Cancer therapy

The Bottom Line

Linus Pauling's claim that high-dose vitamin C prolonged the life of cancer patients was based on improper statistical analysis of data from a case series. Subsequent clinical trials found no benefit from what he recommended. Case reports indicate that high-dose vitamin C can produce kidney damage. And laboratory studies have shown that vitamin C might even accelerate cancer growth. Thus, even if supplementary vitamin C is eventually be found to have some use in fighting cancer, that role is not likely to be extensive. Despite these hard facts, many people still claim that high doses of vitamin C are useful as a cancer treatment. Responsible health professionals should clarify this issue so that patients neither forfeit scientific care nor put themselves at risk by using a product that has no demonstrated merit.

Even though vitamin and mineral supplements are very popular and widely used they are not regulated as “drugs”.  In order to improve consumer’s access to supplements, DSHEA exempts manufacturers from having to prove their products are safe, and also allows them to make health benefit claims without any proof of effectiveness. Only prescription drug manufacturers have to prove the safety of their products [3].

In short, now we have a nearly 2 billion dollars worth and still expanding supplement market without adequate regulation and safety measures, and Vitamin C alone or included in multivitamins makes more than half of this huge market.

• Vitamin C inactivates the chemotherapy agent proteasome inhibitor PS-341 in human cancer cells [14].
• Long-term use of supplemental multivitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E, and folate does not reduce the risk of lung cancer [15].
• The Physicians’ Health Study II was a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled factorial trial of vitamin E and vitamin C that began in 1997 and continued until its scheduled completion on August 31, 2007. E nrolled14 641 US male physicians  took individual supplements of 400 IU of vitamin E every other day and 500 mg of vitamin C daily. Neither vitamin E nor vitamin C supplementation reduced the risk of major cardiovascular events. These data provide no support for the use of these supplements for the prevention of cardiovascular disease in middle-aged and older men [16].
• Vitamin C antagonizes the cytotoxic effects of antineoplastic (chemotherapeutic) drugs [17].
• Supplementation with vitamin C had no effect on oxidative DNA damage in healthy people. Meaning there are no anti-oxidant benefits observed in the study [18].
• And finally Women’s Antioxidant Cardiovascular Study, one of the most recent randomized controlled studies involving 7627 women concluded that  “Supplementation with vitamin C or vitamin E, or beta carotene offers no overall benefits in the primary prevention of total cancer incidence or mortality.” [19].

There is one other thing about Vit C that has not been fleshed out... and it could relate to something about human mental processes.

Dr. Pauling explains that all animals except for humans produce their own vitamin C. The evolutionary reason for abandoning that process in favor of "getting our vitamin c from diet" is that THE ENERGY USED IN THE PROCESS OF PROVIDING OUR OWN VITAMIN C IS ENERGY THAT COULD BE USED FOR ANOTHER PROCESS. In light of the primary difference between other life and humans is human  consciousness, it is possible if not likely that the energy freed up [by abandoning the internal production of Vit C] allowed some higher mental function to operate. 

  Maybe those processes also use Vit. C [no clinical evidence of that, so far]

We don't know if that higher mental function is still evolving or not, or if there is actually some relationship between higher mental functions and Vit C., and therefore the demands for external Vit C could be growing every generation. Are humans, at least some of us, becoming more telepathic? [it seems I am more telepathic than my parents were] ; Or, is consciousness growing? [almost certainly!!].

Therefore, the need for Vit C. could be more, or less, than we get from diet. Also, the fact that foods have become so "de-vito", or devoid of nutrients and vitamins over the past 100 years is an indication of needing supplemental Vit C.

So, go ahead and like my Mom and every friend I have, just say "no, I will get my C from fruit", but the fact of rising cancer rates in the past 100 years speaks for itself - we may need supplemental C.

Death rates from all cancer are a rather crude measure of how the war on cancer is going, anyway, being an aggregate number that is only likely to be affected very late as a result of improvements in cancer therapy. Our population is aging, which means that more people are living long enough to develop cancer, particularly given that we’ve made such dramatic progress in decreasing death rates from cardiovascular disease. People who live longer because they don’t die of cardiovascular disease have to die of something, and cancer, being number two (although not for long), is the next most likely cause.