Subject: Re: Germanium

From: [email-masked] (DMurphy3)
Date: 9 Aug 1995 22:44:01 -0400

>[email-masked] (Jay Mann) in message <[email-masked]>
writes:

>Just to clarify: it's organic if it contains carbon in the structure,
>although carbonate salts are counted as inorganic.  Don't confuse organic
>chemistry with so-called organic farming.

Then what are the pentavalent and hexavalent metal coordination compounds
of carbon? They contain carbon, as you say defines an organic compound,
but no carbonate functionality. Of course an organic chemist would never
admit that carbon could form more than 4 bonds. Hmmmm...

A Friendly Physical/*Inorganic* Chemist,
Dex

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From: [email-masked] ("K N and P J Harris")
Date: Sun, 13 Aug 1995 08:31:22 GMT

Confusion reigns (or at least makes a profit).
I don't have any problems with sorting out organic chemistry and organic 
farming, my point is that the terms are used loosely (and suspect 
deliberately loosely) when goodies are offered up to the consumer. To go 
back to the start of this thread, the query was about germanium offered 
as "organic germanium". The compound specified looked like a simple 
chelate - easily produced synthetically. Chemically I would fully accept 
that this is "organic germanium". However, use the same words (without 
adequate qualification) in the context of a Health Food Store and the 
term "organic germanium" takes on a wholely different slant. It is this 
sleazy wordmongering to which I take exception.
Peter Harris, Reading.UK.