Cancer and Vitamin C:
Evidence-Based Censorship
(OMNS September 15, 2010) The very first paper in the Puerto Rico Health Sciences Journal's special issue on cancer condemns vitamin C therapy for cancer. (1) Furthermore, that Journal has refused publication of a letter correcting the article's numerous errors. We have therefore decided to provide OMNS readers with that rebuttal letter, below:
It is entirely false to assert that we do not know how much vitamin C is effective against cancer. Indeed, the opposite is true: we do know, and we are failing our duty to patients when we fail to recommend vitamin C as adjunctive cancer therapy.
There are many controlled studies that demonstrate that vitamin C is indeed effective against cancer, improving length of life and quality of life. Positive studies have typically used between 10,000 and 100,000 mg/day intravenously. As Dr. Fernando Cabanillas correctly noted, success with 10,000 mg/day by IV was initially reported back in the 1970s by Cameron and Pauling. But Dr. Cabanillas has then omitted some key information. It is important to note that the negative, much-touted Moertel-Mayo studies were not true replications of Cameron and Pauling's work, as A) they used oral doses only, and B) vitamin C was discontinued at the first sign of disease progression. Would we administer injectable chemotherapy orally, and then discontinue chemotherapy if the patient worsened? No, we would administer it properly, and stay with it.
Dr. Cabanillas also neglects to mention that Pauling and Cameron's work was promptly confirmed, first at Japan's Saga University by Murata et al. Dr. Murata employed over 30,000 mg per day and had even better results with terminally ill cancer patients. (2) In the words of Dr. Louis Lasagna of the University of Rochester Medical School, "It seems indefensible not to at least try substantial doses of vitamin C in these patients." (3)
And again contrary to Dr. Cabanillas' statements, many clinical reports from orthomolecular (nutritional) physicians including Dr. Hugh Riordan and colleagues do in fact indicate that IV vitamin C is effective. Says Dr. James A. Jackson, "Dr. Riordan's IV protocol (4) starts out at 15,000 mg intravenous ascorbate and slowly goes up. It is given twice a week. The IVs are continued until the post-IV vitamin C levels reach what our research established as the killing level of 350 to 400 mg/dL. This has been verified. (5) Once this level is reached, the frequency of the IV may be reduced to once a week, or to one or two times a month."
There is no absolutely reliable cure for cancer. Conventional chemotherapy contributes only 2.1% to five year cancer survival in the USA. (6) But with vitamin C, we are on the right track. It has been reported since McCormick in the 1950s (7,8,9) that cancer patients invariably have abnormally low levels of the vitamin. Vitamin C is vital to a cancer patient. What is dangerous is vitamin deficiency. What is even more dangerous is warning people off the very therapy that may help them, and frequently has been shown to make a significant difference.
Precisely how significant remains to be seen. But there are intriguing indications. Linus Pauling took 18,000 mg/day of vitamin C. Pauling died from cancer in 1994. Dr. Charles Moertel of the Mayo Clinic, critic of vitamin C, died of cancer the same year. Moertel was 66. Pauling was 93. Did vitamin C fail to cure Pauling's cancer? If so, then not taking vitamin C failed to cure Moertel's. Pauling lived 27 years longer with ascorbate than Moertel lived without it.
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