More Fuel on the Vitamin C fire..

[Guest guest]

from vitaminCFoundation.org:

> The Vitamin C Foundation was disappointed, but not surprised, when

the U.S. government's National Institutes of Health (NIH) turned down

> our grant request to study vitamin C and heart disease. (McDade

2002) We were shocked by the rejection of Bedell's National Foundation

> for Alternative Medicine. NFAM did not, and perhaps still does not

believe that ascorbic acid is vitamin C.

I find this to be truly shocking. It's not surprising to me that

the naturalists would turn down a grant request for a study that

could possibly invalidate their claim (that the ascorbic acid

component of " Vitamin C " IS *an* important component - not that it is

necessarily the ONLY important component.

But for the NIH to turn down such a grant? How is this clearing

up the mess at all? If the NIH will not act to verify or counter the

claims of the naturalists (and fund the experiments to find out),

then how are they any better than the naturalists, who won't fund the

research either?

The page goes on to speculate that that the " Vitamin C is not

ascorbic acid " argument is actually promoted by the drug industry, to

caue ascorbic acid to lose it's protection under the dietary

supplements act. I agree with the argument in part: " Vitamin C " is

non-legally-speaking just a name, and I think it is all together

possible that while ascorbic acid IS important, all the other things

that are in " natural C " are important as well. But the only way we

will ever know is to do the damn experiments. If the naturalists

won't do them, and the NIH won't do them, how will we EVER get out of

this mess? Except by going on " blind faith " and just eating whole

foods - which is not a bad idea, it worked for millions of years for

humans. But it won't do anything to advance our knowledge of just

what those " other fractions " of " natural C " actually are, or what

they might do.

This is progress?

Jim