Despite its unconvincing history and its blunt but cursory dismissal by modern medicine, vitamin C therapy for cancer may (finally) be undergoing an unexpected resurgence and it isn’t being led by a bunch of naturopaths and vitamin wackos.
Scientific investigators from 13 different countries operating at 28 universities and established clinics have published 37 papers in the past four years on the need to produce more evidence of vitamin C’s safety and efficacy for cancer treatment. In other words, vitamin C therapy is not dead and buried 37 years after it was first introduced by Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling and Scottish physician Ewan Cameron.
Pauling and Cameron in the late 1970s delivered some unsettling news to oncologists and pharmacologists. Oral and intravenous administration of a common vitamin achieved 20-times greater long-term survival of cancer patients than a control group that was not given vitamin C and benefited 22% of treated subjects versus just 0.4% of patients undergoing chemotherapy. [Immune Network 2009]
This predicted reawakening is based upon new scientific discoveries. The realization that vitamin C provides targeted cancer-cell killing properties by transient generation of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) without posing harm to healthy cells and is non-toxic (turns to H2O – water) and has undeniable advantages over harsh chemotherapy and radiation therapy. [Science 2015] One researcher says: “Because high-dose vitamin C is already known to be safe, oncologists ‘can quickly move forward in the clinic’.” [Science Magazine Nov 5, 2015]
Linus Pauling, mislabeled as a health quack by Quackwatch, may be vindicated after all. At the very least vitamin C therapy may avert many of the side effects of conventional cancer treatment. [Cancer Discovery 2014]
Furthermore, this author’s review of the early science conducted by Abram Hoffer MD, a contemporary of Linus Pauling and Ewan Cameron, reveals oral vitamin C alone achieved unparalleled long-term survival when combined with other nutrients like zinc that reinvigorate T-cells (white blood cells also known as T-lymphocytes), especially when combined with a low sugar/carbohydrate diet. [Knowledge of Health 2016]
Also this author uncovered an overlooked paper written by Linus Pauling and colleagues in 1979 that described the problem of sluggish T-cells as a probable reason why vitamin C therapy only achieved modest success then. [Cancer Research 1979]
A copy of this author’s reassessment of vitamin C therapy has been dispatched to all 28 treatment centers in 13 countries publishing recent papers on this subject as well as to other authors and experts in the field of vitamin C therapy. Initial reviews have been positive.
Oral vitamin C therapy has obvious advantages over intravenous therapy because it can sustain high vitamin C levels over longer periods of time.
Technically vitamin C therapy for cancer should be renamed “electron donor therapy” since that is how vitamin C operates as an antioxidant, donating electrons to unbalance atoms to avoid cell death and tissue damage. No wonder Linus Pauling, who studied the structure of molecules and atoms, took an interest in vitamin C. Vitamin C is the chief electron donor antioxidant in the body. Cancer cells rapidly deplete vitamin C resulting a tremendous surge in oxidation defined as an increase in the number of unbalanced atoms in need of electrons. [Medical Hypotheses 1991] Conventional doctors treat cancer at the molecular or tissue level, or in some cases the genetic level. “Ascorbatologists” address cancer at the basest level – atoms.
Below is a list of university-bases research centers and cancer clinics that have published recent papers about vitamin C and cancer.
University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Asan Medical Center, Seoul, Korea Free Radical Medicine Biology 2016
University of Iowa
Redox Biology 2016; Current Pharmaceutical Biotechnology 2015; Cancer Research 2015
Riordan Clinic, Wichita, Kansas
Medical Science Monitor 2016
Ningbo Medical Treatment Center, Lihuili Hospital, Ningbo, China PLoS One 2016
School of Medicine of Ribeirao Preto, University of Sao Paulo, San Paulo, Brazil Biological Trace Element Research 2016
Hosanna Clinic, Singapore
Integrative Cancer Therapy 2015
Institute for Advanced Biosciences
Scientific Reports 2015
Meyer Cancer Center, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, New York Science 2015
University of Siena, Siena, Italy
Annals Hematology 2015
National Cancer Center, Goyang, Korea
Korean Journal Family Medicine 2015
University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida
Advances in Nutrition 2015
Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea
Yonsei Medical Journal 2015
Bezmialem Vakif University, Istanbul, Turkey
Nutrition & Cancer 2015; Alternative Therapies Health & Medicine 2014
Medical University Hospital, Tuegingen, Germany
Viennese Medical Weekly (Wiener Medizinsche Wochenschrift) 2015; Journal Cellular Molecular Medicine 2014
Lady Davis Institute for Medical Research, Segal Cancer Center, Jewish General Hospital, Montreal, Canada PLoS One 2015
Ottawa Hospital Research Institute, Ottawa, Canada
Oncologist 2015
University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand
Frontiers Oncology 2014; Free Radical Biology Medicine 2014
Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand
Science Translational Medicine 2014
Oasis of Hope Hospital, Tijuana, Mexico
Frontiers Oncology 2014
University of Otago, Christchurch, New Zealand
New Zealand Medical Journal 2014; New Zealand Medical Journal 2014
Tokai University School of Medicine, Kanagawa, Japan
Tokai Journal Experimental Clinical Medicine 2014
University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Basic & Clinical Pharmacology Toxicology 2015
Institute for Multidisciplinary Research, University of Belgrade, Serbia Scientific Reports 2014
Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, Toronto, Canada
Integrative Cancer Therapy 2014
Auckland City Hospital, Auckland, New Zealand
Asia Pacific Journal Clinical Oncology 2014
University of Kansas Medical Center, Kansas City, Kansas
Science Translational Medicine 2014; Journal American College Nutrition 2013; Canadian Journal Physiology Pharmacology 2015
Riordan Clinic, Wichita, Kansas
Journal Translational Medicine 2013
Cancer Treatment Centers of America, Zion, Illinois
Cancer Chemotherapy Pharmacology 2013
National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland
Antioxidant Redox Signaling 2013