A FATHER OF NATURAL REMEDIES

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MOTHER'S BEST

15 Years ago today, an early conversation with Linus Pauling

MOTHER: Dr. Pauling, most people it seems think of your name in connection with nutrition and medicine. Isn't it true, though, that you've had no formal training in these fields?

PAULING: Yes, that's true. I've never had a course in biology or biochemistry.

MOTHER: How did you get involved with nutrition?

PAULING: I was trained in chemistry, physics, and mathematics in the early 1920s at the California Institute of Technology. By 1940, I had a very active group of people working with me at Cal Tech on problems of immunology... that is, problems involving antibodies, antigens, antitoxins, allergies and things of that sort. Later, I began to study a variety of diseases with a molecular basis. I remember thinking too, that I might as well study some important diseases while I was at it.

It was during this period that I learned of the work of Hoffer and Osmond. These two researchers — working in Canada — had found in the early 1950s that very large doses of niacin (vitamin B12) were often beneficial to patients suffering from schizophrenia. Eventually, they began to administer massive does of vitamin C, which also proved helpful. In time, I came to realize that vitamin C has many other benefits.

MOTHER: Why do you believe that vitamin C will prevent colds? What leads you to this conclusion?

PAULING: I think it probably does this largely — though perhaps not entirely — by potentializing the body's natural protective mechanisms. There is much evidence for this. A National Cancer Institute study conducted by R. H. Yonemoto, P. B. Chretien, and T. H. Fehniger found that people who were given five grams of vitamin C a day for three days showed a doubling in their rate of lymphocyte production.

(Lymphocytes are white blood cells which act to rid the body of infection.)

MOTHER: Is it your contention that no studies have been done disproving the idea that vitamin C helps prevent colds? Do no such studies exist?

PAULING: I discussed all of the controlled trials I could find in the literature in my last book, Vitamin C, the Common Cold, and the Flu. There were 14 controlled trials altogether. All involved two groups of subjects — a "vitamin C" group and a "placebo" group — and none of the subjects of either group knew whether he or she was receiving ascorbic acid tablets, or tablets of a harmless but indistinguishable placebo, such as citric acid. And every one of these 14 studies showed some protective effect by vitamin C greater than the placebo.

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