"The Role of Vitamin C in the Treatment of Terminal Cancer"
Studies in the 70’s showed an extraordinary survival gain
in terminal cancer patients with vitamin C,
a simple, relatively nontoxic therapy,
and so no wonder it got a lot of attention
especially when reported by a world-renowned scientist,
Linus Pauling,
but studies like this in the 1980’s found no such benefit
and so alas they were left with the inevitable conclusion
that the apparent positive results
in the original study were the product of bias
rather than treatment effectiveness.
In the 90’s though, an alternative explanation arose.
The disappointing 80’s research only used oral vitamin C,
whereas the apparently successful 70’s experiments
also gave vitamin C intravenously
and we didn’t realize until the 90’s
that the same dose given IV can lead to dramatically
higher levels in the blood stream
than if taken orally,
So maybe high dose vitamin C does help in terminal cancer,
but maybe only when given intravenously.
Encouraging case reports continue to be published.
Here there was a regression, remission and cure
documented in individual cases of advanced kidney cancer,
bladder cancer, and lymphoma.
But that’s three success stories out of how many?
If it was three out of a hundred,
or even three out of a thousand...well okay,
if the treatment is sufficiently nontoxic,
but there’s evidence that IV vitamin C
is widely used in the alternative medicine world,
as in 86% of practitioners surveyed.
Just those 172 practitioners alone
treated about 10,000 patients a year
And you ask the manufacturers,
and they’re selling hundreds of thousands of vials
of this stuff in the U.S.
Now it’s not all being used for cancer,
but presumably at least thousands of cancer patients are being treated
every year with IV vitamin C, making the publication
of three remarkable case reports seem less impressive.
So no matter how amazing these cases seemed,
it’s possible the cancers just spontaneously regressed
all on their own and it was just a coincidence
that it happened after they were given vitamin C.
To know for sure you have to put it to the test.
To date there have been some small pilot studies,
and the results so far have been disappointing.
The good news is that even insane doses of IV vitamin C
seem remarkably safe,
but failed in this study of two dozen patients
to demonstrate anticancer activity.
Similar small studies have been published
all the way through to the present
with tantalizing but inconclusive results.
What we do know is that the present state of cancer treatment
is unsatisfactory.
People have this perception that chemotherapy
will significantly enhance their chances for a cure,
but put all our cancer-killing chemo together
and the overall contribution to 5-year survival
is on the order of 2%.
All those side-effects for 2.1%,
at a cost of maybe $100,000 per patient per year.
So it may be worth looking deeper into therapies
like IV vitamin C.
However, the lack of financial reward,
since vitamin C can’t be patented and sold for $100,000,
and bias against alternative medicine
could dissuade conventional investigators and funding agencies
from seriously considering this approach.
So decades later what can we conclude?
After trials which have included at least 1,600 patients
over 33 years, we have to conclude...
that we still don't know
whether Vitamin C has any clinically significant antitumor activity.
Although there is currently no definitive evidence of benefit,
the Mayo Clinic randomized controlled trials
did not negate the potential benefit based on what we now know
about oral versus IV routes of administration.
So we’re kind of back to square one,
does it work or not?
There are highly polarized views on both sides,
but everyone’s working off the same incomplete data.
What we need are carefully controlled clinical trials.
The question is, what do we do until then?
If it was completely nontoxic, then one could argue-
what have you got to lose?
But it’s not; it’s only relatively nontoxic.
For example, there have been rare but serious cases
of kidney injury reported.
After all, if it’s so safe,
why did our bodies evolve
to so tightly control against excess absorption?
It can also be expensive and time-consuming.
Each infusion can cost 1 to 2 hundred dollars out of pocket,
since insurance doesn't pay for it.
which can be quite a boon for alternative medicine practitioners.
About 90% of the millions of doses of vitamin C
being dispensed are in for-profit arrangements,
so there’s financial pressures pushing in both directions,
for and against this treatment.
Given the relative safety and expense, though,
if controlled studies even find a small benefit,
it would be worthwhile.
And if they don’t, okay, fine, the vitamin C question
can be put to rest once and for all.
But in cancer treatment we don’t have the luxury
of jettisoning possibly effective relatively nontoxic treatments.
We should revisit promising avenues,
without prejudice, and with open minds.