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Will Darryl Dawkins be vindicated after all these years?

Met a man from Mars at STRI the other day...

by Eric Jackson

A little before 4 p.m. on January 30 I showed up at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute's (STRI's) Tupper Center in Ancon, expecting to cover the weekly science lecture. But instead I met a man from Mars, and discovered upon talking to him that the usual lecture series had been pre-empted by an all-day symposium, which was drawing toward its close.

What? Martians speak Earthling languages? Your editor picks up alien tongues that quickly?

Please don't misunderstand: Mars, as in the company that makes M&Ms and Milky Way bars, not as in the red planet. The man from Mars was a medical doctor from Texas and a member of the Mars Nutrition Research Council. This was a joint STRI and Mars, Inc. multidisciplinary symposium about cacao, the plant that produces beans from which cocoa and ultimately chocolate are extracted.

Why such an academic gathering in Panama at this time?

It does help, of course, that in much of the home country of Mars, Incorporated it's quite cold this time of the year, and in Panama it's sunny and dry. But all the Kunas seated in the second row were a giveaway to the more specific reason: last year Harvard University researcher Dr. Norm Hollenberg published a study about hypertension --- high blood pressure --- among the people of Kuna Yala. In that comarca people drink enormous amounts of fresh unprocessed chocolate and there is very little hypertension. There are indications that some of the flavanols, chemical components of the fruit of the cacao plant, are responsible for this medical phenomenon.

Now if the hypothesis proves true, that might be good news for Mars, Incorporated. There are few better things for a food company's long-established product line than a sudden medical discovery that its snacks will help a person avoid a stroke or heart attack. Alas, it turns out that the processing in most of these chocolate products destroys the flavanols thought to be beneficial --- you want the dark chocolate, or better yet fresh unprocessed chocolate like they drink in Kuna Yala, rather than a Snickers bar. Still, Mars might want to consider new chocolate products and new processes to take advantage of any health benefits.

And then there's former NBA star Darryl Dawkins, who back in 1979 went on a backboard-smashing slam dunk binge and at the time attributed it to the chocolate thunder surging through his body. The NBA commissioner at the time looked askance at the claim, threatened fines for any more broken backboards and instituted a process that ended up in new backboard and rim designs. But all these years later, will the doctors find that there's something real to the chocolate thunder after all?

Dawkins didn't come up at the symposium, but many other aspects about cacao and chocolate did. Forestry, genetics, ecology, sociology, climate change, politics and economic all shared the stage with the biomedical implications of cocoa flavanols. Some of the presentations were updates of Tuesday afternoon lectures by STRI scientists that this reporter had previously covered. Others, sad to say, were things that were unfortunate to miss.

The MD from Mars whom I first met reacted to my question about the health effects of chocolate like a scientist rather than a snake oil man. He said that he's interested in science rather than advocacy and opined that, although some interesting data had been generated, more research is needed before anybody can reasonably say that regular doses of cocoa flavanols prevent high blood pressure.

Inside, Hollenberg was saying much the same thing, calling for a 25-year controlled study of the medical effects of cocoa. If the suspicion about a link between what the Kunas drink and their low rate of hypertension pans, out, he noted, "the world will want more cocoa." The professor digressed into science history, to the origins of modern science-based medicine in an 18th century British study of the relationship of limes to scurvy. "The British became limeys, and Brittania ruled the waves --- therapeutic trials can be very important."

And now, Hollenberg, concluded, the time is right and "this is the place to do a large randomized clinical trial to see if cocoa is really good for you."

Whether or not cocoa is good for you, and whether or not Mr. Dawkins's condition had anything to do with chocolate, Mars will still be very interested in growing cacao. Thus it funds research by folks like STRI's Dr. Allen Herre, who has won awards for his work on harmful and beneficial fungi in cacao trees.

At the symposium Herre recounted his experimental findings that the innoculation of cacao trees with certain endophytes that appear to fend off the black pod (Phytophthora) blight. He's hoping for the backing to do large-scale field studies, and if this work turns into a practical biological blight control, it will be a boon to African cocoa producers in particular, where black pod is a devastating agricultural disease. Here, where most of our commercial cocoa production has been in Bocas del Toro, black pod is much less of a problem than the frosty pod (Moniellia) blight, for which Herre said, "we have not yet found an effective control agent."

Also at the symposium, STRI ecologist Dr. Sunshine Van Bael spoke about the benefits of growing cacao trees in a natural forest setting, rather than "cleaning" the landscape to plant a cacao monoculture that's tended with chemicals. Do things the natural way, she has found, and the birds who are not driven from their habitats return the favor by picking the insects off of the cacao.

A number of other STRI scientists in various other fields, along with experts from the US Department of Agriculture, the Royal Botanical Gardens, the University of California at Davis, the Gorgas Memorial Institute, McGill University, Conservation International, the Joint Global Change Research Institute, Harvard University and Mars also spoke.

So has all the excitement brought more funding for Herre and the other STRI scientists? Well, yes and no. At the symposium the establishment and funding of an annual Norm Hollenberg Lecture at STRI was announced. Herre said that so far the fanfare "has not helped us directly."

STRI director Dr. Ira Rubinoff also warned against triumphalist thinking. Allowing that "cacao more than most other products is tied to forests" and that's good news for those who would preserve tropical forests, he opined that the fungal blights against which Herre has been working will be succeeded by new threats that will emerge. (And of course that will provide new work for institutions like STRI.)

Rubinoff, who has the seniority to retire but stays on the job because he likes it, use the occasion to "make a plea for more research in the tropics." He compared California and Ecuador in terms of biological diversity (roughly similar, though Ecuador is smaller so has more species per whatever measure of area), and concentration of top-notch academic research facilities (no comparison --- California has lots of those and Ecuador doesn't). He said that the disparity in academia is one of the reasons for a series of economic and political problems across Latin America.

Herre agreed with Rubinoff's warning about resting on the laurels of past or present accomplishments: "several diseases (or strains of existing ones) have emerged over time in the different places that cacao is grown... no reason whatsoever to think that this should not continue. I agree completely with the basic point. There is no 'end point / we have won.' There are only ongoing and ever shifting challenges that need to be dealt with or you go out of business."

On the business of cocoa, Herre was upbeat about what it can do for underdeveloped regions. "Growing chocolate in mixed agricultural / silvacultural systems is about as good as it can get."

Even so, he expresses some skepticism about some of the claims made about chocolate. However, Herre also confessed that "I drink a lot of RAW chocolate (most processing of most chocolates takes out the components that are supposed to be good for your cardiovascular system --- eating Snickers bars will NOT help you).

About Darryl Dawkins and his chocolate thunder claim, Herre said "I would have thought he was referring not literally to 'chocolate' but rather to his blackness --- but in any event chocolate (or components associated with it) certainly affects mood, energy levels, and many other aspects of human physiology. For me, it provides a less jittery lift than coffee."