University Daily Kansan, March 29 1985
CAMPUS AND AREA
Page 9
Vitamin C disputed as cancer treatment
By GREG LARSON Staff Reporter
Most of the more than one million people in the United States who are afflicted with cancer every year use conventional treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiation, in an effort to halt the spread of the disease. In desperation, others turn to unconventional treatments.
Vitamin C, although hailed by some scientists as a cancer cure, has yet to be accepted by the scientific community, a University of Kansas Medical Center nutrition specialist last week. University professor said last week.
Peter Beyer, assistant director of dietetics and nutrition at the Med Center, said vitamin C was not a cause of heart disease and would not cure the disease.
"Linus Pauling and others have said vitamin C benefits cancer patients," he said. "Vitamin C in no way helps prevent cancer."
LINUS PAULING, who won the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1954.
has said studies conducted by him and Ewan Cameron, medical director of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine in Menlo Park, and taking vitamin C helped patients feel better mentally and physically.
He said the vitamin also caused shrinkage of cancer tumors in some patients.
However, researchers from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.. published a report in the January edition of the New England Journal of Medicine disputing the findings of Cameron and Pauling.
David Paretsky, professor of microbiology at the University, said, "My opinion is that the science community sides with the Mayo clinical lab because it has a theory to explain why vitamin C acts the way Pauling says it will.
"THE PEOPLE WHO did the Mayo study are regarded as excellent statisticians."
In 1976 and 1978, Pauling and Cameron published reports that said vitamin K had lengthened the life of or even cured terminal cancer
patients. The clinic responded by testing the findings in 1979 and 1984 and said that vitamin C did not have any effect on cancer patients.
Charles Moerel, director of the Mayo Comprehensive Cancer Center and co-author of the article, said the Mayo Clinic research team had made every effort to fail Pauling's assertions but failed to do so.
The Pauling-Cameron research involved giving terminal cancer patients 10,000 milligrams of vitamin C daily. Some of the patients in the study are still receiving the vitamin C treatments.
BEVER SAID THAT 500 milligrams was considered a large dose and that the average orange contained 60 milligrams. Ingesting large amounts of vitamin C, he said, might cause anemia in white blood cells in fighting disease.
The possibility of kidney stone formation also exists in some people who take megadoses of the vitamin, he said.
Pauling and Cameron gave these daily doses of vitamin C to patients at the University Hospital of New York.
Hospital in Loch Lomondside, Scotland. The control group — those who did not take vitamin C — was chosen from the hospital's records.
In the study, patients were selected for the control group if their sex, age and tumor type corresponded to those of the patient receiving the vitamin C doses, Pauling said.
MOERTEL SAID THE selection of the Cameron-Pauling control group could have included biases because the individuals conducting the experiment had helped choose the patients.
"How can they determine that both groups of cancer patients are the same?" he said. "There is no way to look at a medical record and not be biased."
In 1984, the Mayo Clinic used a random study, called randomized double-blind comparison, in which the patients were chosen at random, split into two groups and given either a placebo or vitamin C, he said.
In a randomized double-blind comparison, neither the patients nor the physicians know the type of pills the groups are taking.
Pauling said the Mayo Clinic experiment failed to reproduce the conditions of the Cameron-Pauling study and could not be compared.
"I object to the way they wrote their article." Pauling said. "The conclusion that they came up with is hardly justified because they studied only patients with colorectal cancer."
Moertel said the vitamin C was given to the patient until the cancer tumors grew by 50 percent. If the cancer reached this stage, he said, the vitamin C was not effective in arresting the growth of the disease.
Another difference in the Mayo Clinic experiment, Pauling said, is that vitamin C was administered to patients for only part of the experimental time period.
Nobel prof to give talk on April 10
A Nobel Prize winner who research has helped confirm important theories in modern art will visit 10 at the University of Kansas.
Carlo Rubbia, a senior scientist at the European Center for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland, and professor of physics at Harvard University, will give a lecture on his work in high-energy particle physics at 8 p.m. April 10 at the University of Kansas Nelson. His lecture is titled "Discovery of the Intermediate Boson."
Rubbia will meet with College of Liberal Arts and Sciences honor students that morning. At 4 p.m., a reception will be in 1087 Malott will speak will snook at a technical colloquium at 4:30 p.m. in 1087 Malott.
Rubbia shared the 1984 Nobel Prize in physics with Simon van der Meer.
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