Abram Hoffer - Biography

Biography

Hoffer was born in southern Saskatchewan, Canada, in 1917, the last of four children and the son of Israel Hoffer. Originally interested in agriculture, Hoffer earned both a Bachelor of Science and a Masters degree in agricultural chemistry from University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon. He then took up a scholarship for a year of post-graduate work with the University of Minnesota, followed by work developing assays for niacin levels at a wheat products laboratory in Winnipeg. Hoffer earned a PhD in biochemistry in 1944, part of which involved the study of vitamins (particularly B vitamins and their effect on the body) and with an interest in nutrition went on to study medicine at the University of Manitoba in 1945. After two years of clinical work at the University of Toronto, Hoffer earned his MD in 1949. Though originally intending to be a general practitioner, during his degree Hoffer developed an interest in psychiatry. He married Rose Miller in 1942, and his son Bill Hoffer was born in 1944 followed by two more children, John and Miriam, in 1947 and 1949.

Hoffer was hired by the Saskatchewan Department of Public Health in 1950 to establish a provincial research program in psychiatry, and joined the Regina Psychiatric Services Branch, Department of Public Health in 1951. He remained the Director of Psychiatric Research until entering private practice in 1967. Critical of psychiatry for its emphasis on psychosomatic psychoanalysis and for what he considered a lack of adequate definition and measurement, Hoffer felt that biochemistry and human physiology may be used instead. He hypothesised that schizophrenics may lack the ability to remove the hallucinogenic catecholamine metabolite adrenochrome from their brains. Hoffer thought vitamin C could be used to reduce adrenochrome to adrenaline and niacin could be used as a methyl acceptor to prevent the conversion of noradrenaline into adrenaline. Hoffer called his theory the "adrenochrome hypothesis".

In 1967, Hoffer resigned some of his academic and administrative positions, entered into private psychiatric practice in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and created the Journal of Schizophrenia (renamed the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine in 1986). Hoffer used the journal to publish articles on what he called "nutritional psychiatry", later orthomolecular psychiatry, claiming his ideas were consistently rejected by mainstream journals because they were unacceptable to the medical establishment. In 1976, Hoffer relocated to Victoria, British Columbia and continued with his private psychiatric practice until his retirement in 2005. In 1994 Hoffer founded the International Society for Orthomolecular Medicine, holding its inaugural in Vancouver in April of the same year. Hoffer continued to provide nutritional consultations and served as editor of the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine. He was also President of the Orthomolecular Vitamin Information Centre in Victoria, BC.

Hoffer died May 27, 2009 in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.