Fw: New life for vitamin C as cancer treatment

[Guest guest]

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http://www.nationalpost.com/home/story.html?f=/stories/20010206/466134.html

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> New life for vitamin C as cancer treatment

> Articles say early studies of its value were prejudiced

> Brad Evenson

> National Post

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> Sakuma, The Associated Press

> Linus ing was an early believer in vitamin C's power.

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> Scientists might have blundered 20 years ago when they rejected vitamin C

> as a cancer treatment, researchers say.

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> Two articles published today in the Canadian Medical Association Journal

> suggest the cancer doctors failed to properly test the sugar-like

> molecule, partly because of a prejudice against " alternative " cures.

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> " In 1971, even saying that vitamin C could be useful was so outlandish

> that a conversation would stop between scientists and physicians, " says

> author Dr. Hoffer, a professor of medicine at McGill University.

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> " What's changed now is ... a commitment on the part of agencies to study

> alternative cancer therapies. "

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> If the vitamin C theory is correct, it could restore the lustre to the

> reputation of the renowned American chemist Dr. Linus ing. A two-time

> Nobel Prize winner, Dr. ing died in 1994, embittered that the medical

> establishment had scorned the idea, which he had championed.

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> The controversy began in 1974 when two ish doctors reported that a

> handful of patients with advanced, " incurable " cancer had an extraordinary

> response to high doses of injections and pills of vitamin C. One of the

> doctors confessed he had never seen anything like it.

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> Dr. ing, whose 1970 book Vitamin C and the Common Cold set out his

> theory that megadoses of the vitamin could cure disease, urged medical

> scientists to test it on terminal patients.

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> However, two clinical tests at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota found the

> vitamin did not alter the course of disease and the notion was abandoned.

> Dr. ing attacked the studies, arguing they were designed to fail.

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> " He felt that the failure to even examine the possibility reflected

> close-mindedness on the part of the medical establishment, " says Dr.

> Hoffer, who knew Dr. ing.

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> Dr. Hoffer said his own speculation is the Mayo researchers " wanted a

> quick and decisive way to disprove the treatment. "

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> Last year, at a research workshop in Montreal, scientists began

> re-examining the methods used to test high-dose vitamin C against cancer.

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> Experts suspect the Mayo Clinic, which tried the treatment for only 10

> days, abandoned it too soon.

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> Another theory, proposed by U.S. molecular scientist Dr. Mark Levine, is

> that the Mayo Clinic erred by giving only oral vitamin C, instead of

> injecting it intravenously.

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> Taken orally, much of the vitamin is lost in urine instead of accumulating

> in the body's tissues.

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> " We should rigorously explore the anti-cancer effects of vitamin C, when

> administered intravenously at high doses, in patients with well-documented

> cancer, " Dr. Levine writes in a separate article published today in the

> Canadian journal.

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> Molecular scientists think vitamin C might protect cells from free

> radicals, which are damaging chemicals that make the cells vulnerable to

> cancer.

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> In speeches, Dr. ing would draw a test tube full of the vitamin C a

> goat produces and uses every day. Humans produce none, which he argued may

> be why goats get less disease. " I would trust the biochemistry of a goat

> over the advice of a doctor, " he said.

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> Dr. ing, who took 10 milligrams of vitamin C daily, died of cancer at

> age 93.

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