Linus Pauling was right all along. A doctor's opinion
Since Pauling's death, the medical establishment has reclaimed the scientific position with a series of experiments on vitamin C. In particular, the NIH measured the distribution of vitamin C in the body and claimed that Pauling was wrong about the need for high doses, as the blood could be saturated at low doses [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 93, 3704-9.]. They added that doses higher than one gram were potentially dangerous. From this point on, the high dose vitamin C lobby were on the defensive.
Taking note of this inconsistency, Drs Steve Hickey and Hilary Roberts decided to investigate the data for a book ("Ascorbate, the science of vitamin C", www.lulu.com/ascorbate). They began by looking at the apparently ludicrous claims for the medical effects of vitamin C. Pauling had stated that the substance could cure cancer and that shortage was the major cause of heart disease. Among his many scientific advances, Pauling had made occasional errors: perhaps he had done the same with vitamin C. If he was wrong, his hypotheses should be easy to refute.
When they examined the evidence, Hickey and Roberts found background evidence for Pauling's ideas from independent scientific and medical reports, covering half a century. The findings in these papers could neither be dismissed as placebo effects nor easily explained. The reports included remission of AIDS, cures for cancer, and the immediate recovery of children at the point of death from septic shock. The claims seemed so out of the ordinary that they were hard to believe. However, Hickey and Roberts could find no counter examples in the scientific or medical literature.
If these positive reports were indeed wrong, no-one had shown this to be true. The scientific evidence was consistent with Pauling's ideas, with a few notable exceptions. The primary exception was the NIH data on blood and tissue saturation. The medical establishment accepted the NIH conclusions and held them in the highest regard. The US Institute of Medicine had based their official recommended dietary allowance (RDA) on these results. If the NIH was correct, then Pauling was wrong and the positive reports of high doses must be invalid.
The NIH conclusions were not correct, however. Hickey and Roberts examined their experiments and found them to be full of errors. For example, the researchers had given a dose of vitamin C, waited until it had been excreted and then measured blood levels. Using this procedure, they found that increasing the dose did not greatly increase the blood levels. Instead of realising that this was because the dose had been excreted, the NIH claimed it was because the body was saturated, so higher doses were redundant. They then used white blood cells as a model for normal cells, to see how they absorbed vitamin C from their surroundings. These white blood cells are specialised to absorb vitamin C, even when supplies are low. If other body cells were similar to white blood cells, we would normally have a reserve of 40 grams in our bodies. In this case, given the proposed RDA of 200mg, it would take 2-3 years to fill a depleted body. This is demonstrably incorrect: the classic example is that James Lind's sailors recovered from scurvy in a matter of days when they were given citrus fruits containing small amounts of vitamin C.
These mistakes were gross and unsupportable. In order to check their re-interpretation of the data, Hickey sent emails to the NIH, the Institute of Medicine and every scientist he could contact who was associated with the RDA, asking them to provide a reasonable scientific response to these errors. No-one was able to provide such a response. Since it is normal scientific practice to explain and defend your ideas, the hypothesis that people only need small amounts of vitamin C looks increasingly shaky.
Even the NIH's subsequent data contradicts their earlier work. The NIH vitamin C group published a series of papers on vitamin C and cancer [Ann Intern Med, 140(7), 533-7.]. In these papers, they suggested that repeated doses of oral vitamin C would produce blood levels of at least 220 microM (a measure of the concentration) , which is three times greater than the 70 microM maximum "saturated" value they claimed in their RDA papers. While their own papers clearly showed that their low-dose claims were wrong, the NIH appeared not to notice. Instead, they suggested that intravenous doses could produce higher blood levels, which might be effective against cancer. Even though their data were coming closer to Pauling's findings on the use of vitamin C in cancer, the NIH took the opportunity to mount another attack on Linus Pauling, suggesting he did not know the difference between oral and intravenous (IV) vitamin C.
Pauling had performed a series of trials with Dr Ewan Cameron, a Scottish cancer specialist, showing that intravenous vitamin C allowed cancer patients to live much longer than expected. Numerous other studies confirmed this effect, particularly the work of Dr Abram Hoffer and Dr Hugh Riordan. The Mayo Clinic tried to refute this research but failed, as they used low, oral doses, making their results invalid. In their own cancer paper, the NIH researchers claimed that Pauling and Cameron's use of the IV route was "serendipitous", implying that Pauling did not know the difference between injected and oral doses. In fact, Pauling had written explicitly about this difference, so the NIH criticism was misplaced.
A new scientific theory, called the dynamic flow model, explains all the observed responses to vitamin C in the literature. This model is described in the book "Ascorbate", mentioned above. According to the model, people should ideally be in a state of dynamic flow, which means they should ingest more vitamin C than they need, in the form of divided dose supplements. The extra ascorbate flows through the body and is excreted in the urine. It is not wasted, however, as the excess acts as a reservoir when extra vitamin C is required. Dynamic flow is the closest we humans can get to restoring our physiology to how it was before we lost the ability to make vitamin C in our bodies, as most other animals still do.
It is difficult to imagine what Linus Pauling would have made of all this had he lived. Hickey and Roberts like to think that he would have pointed out the NIH errors earlier. He might have had fun explaining that the NIH could not perform a simple experiment, yet tried to blame him for the deficiencies in the Mayo Clinic's research. It is now 10 years since Pauling's death. Biologist Rene Dubos suggested that the mainstream converges with Pauling twenty years later. If so, we only have another decade to wait until the medical establishment can admit that Pauling was right all along.
A new mechanism of vitamin C effects on A/FM/1/47(H1N1) virus-induced pneumonia in restraint-stressed mice
It is well known that vitamin C could protect against influenza infection, but little is known about the mechanisms. This study aimed to investigate the influence and possible mechanisms of vitamin C on pneumonia induced by influenza virus in stressed mice. Results showed that restraint stress significantly increased the mortality and the severity of pneumonia in mice caused by A/FM/1/47(H1N1) virus infection, which was attenuated by oral administration of vitamin C (125 and 250 mg/kg). Moreover, vitamin C administration significantly decreased expression of susceptibility genes, including mitochondrial antiviral signaling (MAVS) and interferon regulatory factor 3 (IRF3), and increased expression of NF-κB. These work in conjunction to induce type I interferons (IFNs) and elicit innate antiviral response as key factors in RIG-I-mediated signal transduction pathway. The above effects of vitamin C were further found to relate with inhibition of excess CORT synthesis by regulating steroid hydroxylating enzymes in adrenal gland. In conclusion, the protective effects of vitamin C on influenza virus-caused pneumonia might be related to its inhibition of CORT synthesis, which reduces the susceptibility to influenza viral infection in restraint-stressed mice. These findings provide a new mechanism for the effects of vitamin C on influenza virus-induced pneumonia in restraint-stressed mice.
Vitamin C levels are universally low or undetectable in patients with critical illness, especially in those with sepsis. Vitamin C is a key antioxidant and an essential cofactor for many important biological reactions.2 Vitamin C is synthesized by all vertebrates except primates and guinea pigs, and the synthesis of vitamin C increases during stress. Furthermore, vitamin C is secreted by the human adrenal gland,3 and therefore vitamin C acts more like a “stress hormone” than a “nutrient.” The comparison between studies administering vitamin C with other nutritional studies is therefore not relevant. Additionally, the biological properties (and safety) of vitamin C are quite distinct from that of glutamine. The statement that “vitamin C supplementation in critical illness has been studied in high-quality trials without a signal of benefit” is not correct. IV vitamin C has been successfully used to treat patients in the general surgical ICU4; patients with traumatic injuries5, 6; and patients with sepsis,7, 8 pancreatitis,9 burns,10, 11 and tetanus12; as well as patients undergoing coronary artery bypass surgery.13 No adverse effects of IV vitamin C were noted in any of these studies. Patients with malignancy have received adjunctive treatment with IV vitamin C in doses of up to 150 g (100 times the dose that we recommend) without untoward side effects. We therefore believe that the administration of vitamin C in the dosage that we recommend is an exceedingly safe intervention.
Andrew Saul writes: "ntravenous vitamin C is legal. No, no one has "banned" it. An IV of C is not all that difficult to obtain IF YOU REALLY INSIST ON IT. Here is my popular article on ways to take the reins and get the C in the veins."
"More than a million Americans fall ill from severe sepsis annually, and between 28 and 50 percent of them die"
"sepsis patients often have undetectable levels of the nutrient"
"Four of the 47 patients Marik documented in his paper died in the hospital. But their deaths, Marik reported, were from underlying diseases, not from sepsis. By comparison, 19 of the 47 patients he’d treated before trying vitamin C and steroids had died.
So far, he’s treated more than 150 patients with the protocol and he says only one has died from sepsis.
