Vitamin C effective against cancer? Try it IV.

In 1997, I spent one week touring alternative cancer treatment clinics in Mexico. Some of those clinics were using vitamin C to treat cancer, a practice mocked by conventional doctors as unproven and ineffective. Now, a new study may give these much-maligned practitioners the last laugh.

Researchers at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Baltimore, Maryland studied the effects of incubating cancer cells in laboratory dishes in the presence of vitamin C for one hour. They examined the effects of vitamin C on ten different cancer cell lines.

They observed that vitamin C killed 50 percent of the cancer cells in one half of the cell lines, while they had no effect on the healthy cells. According to their observations, vitamin C chemically interacted with the outside of the cancer cells to produce hydrogen peroxide, which then killed the cancer cells. (My guess is that cancer cells differ from normal cells by possessing something that interacts with vitamin C in such a way as to produce the hydrogen peroxide, while the healthy cells lack whatever this factor is and so they remain unscathed.)

According to Stephen Barrett, MD of www.quackwatch.org, the controversy over vitamin C use in the treatment of cancer began with reports published in the late 1970s by Linus Pauling, Ph.D. and Ewan Cameron, a Scottish surgeon, who claimed that 1,000 cancer patients they treated with 10 grams of oral vitamin C lived three to four times longer than 1,000 cancer patients of other physicians from the same hospital who were not treated with vitamin C. But critics debunked the research, pointing out that this study did not employ conventional matching of participants so that one could be sure that they were truly demonstrating an effect of vitamin C. In response to these criticisms, Pauling and Cameron “replaced some of the patients and controls and published another analysis in September 1978 in the same journal.” Barrett goes on to cite three randomized, placebo-controlled studies involving a total of 367 cancer patients, all done by the Mayo Clinic, and all of which failed to show any increase in longevity for those receiving 10 grams of oral vitamin C (see http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/c.html).

Except for the Pauling/Cameron study, most research in the past has not shown vitamin C to be effective in cancer treatment. However, those studies involved vitamin C taken by mouth. Researches from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases report that vitamin C taken by mouth is cleared by the body very quickly, so that the blood concentrations of this vitamin never get very high. However, when vitamin C is given intravenously, levels can be achieved up to 70 times greater than when given by mouth, and this without any obvious negative effects on the patient.

Vitamin C is virtually non-toxic. According to its proponents, vitamin C’s only side effect is diarrhea, and this only occurs when the patient’s system is saturated with it. Since the saturation level is claimed to vary with a person’s state of health, advocates for intravenous vitamin C administer it up to the point where diarrhea develops, an approach they refer to as “the bowel tolerance method”.

In a letter to the editor of Science News, a writer from the Linus Pauling Institute pointed out how one practitioner used 10 grams of vitamin C intravenously each day for the first two weeks of treatment. This was then followed by an oral dosage for an indefinite period of time.

Perhaps, with this new laboratory study, someone will test the effectiveness of intravenous vitamin C in cancer patients in a clinical trial.

In the meantime, even though vitamin C killed only half of the cancer cells in only half of the cancer cell lines, and even though there is still significant controversy in the medical literature, I would still seriously consider taking intravenous vitamin C if I were diagnosed with cancer. As far as I have been able to determine, it’s a safe adjunct to cancer treatment.

Note: since vitamin C for cancer is considered an alternative, unproven treatment, it is not eligible for payment through Christian Healthcare Ministries and most, if not all, insurance companies.

Chen, Q., M. G. Espey, M. C. Krishna, J. B. Mitchell, C. P. Corpe, G. R. Buettner, E. Shacter, and M. Levine (2005). “Pharmacologic Ascorbic Acid Concentrations Selectively Kill Cancer Cells: Action as a Pro-Drug to Deliver Hydrogen Peroxide to Tissues.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 102 (38): 13604-9.

Posted on 12/04/2006 under Christian Health & Medicine, Alternative Medicine, Diseases, Nutrition/Prevention. Comments RSS feed.
You can leave a response.

Post a Comment / Question

Use this form to add a comment to this entry.