Linus Pauling: Nobel Prize Scientist

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Ewan Cameron — a surgeon in Scotland — and I have been doing some cancer research of our own over the past six years or so. In fact, we authored a paper on this subject — vitamin C and cancer — not long ago.

PLOWBOY: You're referring to the paper which appeared in the October 1976 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences... is that correct?

PAULING: Yes. In that paper, we compared the survival times of two groups of terminal cancer patients, all of whom had been pronounced "untreatable" by at least two independent clinicians. One group of 100 terminally ill patients was given vitamin C — ten grams per day per person — while a control group consisting of 1,000 terminal cancer patients got no supplemental ascorbic acid. Let me point out that the 1,000 patients who didn't get vitamin C were matched controls: That is, for each one of the 100 persons who did get the vitamin, we had ten control patients of the same sex, roughly the same age and having the same type of cancer. Ten matched controls for each "vitamin C" patient.

What we observed was that the patients who received vitamin C lived — on the average — 4.2 times as long as the control patients. The average survival time for the control patients was only 50 days from the time they were declared untreatable. the "vitamin C" patients survived an average of more than 210 days.

PLOWBOY: Are any of the people who were involved with this study still alive?

PAULING: Oh yes. Thirteen of the 100 "terminal" cancer patients who received vitamin C are still living. For some of those 13, it's been five years since they were pronounced "untreat able". That's pretty remarkable when you consider that all 1,000 of the control patients are dead now. Only three of the 1,000 lived more than a year after being pronounced untreatable, and those three have since died.

PLOWBOY: That's a mighty sobering observation.

PAULING: Yes. Today, all of the cancer patients who come to Vale of Leven Hospital in Scotland — which is where the study was carried out- receive ten grams of vitamin C a day.

You know, one of the terminal cancer patients in that study deserves special mention. This man came to the hospital and was given ten grams of vitamin C a day, and — because he responded well to this treatment — his physician decided after six months to take him off of the vitamin. Well, within a month the cancer in his chest came back. His doctor gave him ten grams a day of vitamin C again, but he didn't respond this time, so his daily ration was increased to twenty grams. Within a month, the cancer had gone away again and the fellow was back at work. He's still alive-two years later-working as a truck driver. He's in perhaps better-than-ordinary good health (laughter). And he continues to take twelve and a half grams of vitamin C a day.

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