I'd have to say that one of my great heroes is Linus Pauling - not really for his more traditional work, but for his belief that "optimum nutrition is the medicine of the future", for which he has aroused considerable controversy, though the essence of that approach is supported here: http://www.lef.org/abstracts/index.htm The approach makes intuitive sense, since everything in living organisms is made of naturally occurring substances, and nothing else. Yet modern medicine fails to consider these very substances to be the proper tools for restoring an ailing body to its proper, healthy condition. Pauling, the most prestigious chemist of the 20th century, was attacked by the medical establishment for advocating this, and his views were marginalized. What used to be here is presented coherently in a series of Facebook posts of Ben Goertzel, a biographer of Pauling: https://www.facebook.com/ben.goertzel/posts/527515800717042 Harri Hemilä has made an edit to the Vitamin C and common cold Wikipedia article that clears away many of the criticisms, however, I have presented above in comments to my post on Goertzel's page some items that have been overlooked even in Hemilä's efforts: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vitamin_C_and_the_common_cold&diff=578977245&oldid=578129214 (Hemilä's efforts were stonewalled by a wikipedia user named Mastcell, who has been stonewalling similar articles on vitamins all across Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Vitamin_C_and_the_common_cold&diff=579025890&oldid=578981023#27_Oct_2013:_Rewriting_of_the_vitamin_C_and_common_cold_article:_reasons_for_the_rewriting) Wikipedia is highly problematic on this. Consider the way it treats the work of Frederick Klenner and his work on treating polio with high dose intravenous vitamin c. People will probably be skeptical of this because the wikipedia article "History of poliomyelitis", as of November 19, 2013 states "In 1935 Claus Jungeblut reported that vitamin C treatment enhanced resistance to poliomyelitis in monkeys.[24] However follow up experiments reported by Albert Sabin and Jungeblut himself were unable to confirm the initially promising results.[25][26] Later, Fred Klenner published his own clinical experience with vitamin C in the treatment of polio,[27][28][29][30] however his work was not well received and no large clinical trials were ever performed.": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_poliomyelitis#Historical_treatments But this article is misleading. First, regarding Klenner, the statement that his work was "not well received" is not substantiated, the evidence as I have seen it is merely that Klenner's result was casually cited and subsequently ignored (probably because of Sabin's results) in the following JAMA article - I do not have access to it, but I would appreciate if those who do could verify this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18138510 And here is the real story regarding Jundeblut: Jungeblut demonstrated that Vitamin C completely inactivates the polio virus in vitro, making it non-infectious : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19870431 -such inactivation was replicated in 1978: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC243036/ -Jungeblut later injected polio into the brains of monkeys, and found that many more monkeys that also received vitamin C escaped paralysis than controls - the results seem to indicate that low doses are more effective than high in this case: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2133474/pdf/127.pdf -a modification to this comes from the fact that a subsequent study by Jungeblut demonstrated that polio infected monkeys had lower vitamin c levels than others, and that the monkeys that escaped paralysis had the highest vitamin c levels (see p. 12 of PDF, pt. 3 in "summary and conclusions"): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2133579/pdf/479.pdf -Jungeblut subsequently confirmed his findings, and apparently natural vitamin c was more effective. This study is larger, and thus carries more significance. It also modifies the implications of the previous study by noting that as the disease progresses, larger and larger amounts of vitamin c are needed for therapeutic effect (see p. 467 of the document, not the pdf): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2133575/pdf/459.pdf -the wikipedia article on history of poliomyelitis miscites Jungeblut as failing to confirm his earlier in vitro findings, (and omits the other replications) when the abstract of his 1939 article actually concludes, "With a less forceful method of droplet instillation, the picture of the disease in control animals becomes so variable that the results cannot be easily interpreted; but the available data suggest that vitamin C treatment may be a factor in converting abortive attacks into an altogether non-paralytic infection. 3. The administration of synthetic vitamin C to monkeys infected intracerebrally with small doses of the RMV strain gives results comparable to those previously obtained with this substance in monkeys infected intracerebrally with the Aycock strain of poliomyelitis virus.": http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2133810/ I will excerpt more from this study, but use the PDF, and page numbers will refer to the document, not the PDF: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2133810/pdf/315.pdf P. 318 notes that vitamin C inactivated the more virulent RMV virus in vitro, and nullified its effects on monkey groups treated with the combination, whereas the standard untreated virus produced paralysis. This fact shows how problematic wikipedia is as a source. See also p. 322 series IV-VI, showing a consistent effect for higher doses being needed to fight off the more virulent strain. -see p. 326, where Jugenblut states that "The results recorded in this paper serve to affirm and extend our previous observations on the effect of crystalline vitamin C on poliomeleytis virus." He gives other examples and states, "Vitamin C, therefore, may truly be designated as the "antitoxic and antiviral" vitamin -he discusses the technical reasons why Sabin failed to replicate the effect (too much virus - and later, as Klenner would find out with humans, not enough vitamin C) Pursuit of some of the items in the comments to the Goldacre post will show preliminary evidence (that has not yet been replicated in large scale trials, but should be), that high dose intravenous vitamin C may be an almost universal anti-toxin and anti-viral, and possibly sink the vaccine industry. This is becoming increasingly important in light of items like the New Zealand News Story "Vitamin C: The Miracle Swine Flu Cure": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twUVWv0fpRc Some relevant sources are as follows: http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/12154.php "Vitamin C, Linus Pauling was right all along. A doctor's opinion Main Category: Cancer / Oncology Article Date: 17 Aug 2004 - 0:00 PST Here is an article written by Dr Hilary Roberts about Linus Pauling and his views on vitamin C. Summary It is the 10th anniversary of the death of Linus Pauling and his most controversial scientific conjectures about the health benefits of vitamin C are being confirmed. The weight of evidence may yet force the medical establishment to accept his ideas on nutrition and health. Linus Pauling's claim, that he knew a cure for heart disease, cancer and infections, was greeted with ridicule. His remarkable health claims concerned the substance we know as vitamin C. Now, ten years after his death on 19th August 1994, his revolutionary ideas are finally on the way to vindication. Given his history, it should not surprise us if Pauling was right all along. He was, after all, the leading chemist of the last century and, arguably, the greatest ever American scientist. He remains the only person to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes, the first for Chemistry (1954) and the second for peace (1962). In addition to being one of the greatest scientists ever, he was a renowned humanitarian. By the time of his death, the medical establishment had branded Pauling a quack, because he advocated the use of high doses of vitamin C to treat many diseases. Irwin Stone first introduced Pauling to vitamin C, and explained that it wasn't really a vitamin at all, but an essential substance we could no longer manufacture in our bodies. Most animals make their own vitamin C, in large amounts. In humans, the gene for this ability has mutated and no longer works properly. When Pauling looked into Stone's claims, he found that conventional medicine had long ignored evidence from respected physicians and scientists. This research suggested that high doses of vitamin C might be a cure for many illnesses, including cancer and heart disease. However, when he explained these findings in his wonderfully constructed books "Vitamin C and the Common Cold" and "How to Live Longer and Feel Better", the medical profession was incensed, implying that a mere chemist could not possibly understand the intricacies of medical science. If Pauling was correct, vitamin C could help overcome the major killers in the industrialised world. This sounded so unlikely that a lesser scientist making the claim would probably have been ignored; the medical world had already disregarded similar reports of vitamin C. Linus Pauling had a reputation for being 20 years ahead of other scientists. He may well have been years ahead in other fields but, in medicine, the insiders considered such a thing to be impossible. Pauling battled with the medical authorities and convinced a lot of the public of the benefits of high dose vitamin C. He took on the medical establishment because the implication for health was enormous: an end to premature death and unnecessary suffering from heart disease, infection and many cancers. Since Pauling's death, the medical establishment has reclaimed the scientific position with a series of experiments on vitamin C. In particular, the NIH measured the distribution of vitamin C in the body and claimed that Pauling was wrong about the need for high doses, as the blood could be saturated at low doses [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 93, 3704-9.]. They added that doses higher than one gram were potentially dangerous. From this point on, the high dose vitamin C lobby were on the defensive. If the body could be saturated at low doses, the argument went, higher doses were simply a waste or even potentially dangerous. However, clinical reports of the utility of high dose vitamin C had been repeated in the literature for over 50 years. These reports continued, particularly in the fields of heart disease, infections and cancer, contradicting the NIH conclusions. Either the clinical reports of the efficacy of high doses were incorrect, or the NIH experimental work was flawed. Taking note of this inconsistency, Drs Steve Hickey and Hilary Roberts decided to investigate the data for a book ("Ascorbate, the science of vitamin C", www.lulu.com/ascorbate). They began by looking at the apparently ludicrous claims for the medical effects of vitamin C. Pauling had stated that the substance could cure cancer and that shortage was the major cause of heart disease. Among his many scientific advances, Pauling had made occasional errors: perhaps he had done the same with vitamin C. If he was wrong, his hypotheses should be easy to refute. When they examined the evidence, Hickey and Roberts found background evidence for Pauling's ideas from independent scientific and medical reports, covering half a century. The findings in these papers could neither be dismissed as placebo effects nor easily explained. The reports included remission of AIDS, cures for cancer, and the immediate recovery of children at the point of death from septic shock. The claims seemed so out of the ordinary that they were hard to believe. However, Hickey and Roberts could find no counter examples in the scientific or medical literature. If these positive reports were indeed wrong, no-one had shown this to be true. The scientific evidence was consistent with Pauling's ideas, with a few notable exceptions. The primary exception was the NIH data on blood and tissue saturation. The medical establishment accepted the NIH conclusions and held them in the highest regard. The US Institute of Medicine had based their official recommended dietary allowance (RDA) on these results. If the NIH was correct, then Pauling was wrong and the positive reports of high doses must be invalid. The NIH conclusions were not correct, however. Hickey and Roberts examined their experiments and found them to be full of errors. For example, the researchers had given a dose of vitamin C, waited until it had been excreted and then measured blood levels. Using this procedure, they found that increasing the dose did not greatly increase the blood levels. Instead of realising that this was because the dose had been excreted, the NIH claimed it was because the body was saturated, so higher doses were redundant. They then used white blood cells as a model for normal cells, to see how they absorbed vitamin C from their surroundings. These white blood cells are specialised to absorb vitamin C, even when supplies are low. If other body cells were similar to white blood cells, we would normally have a reserve of 40 grams in our bodies. In this case, given the proposed RDA of 200mg, it would take 2-3 years to fill a depleted body. This is demonstrably incorrect: the classic example is that James Lind's sailors recovered from scurvy in a matter of days when they were given citrus fruits containing small amounts of vitamin C. These mistakes were gross and unsupportable. In order to check their re-interpretation of the data, Hickey sent emails to the NIH, the Institute of Medicine and every scientist he could contact who was associated with the RDA, asking them to provide a reasonable scientific response to these errors. No-one was able to provide such a response. Since it is normal scientific practice to explain and defend your ideas, the hypothesis that people only need small amounts of vitamin C looks increasingly shaky. Even the NIH's subsequent data contradicts their earlier work. The NIH vitamin C group published a series of papers on vitamin C and cancer [Ann Intern Med, 140(7), 533-7.]. In these papers, they suggested that repeated doses of oral vitamin C would produce blood levels of at least 220 microM (a measure of the concentration) , which is three times greater than the 70 microM maximum "saturated" value they claimed in their RDA papers. While their own papers clearly showed that their low-dose claims were wrong, the NIH appeared not to notice. Instead, they suggested that intravenous doses could produce higher blood levels, which might be effective against cancer. Even though their data were coming closer to Pauling's findings on the use of vitamin C in cancer, the NIH took the opportunity to mount another attack on Linus Pauling, suggesting he did not know the difference between oral and intravenous (IV) vitamin C. Pauling had performed a series of trials with Dr Ewan Cameron, a Scottish cancer specialist, showing that intravenous vitamin C allowed cancer patients to live much longer than expected. Numerous other studies confirmed this effect, particularly the work of Dr Abram Hoffer and Dr Hugh Riordan. The Mayo Clinic tried to refute this research but failed, as they used low, oral doses, making their results invalid. In their own cancer paper, the NIH researchers claimed that Pauling and Cameron's use of the IV route was "serendipitous", implying that Pauling did not know the difference between injected and oral doses. In fact, Pauling had written explicitly about this difference, so the NIH criticism was misplaced. A new scientific theory, called the dynamic flow model, explains all the observed responses to vitamin C in the literature. This model is described in the book "Ascorbate", mentioned above. According to the model, people should ideally be in a state of dynamic flow, which means they should ingest more vitamin C than they need, in the form of divided dose supplements. The extra ascorbate flows through the body and is excreted in the urine. It is not wasted, however, as the excess acts as a reservoir when extra vitamin C is required. Dynamic flow is the closest we humans can get to restoring our physiology to how it was before we lost the ability to make vitamin C in our bodies, as most other animals still do. It is difficult to imagine what Linus Pauling would have made of all this had he lived. Hickey and Roberts like to think that he would have pointed out the NIH errors earlier. He might have had fun explaining that the NIH could not perform a simple experiment, yet tried to blame him for the deficiencies in the Mayo Clinic's research. It is now 10 years since Pauling's death. Biologist Ren頄ubos suggested that the mainstream converges with Pauling twenty years later. If so, we only have another decade to wait until the medical establishment can admit that Pauling was right all along. Dr. Hilary Roberts Email: radicalascorbate@yahoo.com" http://www.advancedscientifichealth.com/newpweb_nsf_animals.asp?SID=554893 "How are men different from other animals? What do guinea pigs, apes, some fruit bats and humans have in common? They all share the inability to produce their own ascorbic acid (vitamin C). All other animals produce vitamin C endogenously, or inside their own bodies. Scientists believe they have evidence suggesting that humans used to produce their own ascorbic acid from an enzyme produced in the liver. But something happened and humans now depend on dietary sources of vitamin C. Guinea pigs, apes, some fruit bats and humans share another trait: The tendency to develop coronary heart disease. The development of heart disease only occurs in animals and humans that lack adequate intake of ascorbates through dietary sources. It has also been observed that zoo animals, such as gorillas fed processed "gorilla chow" readily develop heart disease unless they are supplied with adequate amounts of ascorbates. By comparing the amount of vitamin C produced endogenously in animals that do not develop heart disease, we can get a good idea of how much vitamin C is essential to maintain cardiovascular health in humans. Goats, cows, dogs, cats, squirrels and rabbits manufacture ascorbic acid at a rate of about 10 g per 70 kg (154 pounds) of body weight. In other words, to achieve the levels of ascorbic acid produced by animals that do not develop coronary heart disease, a 154-pound human would need to ingest 10 g of dietary or supplemental vitamin C daily. Noting that 1,000 mg = 1 g, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has established the U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for vitamin C at 35 mg for infants; 45-50 mg for children and 60 mg for adults. According to the FDA, humans require about 200 times less vitamin C than animals to maintain optimal health. The late Dr. Fred Klenner was one of the world's foremost authorities on vitamin C. He believed that the government's concept of daily minimal intakes should be abolished because, "The physiological requirements [for ascorbic acid] in man are no different than other mammals capable of carrying out this synthesis." Judging from the numbers of people being stricken by and succumbing to heart disease in the U.S., it would appear that Dr. Klenner (and doctors Pauling, Irwin Stone, Glenn Dettman and Archie Kalokerinos) are correct about the levels of ascorbic acid necessary to maintain optimal cardiovascular health." If you think you can get the wikipedia coverage of this changed though, good luck. In one of my bans on wikipedia, I was banned for trying to get an accurate reflection of the content of two reviews in an article, these were articles in mainstream journals, which suggested reevaluation of intravenous vitamin C for cancer therapy (evidence shows that it is adjunctive, and in "How to Live Longer and Feel Better" (1986, W.H. Freeman and Company), p. 180, Pauling said that, "With the possible exception of during intense chemotherapy, we strongly advocate the use of supplemental ascorbate in the management of all cancer patients as early in the illness as possible. We believe that this simple measure would improve the overall results of cancer treatment of cancer treatment quite dramatically, not only be making the patients more resistant to their illness but also by protecting them against some of the serious and occasionally fatal complications of cancer treatment itself." He continues (p. 180) that "There are many advantages to using Vitamin C as an adjunct to appropriate conventional therapy in the treatment of cancer patients." So he specifically advocated it as complementary, not alternative medicine, contrary to the misrepresentations of critics - and in "Vitamin C and Cancer", he specifically stated that it was not a cure for cancer (see p. 130)). But anyway, here is the link to the relevant item: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Edit_warring&diff=prev&oldid=574271325#User:198.189.184.243_reported_by_User:UseTheCommandLine_.28Result:_Topic_ban_under_WP:ARBPS.29, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive139#Arbitration_enforcement_action_appeal_by_198.189.184.243 I was forced to carry on my argument here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:MastCell#controversy_about_vitamin_c, but this action, too, was condemned: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:198.189.184.243&diff=574455082&oldid=574386896 My previous ban from Wikipedia is discussed at the end of this piece: https://archive.org/details/LesDerniersJoursDesRomanof On the fraud used by the medical establishment against orthomolecular psychiatry, the featured text delves into relevant details. Earlier evidence of chicanery in mainstream medicine is provided by Dr. Emmanuel Josephson in "Your Life is Their Toy": https://archive.org/details/YourLifeIsTheirToyJosephson