Linus Pauling: Nobel Prize Scientist

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There's also another rare kind of kidney stone: the oxalate stone. Studies have shown — in this connection — that people who take up to four grams of vitamin C a day do not excrete more than the normal amount of oxalate in their urine, while persons who take nine grams of the vitamin per day excrete about double the normal amount of oxalate in their urine. So there might be some additional tendency among people who are prone to have oxalate stones and who take large doses of vitamin C to form kidney stones of this type. As a matter of fact, however, no one has ever been reported to have gotten oxalate stones from taking vitamin C.

So you see, vitamin C has almost nothing to do with kidney stones. This is the sort of red herring that is frequently pulled out to frighten people away from vitamin C. It's silly, really.

PLOWBOY: Do you believe it might be possible — with the aid of vitamin C — to completely eradicate the common cold in the same way that, say, smallpox has been wiped out in most parts of the world?

PAULING: Well I should think that it would be possible, yes. Of course, it might take a very long time, because cold viruses from one part of the world can be carried by travelers to other parts of the world, and we know — too — that in some countries, conditions are such that we can't possibly expect the proper amount of vitamin C to be made available to everyone. But ultimately, it might be possible to have a country in which nobody has the common cold.

You have to remember that the common cold spreads by people sneezing in each other's faces ... but you don't get the cold if there aren't any cold viruses around. Now if a lot of people have colds, then almost everybody is certain to get a cold sooner or later. If only a few people in a given population have colds, however, then the number of other people who are exposed to the disease is smaller, and the amount of the virus to which they are exposed is smaller, so that protection against the common cold operates in a kind of "auto-catalytic" fashion. That is, the fewer the number of people who have colds ... the fewer the number of people who'll catch colds.

Even if there are cold viruses around, though, you can keep yourself from getting colds if you take the right amount of vitamin C.

PLOWBOY: Pardon me for asking ... but do you ever get colds these days?

PAULING: I sometimes get what I think would become a cold if I were to allow it to develop. About once a year, I begin to feel as though I'm catching a cold ... but as soon as I do, I increase my intake of vitamin C, and that stops it. I've taken as much as 40 grams of ascorbic acid in a day, if I felt I was "coming down with something".

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