Attempting to make the
case for vitamin C
August 10, 2006
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Mark Levine, a government researcher, has
published case studies of cancer patients who used vitamin C intravenously.
Name: Loretta Hill
Home:
Age: 43
Diagnosis:
Treatment: Surgery, radiation, chemotherapy. Six months later, when
the cancer had spread to both lungs, she had more surgery. Doctors recommended
more chemotherapy. At that point, she
was severely debilitated, and choose vitamin C
treatment instead.
Current vitamin C regimen: 30 grams weekly
Status: Cancer free for four years
Name: Bill Nath
Home:
Age: 69
Diagnosis: Bladder cancer
Recommended treatment: Chemotherapy, radiation,
surgery. (Nath rejected all these.)
Vitamin C regimen: 30 grams intravenously, twice a week for three months, then
every month or two for four years.
Status: Cancer free for 10 years
– McCLATCHY-TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE
Chemotherapy,
with a C
Is the popular vitamin a possible cure
for cancer?
By Marie McCullough
MCT NEWS SERVICE
August 10, 2006
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Is mainstream medical
science ignoring an inexpensive, painless, readily available cure for cancer?
Mark Levine mulls this loaded
question.
The government nutrition
researcher has published new evidence that suggests vitamin C can work like
chemotherapy – only better. But so far, he hasn't been able to interest cancer
experts in conducting the kind of conclusive studies that, one way or the
other, would advance treatment.
“If vitamin C is useful in cancer treatment, that's
wonderful. If it's not, or if it's
harmful, that's fine, too,” said Levine, a Harvard-educated physician at the National Institute
of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. “The
goal is: Find what's true. Either way, the public wins,
clinicians win and patients win.”
If Linus
Pauling, the two-time Nobel laureate-turned-vitamin C zealot, had taken an
equally dispassionate stance 30 years ago, who knows where the vitamin would be
in oncology today. Surely not where it is: a dubious alternative on the fringes of
medicine, despite
its continuing links to remissions and cures.
This is not about popping
supplements. It's about putting
high-dose vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, into a vein, which requires needles and
trained professionals.
The distinction between
oral and intravenous is crucial. The body automatically gets rid of extra C
through urine. Levine's lab has shown that, at high concentrations, the vitamin
is toxic to many types of cancer cells in lab dishes. But to get that much C
into the body before it's eliminated, it must be put directly into the blood.
This may explain the
defining setback of Pauling's crusade. He and his collaborator, Scottish
surgeon Ewan Cameron, gave C intravenously and
orally, and claimed many of their cancer patients lived surprisingly long and
well. In the 1970s, two rigorous government studies intended to test their
claims gave only pills – and found no benefits.
How could so many smart
people, including Pauling, ignore a variable as basic as the body's ability to
absorb and clear a drug? “I don't want to
impugn anyone,” Levine said. “It's
one of these things where somebody didn't ask the right questions.”
Anecdotes don't matter
So Levine keeps on,
driven by the still-open question: Can intravenous vitamin C do what even the
costliest, most targeted, most effective therapies cannot: kill cancer cells
without harming healthy ones?
Levine, in collaboration
with National Cancer Institute pathologists, re-examined, then
published the cases of three patients treated with intravenous vitamin C by the
Center for Improvement of Human Functioning in
The problem is, anecdotes and impressions don't count. Skeptics ask: Where's the data on dosing and
regimens, on tumor responses, on survival?
“As far as I know, that kind of registry just doesn't
exist now, and it's a huge weakness of the movement,” acknowledged Ron Hunninghake, chief medical officer at Riordan's center,
which is starting a database.
In any case, as consumers
clamor for alternative therapies, intravenous C is gaining fans. Reports of
side effects are rare, and risky patients – with kidney problems or blood
disorders – are easily screened out.
“Interest is definitely growing,” said Kenneth Bock, physician and
president of the
Interest is not growing,
however, among mainstream oncologists, judging from conferences, publications
and interviews with some of them.
The National Cancer
Institute, with a $5-billion budget, is not sponsoring studies of intravenous
C. Neither is the
The old man and C
Jeffrey White, a director
at the National Cancer Institute, said that he's tried to “generate awareness”
of Levine's research, and believes it justifies more studies in humans. But
White acknowledged that the NCI has rejected “a few” proposals for such
studies.
At the prestigious Mayo
Clinic in Rochester, Minn., oncologist Edward Creagan
said the idea that intravenous, but not oral, levels are toxic to cancer is “an intriguing concept.” “However, my own
belief is that the vitamin C story is really ancient history,” he said. “It would be very difficult for patients and
clinicians to mount a lot of enthusiasm for another vitamin-C study.”
It was Creagan and his Mayo colleague, Charles Moertel,
since deceased, who in the 1970s conducted the two National Cancer
Institute-funded clinical trials that showed vitamin C pills were no better
than placebo pills for cancer patients.
A clinical trial is
considered ultra-reliable because it is designed to keep beliefs and hopes from
slanting findings.
Pauling lobbied for a
trial, then later contended that the Mayo researchers
enrolled unsuitable patients. A second trial in response to Pauling's criticism
also bombed. Again he faulted the Mayo oncologists. He also threatened a libel
suit against a
By then, Pauling
advocated treating everything from the common cold to mental illness with
vitamins and other substances he dubbed “orthomolecular,” meaning “right
molecule.” To many colleagues, this genius and visionary, winner of the 1954
Nobel in chemistry and the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for his antiwar work, had
become a kook – “The Old Man and the C.”
Decades later, both
skeptics and fans of C are gun-shy about more trials.
“There's tremendous
resistance to even test this,” Levine said. “It's very hard to revisit
something like this without data. Information is diamonds.”
C acts in a lab dish
As the chief of the
molecular and clinical nutrition section at the National Institute of Diabetes
and Digestive and Kidney Diseases – hardly a hotbed of federal cancer research
– Levine discovered some diamonds “by accident.”
In the early 1990s, his
lab began looking at how the concentration of a nutrient affects its function,
and how the body gets the proper concentration.
“As part of those studies, we looked at how vitamin C is
absorbed in the intestine,” Levine said.
By 2000, when that work
led to an increase in the
Consumers and scientists
already knew that ascorbate was an “antioxidant,”
meaning it protects cells from reactive oxygen molecules – the same marauders
that turn peeled apples brown and wet metal rusty.
Indeed, the reason the
American Cancer Society and others discourage ascorbate
megadoses is that a few studies of cells in dishes
suggest C might protect cancer from oxidant damage. Chemotherapy and radiation
work partly by intentionally unleashing this damage.
But Levine's lab-dish
studies showed that ascorbate transforms from an
antioxidant into just the opposite – an oxidant “promoter” – when it reaches
high concentrations. At these levels, which are achievable in the body only
intravenously, C acts like a toxic drug by generating hydrogen peroxide, a
powerful oxidant used as a bleaching agent, an antiseptic and even a World War
II rocket fuel.
Still, the biochemistry
was puzzling. Putting pure peroxide in the bloodstream can be fatal, so why did
patients feel fine when the vitamin that produces it was dripped into their veins?
Levine's experiments
offered possible answers. Vitamin C did not generate peroxide in blood, only in
liquid such as that found in body cavities. Thus, in the body, intravenous C
must seep out of the blood to work.
Five out of nine types of
cancer cells that were put in simulated body-cavity fluid died when
concentrated ascorbate or peroxide was added to the
dish. And the best part: This same lethal marinade had no effect on healthy
cells.
For some reason, cancer
cells were like the Wicked Witch of the West splashed with water – powerful
villains vanquished by a mundane substance that is harmless to good guys.
Previously, Riordan had
speculated that this was partly because an enzyme that neutralizes peroxide is
abundant inside normal cells, and scarce inside cancerous ones. But by inducing
cells to take in C, Levine proved that the internal concentration doesn't
matter; malignant cells withered only when C surrounded them.
Armed with this new
evidence, a coterie of researchers – all associated with Pauling or his
disciples – has recently obtained private funding for small trials of
intravenous C.
University of
Meanwhile, Levine is
forging ahead with animal studies, trying to decipher the molecular magic of
C's selective toxicity.
Does that mean he
believes C is an unsung cancer weapon?
“I think that question is akin to 'Do you still beat your
wife?' ” he said. “The question
I would ask is: Shouldn't we investigate the potential of ascorbate
as a drug? Let's not guess anymore. Let's be motivated by the truth.”