Linus Pauling: Nobel Prize Scientist

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PLOWBOY: Do you think that perhaps more than 13 of the original 100 "test" patients in this study might have been saved if the 100 people had received, say, 20 grams of vitamin C daily instead of 10 grams?

PAULING: I think that almost certainly more than these 13 persons could have been saved if the original 100 had gotten larger amounts of vitamin C. Then too, if these patients had started taking vitamin C at an earlier stage of their disease — before they were pronounced "untreatable" — I think there would have been a much greater chance of saving their lives.

Obviously, there ought to be some studies made as to what the proper dosage of vitamin C is in such cases. Dosage studies, of course, are done all the time with the synthetic chemotherapeutic agents, such as 5-fluorouracil and methotrexate. A great deal of research is done with these drugs to find out what the best dosage is ... usually, they find the amount that's a little bit less than what would kill the patient because of the extreme toxicity of the drug. But with vitamin C, you can take 50 grams a day — day after day — without ill effects, so it may well be that persons with "hopeless" cancer should be taking much larger amounts than we used in our study.

PLOWBOY: Why do you suppose more medical researchers haven't tackled this problem already?

PAULING: Well I just don't understand why. I tried to get the National Cancer Institute to carry out a controlled trial five years ago, but they wouldn't do it: They said they couldn't do it until some animal work had been done, and they asked "Why don't you apply for a grant to carry out some animal research?". So I applied ... I worked for months filling out the application forms and finally sent them in, but my application was turned down. Every year I've applied. I've applied five times now and been turned down each time.

You know, It's funny. Say someone in the National Cancer Institute who has several million dollars to allocate decides to allocate it to some people who want to study the anti-cancer properties of a 2:1 mixture of 5-fluorouracil and methotrexate. Well, it's already been studied in the one-to-one ratio and the individual substances have been studied, and nearly all the doctors in the country are using these anti-cancer drugs on a day-to-day basis. Obviously, it's OK to allocate funds in this manner ... you're not likely to get in trouble. But if I come along and say that I want money to do some work on vitamin C as an anti-cancer drug — and the guy at the National Cancer Institute gives me some money — Senator Proxmire may hold that up as an example of poor judgment — poor use of funds — and the fellow who allocated the money for my project will be on the spot.

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