PSA - Benefits of Vitamin C . . . (Part Two)

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Vitamin C Not As Effective After Chemotherapy Has Been Used


Vitamin C and cancer: Linus Pauling is considered the pioneer in the use of oral and intravenous vitamin c in the treatment of cancer. His documented studies in extending cancer survival using large doses of Vitamin C are seen as a benchmark by all those who seek to replicate or refute the beneficial claims of Vitamin C.

In 1979, the Mayo Clinic undertook a clinical study to replicate or refute the earlier studies of Linus Pauling. The study participants (with a few exceptions) had all received chemotherapy PRIOR to being given ORAL doses of Vitamin C. The study concluded by the Mayo Clinic reported no evidence that large doses of Vitamin C help in extending cancer survival.

The following is a letter from Linus Pauling to the Editor of The Times Magazine who reported "Vitamin C Fails as a Cancer Cure" as a result of the Mayo Clinic findings.

By Linus Pauling (October 24, 1979)
[ http://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/MM/B/B/R/R/_/mmbbrr.pdf ]

To the Editor: An article in your Sept. 30 Week in Review section, "Vitamin C Fails as a Cancer Cure" (with reference to me in the first sentence), said that a controlled study of 150 Mayo Clinic patients with advanced cancer, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, had shown no evidence that large doses of vitamin C help.

This is indeed what was reported by the Mayo Clinic investigators. They themselves and The Times article do not point out, however, that the population of cancer patients investigated in the Mayo Clinic was so different from that investigated by my associate Dr. Ewan Cameron in Vale of Leven Hospital, Loch Lomondside, Scotland, that the results observed in the Mayo Clinic study cannot be considered to refute the results observed in the study in Scotland.

The chief investigator in the Mayo Clinic study wrote to me last year that he hoped to repeat Dr. Cameron's work as closely as possible. I then wrote to him, pointing out that cyto-toxic chemotherapy damages the body's protective mechanisms to such an extent that subsequent treatment with Vitamin C would not be expected to have much value, because Vitamin C functions largely by potentiating these protective mechanisms.

I recommended strongly that only patients who had not received chemotherapy be used in the Mayo Clinic study. This recommendation, however, was ignored. Nearly all the patients in the Mayo Clinic trial had received courses of chemotherapy, whereas only 4 percent of those studied by Dr. Cameron had receieved chemotherapy.

The Vale of Leven study showed that large doses of Vitamin C have great value for cancer patients who have NOT received chemotherapy. The Mayo Clinic study answers an important question in that it verifies that treatment with Vitamin C is far less effective for patients whose immune systems have been damaged by courses of chemotherapy.