Intravenous Vitamin C and Cancer: Quackery or a Valid Medical Therapy For Malignant Tumors?

The recommended daily intake (RDA) for vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is 60 mg. This is enough to prevent scurvy, but there has long been a debate about whether larger doses can be helpful. Humans are, after all, among the rare mammals who cannot produce their own vitamin C. It has been suggested that if we did, our production would amount to several grams a day.

Many people take large doses of the vitamin when they catch a cold, though not all studies have shown any benefit to this practice. Proponents of the vitamin have criticized those studies for using too low doses. We do know that vitamin C is safe even in very large amounts, although it can cause stomach upset and diarrhea. This may be lessened by taking a buffered (salt) form, such as calcium ascorbate.

Route of Administration

The problem is that the human body limits the amount of vitamin C absorbed orally. The more you take, the less of it gets absorbed - the "expensive pee" argument against vitamin supplementation. Intravenous therapy with vitamin C has been used to overcome the obstacle of limited oral absorption.

In 1971 Doctor Frederick R. Klenner published a paper about the use of massive doses of I.V. ascorbate, up to 150 grams, to treat a variety of conditions, such as infections caused by enteroviruses (including polioviruses) and herpesviruses (like mononucleosis and chicken pox), arthritis, viral hepatitis, burns, insect and snake bites and severe allergic reactions. He reported that it "also eliminates pain [from burns]."

Vitamin C for Cancer

Klenner was also an advocate of using intravenous vitamin C for cancer, which has later become the main use of this therapy. For a long time it has been scoffed at as quackery, with studies finding little or no benefit - but most of these studies were done using oral vitamin C.

In contrast, a recent study conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) found that high concentrations of vitamin C (achieved by I.V. doses similar to those used by Klenner) had anticancer effects in 75 percent of the tested cancer cell lines. Non-cancerous cells were unaffected. Tumor weight was reduced by 41-53 percent in animals with advanced cancer.

The Future

Even if these findings are confirmed in humans, it could take a while before vitamin C becomes accepted as a cancer therapy. It may not be the cure for cancer, but it might prolong the lives of those who have not benefited from other therapy.

As a cancer treatment, vitamin C has the benefits of being safe and relatively inexpensive. And even if it does not offer a cure, it can improve the quality of the remaining days. A study conducted on terminal cancer patients found that I.V. ascorbate significantly improved fatigue, cognitive function, pain and even emotional status.

As a word of caution, it is far too early to recommend ditching chemotherapy and other medications in favour of the vitamin. Those undergoing conventional cancer therapy should not take vitamin C without their doctor's approval, as it could actually reduce the efficacy of some treatments.

It is interesting that in Japan intravenous vitamin C is widely used for many conditions, such as pneumonia, allergies and autoimmune diseases. Perhaps in the future the Western world will follow suite. Only time will tell.

References

Yeom CH, Jung GC, Song KJ. Changes of terminal cancer patients' health-related quality of life after high dose vitamin C administration. J Korean Med Sci. 2007 Feb;22(1):7-11.

See Also

Sep 6, 2008 8:23 AM

Guest :

Linus Pauling, nobel laureate in chemistry and peace, tried 25 times
to submit his research on vitamin C and its powerful therapeutic benefits. The FDA was finally shamed in the court of public opinion
to allow his research to be published. Once again, 35 years later, we find that intravenous Vitamin C is one of the many new nontoxic anticancer agents being brought to light through the internet, that can no longer be suppressed so easily, and that will most probably soon bring the corrupt and brutal slaughter of millions of people by chemotherapy and radiation to a disgraceful end. The medical-insurance orthodoxy has used fear, monopoly, and aggressive suppression to keep its golden goose protected. This dying system will be judged by the future as more insidious than the Genocidal slaughters of Germany and Russia of WWII, in that it brainwashed even the most intelligent of health care professionals into its lie that it was doing what was "best" for the patient.
It built great temples of marble and gold, lined with white linen and sterilized stainless steel. It educated an army of workers to reject any natural approaches to health care. It declared war on disease, poisoned, cut out and bombarded with radiation the "mysterious uncurable" perpetual enemy.
Thank God we are on the threshhold of a new era. An era emerging out of darkness and into a more enlightened age where more gentle, natural, and inexpensive healthcare is allowed to prove itself without suppression, ridicule, and bullying. The Emperor, alas,
has no clothes, and doesn't he look impotent! What took so long?

Mar 8, 2009 6:16 PM

Guest :

Maija Haavisto, the writer of this article, seems to think that chemotherapy and radiation actually work. Both are not considered a cure and it's debatable whether they will extend your life or not. That's not even mentioning the severe side effects from both and that both actually cause cancer and can help spread the cancer you already have. The Mayo Clinic study tried to debunk the use of Intravenous Vitamin C using oral Vitamin C. Who actually believes this study? The cure for cancer will not come from any synthetic concoction that the pharmaceutical companies can come up with because pharaceuticals only treat symptoms, they don't cure. Intravenous Vitamin C works but I think the real cure will be it combined with some other antioxidants such as ellagic acid.
Yes, chemo does seem to work for some forms of cancer and does somehow effect a cure occasionally in some cancer patients, but the percentage of cures are no better than a placebo in most cancers. In fact, for many forms of cancer, you actually have a better chance at living or curing yourself by not doing anything.

Mar 9, 2009 12:41 AM

Maija Haavisto :

Both true and false. I have an extensive knowledge about oncology and I actually know how to read and intepret studies. I'm definitely not a big fan of radiation or chemotherapy, but sometimes they do have their uses (they are very effective in e.g. testicular cancer, most lymphomas and leukemias). However, the future of cancer treatments is definitely not in radiation or chemo. I'm a firm supporter of immunotherapy myself, things like low dose naltrexone. On the other hand, I also acknowledge the fact that most (but not all!) alternative cancer therapies are unfortunately quackery or have very limited efficacy. The "cure for cancer" will almost certainly come from pharmaceutical companies, but it will likely include things like immunotherapy and gene therapy - definitely not poisons.

Sadly, many cancers cannot be cured, not with the treatments that conventional medicine has to offer nor with alternative therapies. But this is definitely changing.