Scientists weren’t as enthusiastic. On December 14, 1942, about thirty years before Pauling published his first book, Donald Cowan, Harold Diehl, and Abe Baker, from the University of Minnesota, published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association titled “Vitamins for the Prevention of Colds.” The authors concluded, “Under the conditions of this controlled study, in which 980 colds were treated … there is no indication that vitamin C alone, an antihistamine alone, or vitamin C plus an antihistamine have any important effect on the duration or severity of infections of the upper respiratory tract.”
Other studies followed. After Pauling’s pronouncement, researchers at the University of Maryland gave 3,000 milligrams of vitamin C every day for three weeks to eleven volunteers and a sugar pill (placebo) to ten others. Then they infected volunteers with a common cold virus. All developed cold symptoms of similar duration. At the University of Toronto, researchers administered vitamin C or placebo to 3,500 volunteers. Again, vitamin C didn’t prevent colds, even in those receiving as much as 2,000 milligrams a day. In 2002, researchers in the Netherlands administered multivitamins or placebo to more than 600 volunteers. Again, no difference. At least fifteen studies have now shown that vitamin C doesn’t treat the common cold. As a consequence, neither the FDA, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the American Dietetic Association, the Center for Human Nutrition at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, nor the Department of Health and Human Services recommend supplemental vitamin C for the prevention or treatment of colds.
Although study after study showed that he was wrong, Pauling refused to believe it, continuing to promote vitamin C in speeches, popular articles, and books. When he occasionally appeared before the media with obvious cold symptoms, he said he was suffering from allergies.
Then Linus Pauling upped the ante. He claimed that vitamin C not only prevented colds; it cured cancer.
In 1971, Pauling received a letter from Ewan Cameron, a Scottish surgeon from a tiny hospital outside Glasgow. Cameron wrote that cancer patients who were treated with ten grams of vitamin C every day had fared better than those who weren’t. Pauling was ecstatic. He decided to publish Cameron’s findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Pauling assumed that as a member of the academy he could publish a paper in PNAS whenever he wanted; only three papers submitted by academy members had been rejected in more than half a century. Pauling’s paper was rejected anyway, further tarnishing his reputation among scientists. Later, the paper was published in Oncology, a journal for cancer specialists. When researchers evaluated the data, the flaw became obvious: the cancer victims Cameron had treated with vitamin C were healthier at the start of therapy, so their outcomes were better. After that, scientists no longer took Pauling’s claims about vitamins seriously.
But Linus Pauling still had clout with the media. In 1971, he declared that vitamin C would cause a 10 percent decrease in deaths from cancer. In 1977, he went even further. “My present estimate is that a decrease of 75 percent can be achieved with vitamin C alone,” he wrote, “and a further decrease by use of other nutritional supplements.” With cancer in their rearview mirror, Pauling predicted, people would live longer, healthier lives. “Life expectancy will be 100 to 110 years,” he said, “and in the course of time, the maximum age might be 150 years.”
Cancer victims now had reason for hope. Wanting to participate in the Pauling miracle, they urged their doctors to give them massive doses of vitamin C. “For about seven or eight years, we were getting a lot of requests from our families to use high-dose vitamin C,” recalls John Maris, chief of oncology and director of the Center for Childhood Cancer Research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “We struggled with that. They would say, ‘Doctor, do you have a Nobel Prize?’”
Blindsided, cancer researchers decided to test Pauling’s theory. Charles Moertel, of the Mayo Clinic, evaluated 150 cancer victims: half received ten grams of vitamin C a day and half didn’t. The vitamin C–treated group showed no difference in symptoms or mortality. Moertel concluded, “We were unable to show a therapeutic benefit of high-dose vitamin C.” Pauling was outraged. He wrote an angry letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, which had published the study, claiming that Moertel had missed the point. Of course vitamin C hadn’t worked: Moertel had treated patients who had already received chemotherapy. Pauling claimed that vitamin C worked only if cancer victims had received no prior chemotherapy.
Bullied, Moertel performed a second study; the results were the same. Moertel concluded, “Among patients with measurable disease, none had objective improvement. It can be concluded that high-dose vitamin C therapy is not effective against advanced malignant disease regardless of whether the patient had received any prior chemotherapy.” For most doctors, this was the end of it. But not for Linus Pauling. He was simply not to be contradicted. Cameron observed, “I have never seen him so upset. He regards the whole affair as a personal attack on his integrity.” Pauling thought Moertel’s study was a case of “fraud and deliberate misrepresentation.” He consulted lawyers about suing Moertel, but they talked him out of it.
Subsequent studies have consistently shown that vitamin C doesn’t treat cancer.
Pauling wasn’t finished. Next, he claimed that vitamin C, when taken with massive doses of vitamin A (25,000 international units) and vitamin E (400 to 1,600 IU), as well as selenium (a basic element) and beta-carotene (a precursor to vitamin A), could do more than just prevent colds and treat cancer; they could treat virtually every disease known to man. Pauling claimed that vitamins and supplements could cure heart disease, mental illness, pneumonia, hepatitis, polio, tuberculosis, measles, mumps, chickenpox, meningitis, shingles, fever blisters, cold sores, canker sores, warts, aging, allergies, asthma, arthritis, diabetes, retinal detachment, strokes, ulcers, shock, typhoid fever, tetanus, dysentery, whooping cough, leprosy, hay fever, burns, fractures, wounds, heat prostration, altitude sickness, radiation poisoning, glaucoma, kidney failure, influenza, bladder ailments, stress, rabies, and snakebites. When the AIDS virus entered the United States in the 1970s, Pauling claimed vitamins could treat that, too.
On April 6, 1992, the cover of Time—rimmed with colorful pills and capsules—declared, “The Real Power of Vitamins: New research shows they may help fight cancer, heart disease, and the ravages of aging.” The article, written by Anastasia Toufexis, echoed Pauling’s ill-founded, disproved notions about the wonders of megavitamins. “More and more scientists are starting to suspect that traditional medical views of vitamins and minerals have been too limited,” wrote Toufexis. “Vitamins—often in doses much higher than those usually recommended—may protect against a host of ills ranging from birth defects and cataracts to heart disease and cancer. Even more provocative are glimmerings that vitamins can stave off the normal ravages of aging.” Toufexis enthused that the “pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-La Roche is so enamored with beta-carotene that it plans to open a Freeport, Texas, plant next year that will churn out 350 tons of the nutrient annually, or enough to supply a daily 6 milligram capsule to virtually every American adult.”
The National Nutritional Foods Association (NNFA), a lobbying group for vitamin manufacturers, couldn’t believe its good luck, calling the Time article “a watershed event for the industry.” As part of an effort to get the FDA off their backs, the NNFA distributed multiple copies of the magazine to every member of Congress. Speaking at an NNFA trade show later in 1992, Toufexis said, “In fifteen years at Time I have written many health covers. But I have never seen anything like the response to the vitamin cover. It whipped off the sales racks, and we were inundated with requests for copies. There are no more copies. ‘Vitamins’ is the number-one-selling issue so far this year.”
Although studies had failed to support him, Pauling believed that vitamins and supplements had one property that made them cure-alls, a property that continues to be hawked on everything from ketchup to pomegranate juice and that rivals words like natural and organic for sales impact: antioxidant.
Antioxidation