Reply #50: Linus Pauling [View All]

[moggie]

He claimed that mega doses of vitamin C could prevent cancer, though I believe the Pauling Institute which he founded no longer claims this. Tell me, what did Pauling die of?

Ok, you want research. Here's some:

http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/pauling.html

A dispute between Pauling and Arthur Robinson, Ph.D., gives additional evidence of Pauling's defense of vitamin C megadosage was less than honest. Robinson, a former student and long-time associate of Pauling, helped found the institute and became its first president. According to an investigative report by James Lowell, Ph.D., in Nutrition Forum newsletter, Robinson's own research led him to conclude in 1978 that the high doses (5-10 grams per day) of vitamin C being recommended by Pauling might actually promote some types of cancer in mice. Robinson told Lowell, for example, that animals fed quantities equivalent to Pauling's recommendations contracted skin cancer almost twice as frequently as the control group and that only doses of vitamin C that were nearly lethal had any protective effect. Shortly after reporting this to Pauling, Robinson was asked to resign from the institute, his experimental animals were killed, his scientific data were impounded, and some of the previous research results were destroyed. Pauling also declared publicly that Robinson's research was "amateurish" and inadequate. Robinson responded by suing the Institute and its trustees. In 1983, the suit was settled out of court for $575,000. In an interview quoted in Nature, Pauling said that the settlement "represented no more than compensation for loss of office and the cost of Robinson's legal fees." However, the court-approved agreement states that $425,000 of the settlement was for slander and libel.

That's a very interesting article.