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Article: Pauling's panacea: no good for cancer. (Linus Pauling and vitamin C)
- Article from:
- Science News
- Article date:
- January 26, 1985
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1985 Science Service, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Old ideas die hard. So do relatively new ones, especially to that guru of scientific intuition, Linus Pauling.
In the early 1970s, Pauling proposed that large doses of vitamin C could help treat cancer. Pauling, of Palo Alto, Calif., based his claims on a Scottish study showing a striking survival advantage for cancer patients treated with vitamin C. But researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., announced in the Jan. 17 NEW ENGLAND JOURNAL OF MEDICINE that high-dose vitamin C, the elixir Pauling made famous, has no advantage over placebo as a therapeutic agent for advanced cancer.
The Mayo Clinic researchers denounced the Scottish study, ...