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Multidude wrote:Darrel - I agree with everything you wrote, and its cool to know that you are a piano tech!

DAR
Thanks Multidude.

Something to consider regarding digital interconnects (and also know that I am not an engineer) - if digital "1s" and "0s" are represented by a square wave, the ideal "slope" at the front of the form would be vertical and the voltage representing "1" should be horizontal for the duration of the sampling rate. If the cable presents a reactance that causes a rounding or under/overshoot of the ideal form, timing can become an issue and fidelity can suffer.

DAR
You are over my head a little but my understanding is... wouldn't a wave be analog by definition? You can digitize a wave and break it down into 1's and 0's of course (this is the job of the analog to digital converter and vise versa) but it seems to me, and this is a simplistic way to put it, if it is a wave it is not digital.

In my experience, listening to the differences in equipment is a trying experience. A/B switching can show differences, but whether one is better than the other can be a tough question.

DAR
Now this is important. I would never pretend to be able to test something as subjective as "better." Waste of time. The test would simply be, being able to tell the difference between one digital cable and another. I would be very impressed. I can imagine a very poor quality or defective cable having trouble with a digital signal but cannot imagine two good quality digital cables producing a result that could be detected by a human listening to the final analog output.

I've organized or participated in double blind tests with the audio society I was affiliated with back in the day, only to find folks more confused after than before.

DAR
Similar results happen when dowsers are tested. Let me tell you a little secret. When you have a room full of believers it is really hard to get people to put together even the most simple scientific test. This is a job you call the skeptics in for (who are preferably magicians on the side).

It seems to me that our suggestibility and preconceptions seem to cloud our ability to make decisions about sound quality in one sitting, like most of the tests we hear about are conducted.

DAR
Exactly right. But part of the problem is if you were trying to measure "better" or "quality." Sound is amazingly complex (much more so than people realize I think) and is incredibly clouded by, as you say "suggestibility and preconceptions." But perhaps all of our senses are. Best to test if people can, in a blinded test, discern a difference between "a" and "b."

I have fooled myself time and time again into believing some new tweak is the bee's knees, only to realize, after a few days, that the previous configuration delivered more musical results.

DAR
I read and interesting article put out in the 80's by Yamaha regarding the psycho acoustics of our ears. We all hear things differently and it changes as we change. Often I have to delicately deal with older people who reminisce about "how good their piano used to sound" or they wonder why the top notes don't make a sound any more. Quite simply their ears have changed and they can't hear them (most of the sound we hear coming from the highest notes on a piano come from upper partials near or out of the range of many people).

I don't know what we could test, but I'd be up for it. Maybe we could try to hear a difference between AES/BEU, S/PDIF and Optical interconnects?

DAR
I don't know what those abbreviations are but sounds good (no pun).

I just hooked up my Playstation 3 via optical to a new Onkyo 7.1 surround (that's eight speakers folks). Nothing fancy ($500 at Circle City) but we could experiment and see if anyone could tell the difference between even a phono jack and optical. Curious.

D.

Sorry it took so long to get back - I don't have Pauling's book any longer and had to hunt it up and reread it. So far I've seen multiple citations of what somebody else said Pauling said, but no citations of what Pauling actually said. I couldn't trust 35-year-old memory to counter that.

Darrel, especially, seems to have two issues with Pauling: 1) that Pauling supposedly told people to ignore the medical community and rely on vitamin C (and other nutrients/natural chemicals) for all their needs, with a subset of Pauling supposedly talking outside his own field to do so and 2) the actual value of vitamin C (and/or other nutrients/naturally occurring chemicals) in the prevention and ameliorating viral diseases.

There is absolutely too much material on the second issue for me to put it in here (summary - page 182 - 14 controlled studies of ascorbic acid and the amount of illness per subject versus the placebo subject when averaged indicated a decrease of 31% illness when the amount of ascorbic acid used was 70-200 mg/day and 40% when the amount was 1g/day or more), "Vitamin C, the Common Cold and the Flu" is 156 pages of text, 40 pages of appendices, and 15 pages of references, most of them from peer-reviewed journals (and, being an honest researcher, he includes the ones unfavorable to his point). I read it in 3 hours.

However, I have a few citations dealing with the first issue. Page 14, "It is, of course, essential that everyone consult his physician in the case of serious illness. An improved diet should improve your general health; but you cannot hope that it will protect you completely... Page 19, "Some protection against influenza is provided by the injection of a vaccine." [In refering to orthomolecular medicine as a system of supplying a naturally occuring/required chemical that is for some reason deficient so the body can complete its necessary chemical reactions for optimal health - Pages 86, "An example of orthomolecular medicine is the treatment of diabetes mellitus by the injection of insulin...Another way in which the disease can be kept under control, if it is not serious, is by adjusting the diet, regulating the intake of sugar, in such a way as to keep the glucose concentration in the blood within the normal limits."] Page 155, "If you have a fever for more than a couple of days, or a very high fever, be sure to call your physician...If it (a secondary infection) does begin, your physician can control it by a suitable regime with antibiotics...Persons with special risk, such as those with heart, lung, kidney, and certain metabolic diseases, including diabetes, may be advised to be vaccinated against influenza, as may also doctors, nurses, and others exposed to the virus to more than the usual extent."

Pauling also cites (this is the 1976, updated edition) Dr. Page in the Jan 1976 issue of Modern Medicine making the same sorts claims I've seen on this site about Pauling ("To me the most tragic example of self-deception was that in which Dr. Linus Pauling - twice a Nobel prizewinner - proposed and exploited the use of huge doses of vitamin C for the common cold.") - AND the apology Dr. Page made in the July 1976 issue ("I withdraw this statement and regret the unjustified use of the pejorative words 'self-deception' and "exploited' in connection with Dr. Pauling...Dr. Pauling in fact presented in his 1970 book "Vitamin C and the Common Cold" and in his articles a reasonable summary of the published reports of the several controlled studies that had been made, together with his own discussion and conclusions...The high opinion that this magazine has of Dr. Pauling is indicated by our action in giving him the Modern Medicine Award for Distinguished Achievement in 1963 for his discovery that sickle cell anemia is a molecular disease."

In his difficulties in getting his actual research, both primary and secondary, rather than other people's critiques of his research out, I imagine he was tickled at the comment of Canadian physician A. Hoffer in 1971, "[these critics] use two sets of logic. Before they are prepared to look at Dr. Pauling's hypothesis, they demand proof of the most rigorous kind. But when arguing against his views, they refer to evidence of the flimsiest sort for the toxicity of ascorbic acid."

As to a biochemist being outside his field in these studies, the vitamin fairy doesn't do them. Doctors don't have time for chemical research, that's what biochemists do.

Darrel, I wish you'd bring to this discussion the same sort of academic zeal you bring to the issue of global warming - go to the source and read Pauling's work.

Barbara Fitzpatrick wrote: Darrel, especially, seems to have two issues with Pauling: 1) that Pauling supposedly told people to ignore the medical community and rely on vitamin C (and other nutrients/natural chemicals) for all their needs, with a subset of Pauling supposedly talking outside his own field to do so and 2) the actual value of vitamin C (and/or other nutrients/naturally occurring chemicals) in the prevention and ameliorating viral diseases.

DAR
No I don't think that is what I have been saying.

1) I don't know that Pauling "told people to ignore the medical community." I really doubt that he would be so rash. I don't remember claiming that.
I'll drop the bit about him being outside of his field. Biochemist = cancer expert? I just don't know enough to know. He was such a brilliant man he is probably in a special category anyway.

2) I would hardly argue against your #2. It's pretty watered down. I think Pauling was a small "q" quack because he, if the reports are correct, recommended taking super mega doses of vitamins to prevent and ameliorate diseases. This really isn't that difficult. That he would take these super mega doses to experiment on himself shows he was a little quacky. A true believer (TB). He really thought he was on to something. I have no problem with that. But advising it for others based upon bad or nonexistent science is quacky.

Darrel, I wish you'd bring to this discussion the same sort of academic zeal you bring to the issue of global warming - go to the source and read Pauling's work.

DAR
I can do something to educate about global warming and slap down the dishonest GW deniers but there really is no utility in my spending time showing that mega doses of vitamin C don't prevent or alleviate cancer because no serious medical person believes this. And with good reason.
That Pauling fell into quackery in this one little area doesn't negate his life work it just shows his humanness. I probably have areas I am quacky on. I have had some quacky beliefs about electric vehicles. I became a true believer and didn't apply as much skepticism as I normally would have. It's easy to do. You get religious about and idea and it is hard to let go. That's what Pauling did with vitamins and his mega dose theories.

D.
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From a typical quacky alternative health site still peddling Paulings claims:

"Conventional cancer treatment is based on the premise that cancer is an enemy that must be killed even if the therapy causes the patient great discomfort and perhaps even death. Alternative treatment, on the other hand, is based on the philosophy that cancer is an indication that we are mistreating our body and that cancer can be contained or reversed by giving the body all the help it needs in order to heal itself. Not surprisingly, these two philosophies have led to totally different methods of treatment.

Irrespective of which treatment you ultimately choose, there are certain steps that should be taken as soon as you are diagnosed with cancer.

1. Gather all the information you can about your particular type of cancer and the options for treating it. Contact support organizations such as Cancer Victors and Friends and get plugged into a network of people who "have been there and survived".

2. Get a clear understanding of what your doctor proposes to do and if you feel at all uncomfortable with that, get a second opinion. Do not omit to investigate the options for alternative therapy.

3. Unless your doctor advises otherwise, begin boosting your immune system immediately. The late Dr. Linus Pauling recommended that all cancer patients start vitamin supplementation as early as possible. The preferred regimen, formulated by Canadian Dr. Abram Hoffer, involves a daily intake of 12,000 mg vitamin-C, 800 IU vitamin-E, 1500 mg vitamin-B3 (nicotinic acid or nicotinamide), 25 or 50 times the RDA (Recommended Daily Allowance) of other B vitamins, and 200 micrograms of selenium. NOTE: It is necessary to start with smaller amounts of the supplements and build up gradually(23).

The conventional medical establishment is committed to a policy of "cutting, burning, or poisoning" you in their endeavour to rid you of cancer. So if you wish to evaluate gentler, and in many cases far more effective therapies, you usually won't get much help from your medical doctor. The "cancer industry" is very big indeed with an estimated annual revenue of over 50 billion dollars. This conglomerate does not take kindly to competition and, together with the FDA (Food and Drug Administration), has pretty well managed to drive alternative cancer clinics out of the United States. However, you will find many very professional and highly effective alternative clinics in Europe, Mexico, the Bahamas, New Zealand, etc."

Health news

And now I'm wading through Cancer and Vitamin C - I say wading because cancer is really hard for a squeemish person like me to read about. (Of course, it was harder watching my mother die of it - amongst other things. By the time Momma kicked out she had a whole slew of problems, cancer was only one - or two or three - of them.) In the first place, Pauling co-wrote that book with a surgeon who'd been doing cancer surgery for over 30 years, grew tired of the 30% win rate, and started investigating not so much alternatives as augmentations.

Of your "quacky" citation, it is true that Dr. Pauling recommended beginning to boost your immune system immediately. (And I really don't see your complaint about #2, aside from checking out alterative therapy - getting a 2nd opinion is always a good idea when you've got a diagnosis like that.) He had plenty of data indicating vitamin C and other immune-system boosters enhance recover from surgery.

I know I will not convince you to read the book, but because typing is being a pain (as in my wrists hurt), I'm going to do what I really hate in situations like this - summarize chunks of what he said. I'll give direct citations from the book when short enough.

The first section of the book discusses the nature, causes as known or suggested of cancer, and common forms of cancer, the prognoses for each form, and the treatments best suited for each one. Cancer (malignant tumor) is defined - pg 19 - as consisting "of a steadily expanding mass of cells that also infiltrate and invade surrounding tissues, metastasize, and unless arrested, eventually overwhelm the patient." Pg 48, "The first point to note is that for many of the commoner forms of cancer the cause is already known and in some instances the cancer could be prevented and in others at least reduced. The second point to note is that for the majority of established cancers surgical incision of the growth within the limits of spread still offers the best prospects of cure, but that because of various anatomical considerations surgical removal is often technically impossible. Cancer chemotherapy is of very real value in the treatment of some leukemias and related malignancies of the lymphoid system and in the management of some other formed of malignancy characterized by very rapid growth rates, but is of very limited value elsewhere...Radiotherapy is of excellent value as an adjunct to surgery in many situations, in association with chemotherapy in some others, and used alone can be quite curative in such quite different clinical problems as superficial skin cancers and deeply invasive cancers of the bladder."

Here's where I'm summarizing - surgery is the best option, but only viable if the tumor is in a location where the surgery isn't going to do more damage than the cancer itself. Chemotherapy and radiation are most viable for the most malignant, because they are the fastest growing. They both kill cells during the division process, so with a fast growing tumor, they can kill the cancer without killing the patient. These are bad options (my phrasing, not theirs) for tumors that are dividing slower than the surrounding "healthy" cells.

Another therapy that IS used by modern oncologists is hormone therapy - a orthomolecular treatment. Pg 70, "The use of hormones in the treatment of orthomolecular medicine, which is defined as the preservation of good health and the treatment of disease by varying the concentrations in the human body of substances that are normally present in the body and are required for health." Summarizing again - about 30% of breast cancers respond to hormone therapy - which is usually decreasing/eliminating estrogen or giving male hormones or their analogs (although in postmenopausal women it may be giving estrogen). Ditto about 30% prostate cancers, which respond to being given estrogen.

Immunotherapy, another sort of but not exactly "alternative" therapy is treatment by strengthening the immune system, so it will take care of the cancer itself. The appeal - pg 78, "because it involves fighting the disease by natural means, using the body's own defense mechanism, and the danger of serious side effects of the treatment is accordingly small." Because the successful treatment of cancer requires the ability to differenciate the cancer cells from the normal cells, utilizing the body's defenses is optimal where possible, simply because the body's antigen-antibody response is the best mechanism for recognizing the difference. Early (and successful) work in this area was discounted for many years because the mechanism wasn't understood, but researchers were looking into it again by 1979. Cameron and Pauling called the prelimary results "encouraging" and suggested this might be very useful in aiding a patient recover from the effects of immunosuppressant treatments.

Now we com to the most misunderstood, most often misquoted - and the one the most "strawmen" have been created about - Cameron and Pauling, did not expect cures (100% remission of cancers) in all cases by any means. but they both felt there had to be some way to get more than the traditional 30% "cure" rate. Their studies of cancer led them to try a different angle. Most modern cancer therapies hit the "autonomous proliferation" aspect of cancer. They went after the "invasiveness" aspect. Cancer grows and spreads initially by releasing a couple of enzymes - hyaluronidase (to break up/liquify the "intercellular cement" or "ground substance" all cells are a part of) and collagenase (to break up the collagen that strengthens cell walls). Cameron and Paul postulated that treatment with a hyaluronidase inhibitor and Vitamin C (collagen formation) - in conjunction with other/traditional therapy/ies - could stop the tumor from invading the lymph system or the blood stream and metastasizing.

The prevention aspects of vitamin C in cancer are based on research that indicates many/most cancers are viral in nature. Vitamin C, as a major component in collagen production, gives the body what it needs to produce a cell wall the virus can't penetrate.

(FYI - The Mayo Clinic trial somebody quoted above was done with patients on chemo, and other trials had already shown that chemo interfers with vitamin C chemical reactions. Other clinic trials where the tested patients weren't on chemotherapy showed statistical significant differences in number of days survived and amounts of painkillers required. Not cures. Not total remissions. And definitely not 100%. But definitely a statistical difference. At the time of writing, 1979, the main thing Pauling and Cameron were after was more testing.)

And to wrap this up - I found this on the National Library of Science "Profiles in Medicine" page (thanks heavens I could copy it instead of key it).

"However, his theory of orthomolecular psychiatry was ignored or criticized by the medical community... his ideas were outstripping the technology of the time. In order to prove his ideas, he needed to track the activity of very small amounts of nutrients in very complicated biological systems. To do so, he needed more sophisticated analytical tools than had yet been invented. He spent years, for instance, working with other researchers to combine gas chromatographic equipment with computers for urinalysis. Definitive results were few.

At the end of the 1960s, Pauling participated in an exchange of correspondence with Irwin Stone, a biochemist who had attended one of Pauling's lectures. Stone wrote to him recommending that he take increased amounts of vitamin C, which the biochemist believed would boost his health and extend his life. Pauling began to familiarize himself with the subject. In reviewing the literature, he saw that there was some evidence in favor of large doses and began taking more of the vitamin. He immediately felt better and suffered fewer colds, and by 1969 he was commenting to reporters that physicians should pay more attention to vitamin C. In response Dr. Victor Herbert, a clinical nutritionist who had helped set the FDA's recommended daily allowances for vitamins, wrote Pauling a letter demanding the evidence for recommending increased doses of vitamin C.

Pauling responded by reviewing the scientific literature on the health effects of supplemental vitamin C. The result was a book published in 1971, Vitamin C and the Common Cold, marshaling the research data. It became a sensation, kicked off a public controversy in the press, and helped convince millions of people to take more vitamin C. The medical community roundly attacked both the findings and Pauling's credibility. Typically, Pauling fought back. In 1973, he co-founded (with Arthur Robinson, a young colleague who had worked with him on the urinalysis project) the Institute of Orthomolecular Medicine in Palo Alto, California, to pursue his ideas.

In the view of the medical community, Pauling's promotion of large doses of vitamins for everything from the common cold to cancer has often gone beyond the available evidence. However, in more recent years, re-evaluations of Pauling's work have shown that dietary supplementation with antioxidants such as vitamin C can have significant beneficial effects on health. Pauling's ideas about molecular balance and health are increasingly important to a health-conscious public, as well as to a growing number of health professionals.

OK - To specifically deal with the Mayo studies (there were 2) and the Robinson quote above, I had to finish the "Cancer and Vitamin C" (Cameron, Pauling 1979) and a biography ("Force of Nature," Hager 1995).

The Mayo studies, as research, were professional, but the reports most certainly were not. Neither study utilized the Cameron-Pauling procedures and the second one used a different measure to gauge success. Neither report indicated this, even though Dr. Moertel was very well aware of the fact. He couldn't NOT be aware of it, since the studies were sponsored by NCI at Pauling's request and Pauling gave Moertel the Cameron-Pauling procedures and findings to assist him in setting them up. In the first one (as I noted above) Moertel used almost completely chemo patients. It would have been the work of a moment to have added the sentence, "this research confirms the Cameron-Pauling findings that ascorbate therapy does not significantly effect longevity of chemotherapy patients, but does not address their findings regarding surgical or radio therapy patients." Not only did Moertel NOT include such a sentence, he went out of his way to suggest he had used the Cameron-Pauling survey population and refused to include any discussion of differences in the Cameron-Pauling study and his own when Pauling protested.

The 2nd Mayo study report was even more misleading. Moertel stopped the project after three weeks because there was no reduction in tumor size. That wouldn't have been a problem if his report had stated "Ascorbate therapy has no effect on tumor size in a three-week study" - but it didn't. It said "Vitamin C has no effect on cancer." Cameron and Pauling never claimed there would be a decrease in tumor size - that wasn't what they were measuring. The Cameron-Pauling research was measuring longevity and quality of life (recording appetite and activity levels and number of requests for morphine or other strong pain medications). At the time the 2nd Mayo trial was completed, the Cameron-Pauling study was in its 4th year of running, since there were still 3 ascorbate therapy patients alive, although all the non-ascobate therapy patients had died. When their study finally ended, it showed ascorbate therapy patients lived an average 1 year longer than non-ascorbate therapy patients, with considerably better quality of life - definitely an effect on cancer.

What makes it even more of a "swiftboat" deal is that JAMA refused to print Pauling's comments on the Moertel research or any of the Cameron-Pauling research.

The Robinson quote was much more biased than I had thought from just the original snippet, too. Robinson had been the trusted right-hand man for Pauling for many years. When Pauling's wife first had stomach cancer, Pauling put the Pauling Institute (administratively) in Robinson's charge and let him take over some of the major research projects as well. Robinson was using mice for some of the tests, although mice are not really appropriate for ascorbate research because their bodies produce their own, but Robinson felt that mouse short lifespan and ease of producing cancer cells made it worth dealing with that difficulty. Pauling kept up with the results, although he wasn't actively doing this particular project, and was concerned that the mice receiving human-equivalent 10g were actually growing cancer cells (the human-equivalent 50g test mice cancers were destroyed). Robinson himslef was the one who determined that the vitamin C producing apparatus in mice was something like the thyroid apparatus in humans - it shuts down when given the substance. The mice receiving what in humans would be 10g actually had less vitamin C in their tissues than if they hadn't been given any at all and their own bodies were manufacturing it. Then Robinson (who was a lousy administrator - dictatorial and causing all kinds of problems with the other staff) authorized a wealthy woman (Edyie Mae Hunsberger) who claimed to have cured herself of cancer with vegetable and fruit juices (and wrote a book "How I Conquered Cancer Naturally") to start an Orthomolecular Institute in Santa Cruz with the official approval of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine. Pauling hit the roof - and fired Robinson. Robinson sued the Institute and Pauling - about 6 suits altogether totaling some $67 million - after about a million dollars in legal fees on each side had been run up, Robinson settled out of court for $500,000 (the Institute was strapped for cash, that was the only reason they proposed a settlement at all, but Robinson knew he didn't have a case, which is why he accepted it). Robinson also did his dead-level best to discredit the Institute and all of its research, inlcuding his own. (The irony of that is, he was suing Pauling for destroying his professional reputation. I'd say he was doing a pretty good job of doing that himself, except nobody knew it was his work he was trashing.)

It took a new NCI director (in 1989) to meet with Pauling and review his research and commentary on the Moertel studies for Pauling to get any further American acceptance. NCI sponsored a symposium, "Ascorbic Acid: Biologic Functions in Relation to Cancer," in 1990 and were surprised at how much research had been done internationally (while America was still refusing to fund or publish any of it) - presentations were made on (pg 622 of "Force of Nature") "vitamin C's importance in enzymatic and nonenzymatic reactions, its effect in delaying tumor onset and growth, prolonging survival times, reducing treatment toxicity, and increasing the efficacy of other treatments. Special attention was focused on its action as an antioxdant to quench free radicals implicated in cancer genesis." They were also surprised that nobody from the medical community showed up to see the new research. By 1992, within the research/science community (although still not in the medical community) Pauling's work had been so vindicated that at the New York Academy of Sciences meeting, it was proposed and enthusiastically applauded, that the time had come (pg 623, "Force of Nature") "when we should admit that Linus Pauling was right all along." Pauling was lucky. His work was vindicated before he died - unlike poor Alfred Weggoner, whose Continental Drift theory was trashed - along with his reputation and ability to publish or get funding for further research, and died before the discovery of Plate Tectonics vindicated him. Unfortunately, "swiftboat" slime is still stinking up his name, reputation, and work in the popular realm - as the number of "quackbuster" type hits on any Pauling search has very easily demonstrated.

DAR
Got four minutes Barbara?

NPR: The vitamin C Myth 02/02/06

Apparently, according to a study by the Linus Pauling Institute, our bodies can't use more than about 200 mg per day.

I wish I was as good at using the internet as Darrel is - I can't track down the research mentioned in passing by one of the two physicians interviewed for the NPR segment. (The 2nd physician - the first just said there were 20 studies out there proving his point. That's nice. Dr. Pauling had more than 20 studies proving his. Shall we flip a coin - or remember the interesting slant on the Mayo study reports?)

I didn't hear anything (not doubting Darrel - could have been my computer background noise) on that segment that said human tissue can only absorb 200mg, but doubt it seriously, unless the original research said human tissue can only absorb 200mg/kg body weight. (I did run across a study that said absorpsion of vitamin C is negatively effected by large amounts of sugar in the blood, which, considering America's current general diet, could explain a low finding - since in that case the vitamin C wouldn't make it into the tissue to be absorbed before it was excreted.) My reasoning is thus - animals that make vitamin C in their bodies make it at rates ranging from 26mg/kg (small rats) to over 150mg/kg (horses), with the rate increasing with the size of the animal in question, and a 50% intraspecies variance depending on the individual size and particular health of said animal. The gorilla, if not shoved off to marginal lands, gets about 4.5g of vitamin C per day in what it eats. (Gorillas, like humans, don't make their own.) Humans in their evolutionary formation probably did the same. Since I don't believe there's a god out there who made humans "special" to not need the nutrients other primates need - I figure that since I weigh in at about 3/4s a gorilla, I probably need about 3/4s what a gorilla does - about 3g/day (or 1.5-4.5g considering that 50% intraspecies variance) - for "optimum" health. Since disease uses up nuitrients, not just vitamin C, I would also expect to need more of them to fight it. Even if that rationale is incorrect, and I only need vitamin C at the rate a rat does I'd still need more than 200mg per day (1.8g average or .9-2.7g 50% variance, for my body weight).

Should I find the research vaguely alluded to on the NPR segment, I will read it and post a summary. Until then, I will stay with the findings of the studies noted in Dr. Pauling's books.

Barbara Fitzpatrick wrote:The gorilla, if not shoved off to marginal lands, gets about 4.5g of vitamin C per day in what it eats. (Gorillas, like humans, don't make their own.) Humans in their evolutionary formation probably did the same. Since I don't believe there's a god out there who made humans "special" to not need the nutrients other primates need - I figure that since I weigh in at about 3/4s a gorilla, I probably need about 3/4s what a gorilla does - about 3g/day (or 1.5-4.5g considering that 50% intraspecies variance) - for "optimum" health.

Unless you've omitted information, the fact that gorillas get 4.5g of vitamin C from their diet daily doesn't mean that they either need or absorb that much. This reasoning would lead one to believe that if the average person's diet is 2500 calories a day, that everyone needs and uses 2500 calories a day. You know that this does not logically follow, especially considering your above comments on the general diet of modern Americans.

Barbara Fitzpatrick wrote: (The 2nd physician - the first just said there were 20 studies out there proving his point. That's nice. Dr. Pauling had more than 20 studies proving his.

DAR
And what point was that? That it is beneficial to take 1,000's or 10,000+ mg of C a day?
Barbara, according to the NPR blurb, "the Linus Pauling Institute, now says tissues can't use more than about 200 mg per day."

Should I find the research vaguely alluded to on the NPR segment, I will read it and post a summary. Until then, I will stay with the findings of the studies noted in Dr. Pauling's books.

DAR
Are you typing this on a computer from the 60's or 70's? I didn't think so (if you were it would be about the size of an SUV). Pauling's information is outdated (at best) and his more outlandish claims it seems weren't taken seriously even when he made them.

I didn't hear anything (not doubting Darrel - could have been my computer background noise) on that segment that said human tissue can only absorb 200mg, but doubt it seriously, unless the original research said human tissue can only absorb 200mg/kg body weight.

DAR
Here is a transcript of the above audio, no background noise here:

***
"The Vitamin C Myth

February 2, 2006 from Morning Edition

LINDA WERTHEIMER, host: And now to the myth about vitamin C and its effect on the common cold. The health benefits of vitamin C are great, but, as it turns out, only in minimal quantities.

NPR's Patricia Neighmond explains.

PATRICIA NEIGHMOND reporting:

It was Noble Prize winner Linus Pauling, a chemist, who really popularized vitamin C in the early 60s. He suggested that the vitamin, already known to protect against scurvy, was even more beneficial in mega doses. Dr. Marvin Lipman is an endocrinologist in New York and Chief Medical Advisor for the magazine Consumer Reports.

Dr. MARVIN LIPMAN (Endocrinologist and Consumers Union's Chief Medical Advisor): There's very little evidence available that shows that vitamin C in mega doses is good for anything.

NEIGHMOND: Lipman characterizes the taking of mega doses of vitamin C as one of the greatest hoaxes ever played on the American public.

Dr. LIPMAN: There have been at least twenty well controlled studies on the use of mega doses of vitamin C in the prevention of colds, the treating the duration of colds, and in treatment of the severity of colds, and in none of those instances has there been any, really good evidence that vitamin C in mega doses does anything.

NEIGHMOND: Part of the confusion over vitamin C probably revolves around the idea that if something is good, more is better. Vitamin C is good for the body. Lipman:

Dr. LIPMAN: Without vitamin C, the immune function deteriorates, the intercellular cement deteriorates, the linings of blood vessels deteriorate, the membranes of cells deteriorate...

NEIGHMOND: Vitamin C helps decrease the formation of arterial plaque. It also eats up free radicals, which can damage DNA and cause cancer, and if the body gets an infection it mobilizes white cells to fight the infection. But all these benefits occur at what's referred to as optimal levels of vitamin C, which is the RDA or recommended dietary allowance set by the Institute of Medicine. That's 75 milligrams for women and 90 milligrams for men.

Dr. Andrew Weil is a Professor at the University of Arizona, and has written extensively on health and nutrition. Like many Americans, for years he thought mega doses of vitamin C, 1000 milligrams a day or more, were helpful.

Dr. ANDREW WEIL (Author and University of Arizona Professor): What really convinced me to lower my recommendations were two studies, I think this was about four or five years ago, but one of them was done by the Linus Pauling Institute. And they concluded that tissues can't use more than 200 milligrams a day.

NEIGHMOND: Both Dr. Weil and Lipman agree the RDA should be increased to 200 milligrams a day. Because we don't make vitamin C on our own, we have to get it from outside the body. Supplements are one way, but fruits and vegetables are better, because the body absorbs vitamins from food more efficiently.

Consumer Reports' Dr. Lipman.

Dr. LIPMAN: In the studies that we've done, strawberries are the highest in vitamin C content, followed by oranges, cantaloupes, kiwis, black currents and grapefruit. While with vegetables, the exotic bell peppers, and by exotic I mean the colors other than green, the red, the orange, the yellow bell peppers are very high in vitamin C, about 95 milligrams per half a cup.

NEIGHMOND: For himself, Lipman says he takes no vitamin C supplements at all. He says he eats a healthful diet. So does Dr. Weil. But occasionally, says Weil, he succumbs.

Dr. WEIL: If I feel a cold starting, I might take a packet of that, you know, that EmergenC that's 1,000 milligram carbonated, fruit flavored dose. And, maybe it's a placebo, but I feel that sometimes it works for me, and, you know, I may do that, and I'm a physician. So, I think there are many people who do that just because it's a kind of folk medicine in this country.

NEIGHMOND: And luckily, there are no really dangerous side effects from taking too much vitamin C--only flatulence and diarrhea.

Patricia Neighmond, NPR News."
***

DAR
It's fluffy and it's light, this is just a radio blurb after all, but I can back it up. HUGE studies have been clearly showing that taking vitamin C for colds doesn't do jack.

Please read this:

Vitamin C: Do High Doses Prevent Colds?

The gorilla, if not shoved off to marginal lands, gets about 4.5g of vitamin C per day in what it eats.

DAR
This just shows they are eating something that has a lot of vitamin C, not that they need, or use, or even can use that much vitamin C (as Sav points out too). If I owned a strawberry farm I would have a very high vitamin C intake into too. I would also have a very high vitamin C excretion rate.

Should I find the research vaguely alluded to on the NPR segment, I will read it and post a summary. Until then, I will stay with the findings of the studies noted in Dr. Pauling's books.

DAR
Please read this:

High Doses of Vitamin C Are Not Effective as a Cancer Treatment

It summarizes:
"Thus, three prospectively randomized, placebo-controlled studies involving 367 patients documented no consistent benefit from vitamin C among cancer patients with advanced disease."

If Pauling was right about his vitamin C claims he would be famous for them. Instead his apologists are still defending him from charges of quackery for his vitamin C claims. That says a lot.

D.
----------------------------
Excerpt:

"In 1986, Professor A. Stewart Truswell of the University of Sydney, Australia concisely summarized the results of 27 trials conducted since 1970. [8] Of these, five were treatment trials with vitamin C or a placebo given only at the onset of a cold and for only several days and all of which found no benefit. The other 22 were double-blind controlled trials giving daily vitamin C or placebo before and during colds. Of these, 12 trials showed no prevention and no reduction in duration or severity, five trials showed no prevention and only slight, statistically nonsignificant lessening of severity, and the other five trials reported no prevention and a small but significant in reduction of duration of the colds. Dr. Truswell concluded: "It is now fairly clear that for preventing colds, vitamin C has no worthwhile effect," but he believed that: "There is thus a little more evidence for a small therapeutic effect of ascorbic acid (vitamin C). However, as Dr. T.W. Anderson's second trial in 1974 revealed 250 mg of vitamin per day reduced severity as much as did 1,000 mg or 4, 000 mg [16].

Does it make sense to supplement with vitamin C? If so, should it be done daily or only at the first sign of a cold or other infection? And what dosage should be used? The many studies done in the last 30 years clearly prove that daily vitamin C supplements, whether 100 mg or 5,000 mg, do not prevent colds and provide, but only for some people, only a slight reduction in duration and severity of colds. Dr. Thomas Chalmers concluded in 1975: "I, who have colds as often and as severe as those of any man, do not consider the very minor potential benefit that might result from taking vitamin C three tines a day for life worth either the effort or the risk, no matter how slight the latter might be." [5]

If you choose to supplement when a cold strikes, there is no reason to take more than 250 mg per day, as shown in the 1974 Anderson study. This amount is easily obtained from the age-old "remedy," fruit juices. Supplementation with larger amounts of vitamin C has not been shown to be more effective, and it may cause diarrhea or have other adverse effects." --
Vitamin C: Do High Doses Prevent Colds?

Vitamin C Offers Little Protection Against Colds, Review Finds

ScienceDaily (Jul. 18, 2007) — Unless you run marathons, you probably won't get much protection from common colds by taking a daily supplemental dose of vitamin C, according to an updated review of 30 studies.

Conducted over several decades and including more than 11,000 people who took daily doses of at least 200 milligrams, the review also shows that vitamin C (ascorbic acid) does little to reduce the length or severity of a cold, according to the researchers at the Australian National University and the University of Helsinki.

However, they found that people exposed to periods of high stress -- such as marathon runners, skiers and soldiers on sub-arctic exercises -- were 50 percent less likely to catch a cold if they took a daily dose of vitamin C.

Darrell - Thanks for printing the transcript. I didn't doubt you, but my speakers don't always behave the way I wish they would. I did try to find that study, but... I don't have an "old" computer - but I am not very good at framing a search so I get less than 100,000 hits, and I'm not patient enough to go through that big a haystack to find my needle. The issue re: gorilla was that, not constrained to any specific food, they seek out and eat foods containing that much vitamin C. More to the point is that animals that make their own make considerably more than what is necessary to prevent scurvy - or even 3 times what is necessary to prevent scurvy. Primates, guinea pigs, and fruit bats don't make vitamin C, and all of them are naturally "fruitarians" (that includes things we usually call vegetables, like peppers), which indicates that they didn't lose or even decrease their need for it, just because they no longer make it.

I have hesitated to bring up the reason why I think Pauling was, and still is by a certain segment of the population, clobbered for his vitamin C work - or at least for publicizing it. They could have cared less if he'd just stuck to professional journal - because I hate "conspiracy" theories. However, you have acknowledged in the past that there ARE conspiracies out there, if they benefit the monied industries (GW denial and "Who Killed the Electric Car?"), so I will give you this one to think on. The slamming of Linus Pauling and his work on vitamin C began after he published a popular book that did not say "ignore your doctor," did not say "don't take prescribed medications or follow "traditional" therapies" - but did say don't take OTC cold remedies - that they don't cure anything, are of marginal benefit in dealing with symptoms, and are toxic in relatively close to prescription doses (and that people, especially children, die of them every year). That was right about the time P&G introduced Nyquil.

I have already reported on the issue of good research/bad report with the Mayo studies. It's fascinating that American studies all seem to prove the "American" point of view (little or no benefit) while totally disregarding, if not slamming, European, Asian, and Canadian studies that prove everyone else's point of view (benefit). Pauling didn't start the vitamin C research, he just brought it to America. It is also fascinating that after the NCI got a new director in 1989, Pauling's work was "revisited" and NCI sponsored a "Vitamin C and Cancer" symposium - that no medical people (do I know where medical people get their information? Yes, I do) showed up for, but one heck of a lot of researchers did - with positive research.

The NPR program did at least admit that - all claims Pauling made and were "dissed" back when he made them - "Vitamin C helps decrease the formation of arterial plaque. It also eats up free radicals, which can damage DNA and cause cancer, and if the body gets an infection it mobilizes white cells to fight the infection". Too bad it went on to say that those benefits are gained at the RDA level, when their own guest speakers recommended increasing to 200mg/day. That, by the way, is only 50mg lower than the low end of Pauling's "RDA" range (250mg-10g).

In a way, I guess it's a good thing the attacks are focused on Pauling - that way a researcher can quote the studies Pauling quoted - and those that replicated Pauling's findings - without "quack" being thrown at them, as it is if they quote Pauling. (By the by, according to Pauling, Dr. George Beaton, chair, Dept. Nutrition, School of Hygiene, University of Toronto did replicate Pauling's studies and findings - again I haven't managed to get my haystack small enough to find that needle, but the research was done in the early 1970s. But then, he doesn't count, because he's not American, so doesn't know how to do viable research.)

Barbara Fitzpatrick wrote:Primates, guinea pigs, and fruit bats don't make vitamin C, and all of them are naturally "fruitarians" (that includes things we usually call vegetables, like peppers), which indicates that they didn't lose or even decrease their need for it, just because they no longer make it.

You're looking at this backward from the perspective of evolution. The species survived despite the broken ascorbate synthesis chain due to the fact that their intake of vitamin C is sufficient.

Barbara Fitzpatrick wrote:... so I will give you this one to think on. The slamming of Linus Pauling and his work on vitamin C began after he published a popular book that did not say "ignore your doctor," did not say "don't take prescribed medications or follow "traditional" therapies" - but did say don't take OTC cold remedies - that they don't cure anything, are of marginal benefit in dealing with symptoms, and are toxic in relatively close to prescription doses (and that people, especially children, die of them every year). That was right about the time P&G introduced Nyquil.

I'm not buying it. Nyquil doesn't speed recovery, it only quells symptoms. The same with other "cold medicines." Nobody today thinks that these products help defeat viral infections. If these were the reasons Pauling was blacklisted, then our knowledge of these facts now would vindicate him. It hasn't.

Barbara Fitzpatrick wrote:That, by the way, is only 50mg lower than the low end of Pauling's "RDA" range (250mg-10g).

That's an absurdly wide range. If all this evidence was so good, why was there such a disparity in these numbers? If all this evidence was so good, and Americans are just corrupt hacks, why do other nations like the UK and Canada have lower RDAs?

Barbara Fitzpatrick wrote:That, by the way, is only 50mg lower than the low end of Pauling's "RDA" range (250mg-10g).

SAV
That's an absurdly wide range.

DAR
Yes it is. Here is a quote from a link already provided, showing Pauling was leaning very much toward the higher end:

"Linus Pauling's 1970 book, Vitamin C and the Common Cold. [1] The book's main claim was that taking 1 gram (1,000 mg) of vitamin C daily would reduce the incidence of colds by 45% for most people, but that some persons might need much larger amounts. It recommended that if symptoms of a cold do start, you should take 500 or 1,000 mg every hour for several hours -- or 4 to 10 grams daily if symptoms don't disappear with smaller amounts. Without question, publication of this book, combined with Pauling's reputation as a Nobel Prize-winning scientist, has made vitamin C a best seller. When his theory was announced, millions of Americans rushed to try it for themselves. The second edition of the book, issued in 1976 as Vitamin C, the Common Cold and the Flu, suggested even higher dosages [2].

Vitamin C and the Common Cold also suggested that most people need a daily vitamin C intake of 2,300 mg or more for "optimum" health and to meet stresses, including infections. In a subsequent book, How to Live Longer and Feel Better, Pauling stated that individual biochemical variability is so great that optimum intake may may be as great as from 250 mg to 20 grams or more per day [3].

Many concerned persons have wondered whether Pauling's advice was prudent, and millions have experimented upon themselves to see whether they could tell. Pauling himself reportedly took 12,000 mg daily and raised it to 40,000 mg when symptoms of a cold appeared! [4]"

Vitamin C: Do High Doses Prevent Colds?

If all this evidence was so good, why was there such a disparity in these numbers?

DAR
Good question.

A very quacky site where adherents seem to take vitamin C as a sacrament has this poll. The % given represents the percentage of those polled. The number to the right is the actual number of people claiming to take this much vitamin C:

***
How much vitamin C do you take each day?

None 5% 316
The RDA (less then 100 mg) 4% 249
Less than 500 mg 6% 407
Less than 1001 mg 16% 1053
Less than 5001 mg 34% 2188
Less than or equal 10000 mg 17% 1109
More than 10000 mg 17% 1096

Total: 6420

http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/

The problem with not reading the works themselves is citations can be taken out of context - and two totally different context-citations put side by side so that they "contradict" each other. Pauling's "RDA" range - .25g-10g was based on 1) vitamin C mg/kg production in a wide range of animals, from lab rats to horses and 2) average amounts of vitamin C available in the preferred diet of primates and other non-vitamin C manufacturing animals. He inclined to the higher end for humans since studies show the larger the animal the higher the mg/kg. His recommendations for therapeutic amounts were, of course, higher than his RDA amounts, since the body goes through nutrients like wildfire when trying to destroy viral or bacterial invaders.

The flip "just eat a balanced diet" is total horse hockey. We don't eat the diet we evolved for. That's been true for about 15000 years, but has gotten signally worse since the overcrowded cities of the industrial revolution and even more so with the non-food foods currently so popular. The base of the official food pyramid is grain. Humans could not 15000 years ago and still cannot digest grain unless it is cooked. Probably because dried grain keeps well overwinter - and more than likely this was first discovered due to a generations-long famine - grain has been the base of human diet since just before the agricultural "revolution" - but grain has diddly vitamin C, unlike the high fruit/vegetable diet we evolved for/with. This is what biochemists interested in nutrition discovered in the 1st half of the 20th century. They all started out saying 'no need for supplements, just eat a balanced diet,' and they all ended up saying 'take supplements as part of a balanced diet'. Even if the food we get had the nutrient in it under the "modern" intense, artificial high-nitrogen fertilizer agribiz farming techniques - which it doesn't - we aren't eating the right foods to get all the ones we need.

As to the research mentioned in the NPR segment - horse hockey. And I'd say the same if he'd said 20g/day. If the research was valid, and it probably was (jeeze, I wish I could find it), it said vitamin C saturates the tissues at xmg/ykg. Otherwise that 200mg/day of vitamin C would soak all the tissues of every age, weight, height, gender, and health status of every human being on earth. My 7kg baby grandson to my 70kg 56-year-old self to the 6'7 110kg male 30-something research associate at work to my best friend's 150kg 50-year-old diabetic husband would all have saturated tissues with 200 mg/day. Sorry. It doesn't work like that. I need more macronutrients (protein, carbs, fats) than my grandsons, but less than the research associate - I also need more micronutrients (vitamins, minerals, other stuff we're just learning about) than my grandson and less than the research associate. That's just the way it works.

Barbara Fitzpatrick wrote:Pauling's "RDA" range - .25g-10g was based on 1) vitamin C mg/kg production in a wide range of animals, from lab rats to horses and 2) average amounts of vitamin C available in the preferred diet of primates and other non-vitamin C manufacturing animals. He inclined to the higher end for humans since studies show the larger the animal the higher the mg/kg.

First, the USRDA isn't for any organisms besides humans. If you are correct in saying that Pauling based this range on numbers from "a wide range of animals," I'm even less convinced than I was earlier. Pauling was no fool, and for him to be as vague as this for reasons as shoddy as this in no way makes me reconsider his claims.
Second, which Darrel and I have already mentioned before, statistics from intake of healthy organisms can only establish an upper limit of the needed amount. Pauling was damn good at math, so there's no way he didn't realize this.

Study: Vitamin C or E pills do not prevent cancer

Vitamin C or E pills do not help prevent cancer in men, concludes the same big study that last week found these supplements ineffective for warding off heart disease.

The public has been whipsawed by good and bad news about vitamins, much of it from test-tube or animal studies and hyped manufacturer claims. Even when researchers compare people's diets and find that a vitamin seems to help, the benefit may not translate when that nutrient is obtained a different way, such as a pill.

"Antioxidants, which include vitamin C and vitamin E, have been shown as a group to have potential benefit," but have not been tested individually for a long enough time to know, said Howard Sesso of Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

The Physicians Health Study, which he helped lead, was designed to do that. It involved 14,641 male doctors, 50 or older, including 1,274 who had cancer when or before the study started in 1997. They were included so scientists could see whether the vitamins could prevent a second cancer.

Participants were put into four groups and given vitamin E, vitamin C, both, or dummy pills. The dose of E was 400 international units every other day; C was 500 milligrams daily.

After an average of eight years, there were 1,929 cases of cancer, including 1,013 cases of prostate cancer, which many had hoped vitamin E would prevent.

However, rates of prostate cancer and of total cancer were similar among all four groups.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health and several vitamin makers. Results were being reported Sunday at an American Association for Cancer Research conference in Washington.

"Well-conducted clinical trials such as this are rapidly closing the door on the hope that common vitamin supplements may protect against cancer," said Marji McCullough, nutrition chief at the American Cancer Society. "It's still possible that some benefit exists for subgroups that couldn't be measured, but the overall results are certainly discouraging.

"The American Cancer Society recommends getting these and other nutrients by eating a mostly plant-based diet with a variety of vegetables, fruits and whole grains. A bonus is that this type of diet helps to prevent obesity, which increases the risk of several cancers."

About 12 percent of Americans take supplements of C and E. The new study does not mean these vitamins have no value, just that they didn't prevent cancer in this group of doctors, who may be healthier than the general population, said Dr. Peter Shields, deputy director of Georgetown University's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The best bet, he said, is to do things that are known to prevent the disease — eat right, maintain a healthy weight, and exercise.


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