared from Cycas circinalis, She pointed out that other potentially toxic plants were also used for food, including bitter cassava (Manihot esculenta). She also noted that a black fungus with unknown properties sometimes grew on the washed cycad seed, and others have noted the presence of a contaminating fungal species that elaborates the mycotoxin 3-nitropropionic acid, another agent with neurotoxic potential. Kurland repeatedly noted the possible relationship between Guam ALS and neurolathyrism and odoratism, human and experimental disorders, respectively, associated with the consumption of Lathyrus sativus (Grass pea) and Lathyrus odoratus (Sweat pea)

  --Excerpted from a presentation: The Contributions of Marjorie Whiting, Ph.D. by Peter S. Spencer, Oregon Health Science University, Portland Oregon, at the American Academy of Neurology’s 48th Annual Meeting, March 23 – 30, 1996, San Francisco


Jonathan Weiner authored a New Yorker article in 2005 describing Dr. Whiting’s work in Guam. The following excerpt from his article appeared on page 44.

For decades, some Chamorros have placed the blame for the disease on the islands’ cycads, which look a little like palms or tree ferns. Cycads are the most primitive seed-bearing plants known on earth—they predate the dinosaurs by tens of millions of years—and their seeds, each about the size of a squash ball, are poisonous. To detoxify them, Chamorros chop them up and soak them in pails of water, changing the water daily for a week or two. Then they use the seed pulp to make flour for tortillas and chips. If dogs or chickens drink the water from the first soaking, they die. Even ants and flies stay away from it.

In the nineteen-fifties, Marjorie Whiting, an ethnobotanist, and Leonard Kurland, an epidemiologist and neurologist, who was the director of the N.I.H. research station, decided that the Chamorros might be right about cycads. Whiting spent a month in Umatac, cooking with the women and recording their recipes. She lived with the Quinata family, who, according to local folklore, were the first people on Guam to come down with the disease, and who had lost someone to it in every generation since the early eighteen hundreds. The cycad theory gained popularity, and in 1962 Kurland was able to organize an ambitious series of cycad conferences sponsored by the N.I.H. Many of the conference sessions focused on cycasin, a toxic compound in cycads….

  --From: The New Yorker, April 11. 2005: Annals of Medicine: The Tangle – An Ethnobotanist tries to solve the mystery of neurological disease on Guam by Jonathan Weiner (pp. 43-51).