Since Petr Beckmann has revealed, in the July issue, the skeletons in your new editor's professional closet, we may as well get the ascorbic acid question out of the way and save a lot of unnecessary correspondence. Many
During the 1970s, 12 research papers were published that included among their authors Linus Pauling and Arthur Robinson. I was senior author of seven, Linus of three, and other scientists of two. During some of those years I was President and Research Director of the Pauling Institute.
Several other papers should have been published, but were suppressed by lawyers whom Linus rewarded with over one million dollars in legal fees. Although Linus was eventually punished by being required to make large financial payments for personal damages, much valuable research about ascorbic acid and other health subjects was never properly published.
This has been of continuing interest, because many people supplement their diet with vitamin C. Since the dosages consistent with optimum health are still unknown, there is concern about the guesses that are made in determining current nutritional recommendations.
Beginning in the 1920s, interest was aroused by laboratory work showing anti-viral effects of ascorbic acid in petri dish cultures. This led to empirical observations by some physicians including especially Fredrick Klenner and by many individuals with curiosity about nutrition.
By the mid 1950s, a general attitude had come to prevail in the health food subculture concerning vitamin C. 500 mg per day was considered a reasonable maintenance dose for good health, several grams per day was considered sensible when ill, and some people like Klenner advocated very large (even injected) doses for serious illnesses. Maintenance doses recommended were frequently as high as about 3000 mg per day. Much uncontrolled anecdotal experimentation and very little rigorous scientific work was the basis for these recommendations.
In the late 1960s, word of this reached Pauling, who was aging and beginning to have increased concern about his own health. He initially adopted the popular 3000 mg per day dosage.
Whether vitamin C rejuvenated Linus's tissues is unknown, but it certainly didn't hurt his hunger for notoriety. In succession over the next decade, Pauling and retainers claimed that vitamin C was a cure for the common cold, for mental illness, for cancer, and for AIDS. In order to seize the initiative from the health food gurus, Pauling gradually raised his recommended dosage to about 20,000 mg per day. Exemplary was Pauling's claim, unretracted to the present, that "75% of all cancer can be prevented and cured by vitamin C alone." Although Pauling avoided direct experimental tests ("I don't need to do experiments. People believe me, because of who I am.") experiments were done.
Not only did these experiments fail to confirm the exaggerated claims, but concerns arose over the safety of very high chronic dosages. Vitamin C oxidation products were shown to degrade proteins and DNA in physiological solutions and to damage cultures of human cells. Incidence and severity of cancer in mice actually rose in some dose ranges, although they fell in others. Several scientists who were unlucky enough to obtain such results suffered vicious personal and professional attacks by Pauling.
For many years, good research on vitamin C (a potentially valuable substance in the maintenance of good health) came almost to a halt as attention focused on the test of Pauling's increasingly wild claims. It was not a cure for cancer, but did it help perhaps a little? This had been suggested long before Pauling, but an experimental test was delayed by his publicity campaign.
Today much of this hoopla has subsided and biochemists are getting along with the job of gradually understanding this important substance. Many people take 500 to 3000 mg of vitamin C each day as a nutritional supplement just as the health food gurus of the 1950s were recommending. These doses are probably safe. The experiments on ascorbic acid oxidation products suggest that doses much higher than this should be avoided in healthy people.
Edward Teller told me several years ago that even he takes vitamin C "so that there will be at least one thing that Linus and I agree about." Ironically, the contrived argument that Pauling used so effectively against Teller in their famous debates about atomic testing would bury vitamin C were it used in a similar debate today.
Pauling argued that the harmful effects of high radiation doses should be linearly extrapolated to zero. This led to predictions of damaging health effects from the low amounts of atmospheric radiation being produced by atomic tests. Today, as
AtE readers are well aware, it is known that these low doses are actually of positive biological value.Any extrapolation of the biological effects of vitamin C oxidation products at high doses into the low dose range would certainly be enough for an FDA ban of this substance—which is actually required for life in small amounts.
Pauling is, however, running a personal experiment. He has been taking massive doses of vitamin C for over 20 years and is now 92 years old. He is still alive although afflicted with two sorts of cancer. If vitamin C has prolonged his life, then it has given him the opportunity of watching the collapse of the political empires of international socialism to which he sold his political soul. Petr Beckmann's joy has been Pauling's pain.
I personally hope Linus makes it to 100. And if he does, I may change my recommendation to no more than 3,000 mg per day until the age of 70. After that, mainline the stuff! (Don't do it.) One warning—prolonged supplementation of vitamin C creates a biological dependency. Withdrawal from this addiction should be gradual over several weeks to avoid harmful scorbutic effects.
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Vol. 21, No. 1
Newsletter: Access to Energy Newsletter Archive Volume: Issues Issue/No.: Vol. 21, No. 1 Date: September 01, 1993 04:42 PM (For actual publication date see newsletter.) Title: Petr Beckman
Copyright © 2004 - Access to Energy Newsletter Archive
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