Chapter 3: Case Study of Scientific Corruption

Written by Webster Kehr, Independent Cancer Research Foundation, Inc. | Last updated on | Filed under: Conspiracy Theories, Orthodox vs Alternative Medicine

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The Dr. Ewen Cameron and Linus Pauling, PhD Vitamin C Experiment

Linus Pauling is one of the few people in history who has won two Nobel Prizes and is the only person to have won two unshared Nobel Prizes. He lived well into his 90s. Here is a quote from an interview with him:

I became interested in vitamin C and cancer in 1971 and began working with Ewan Cameron, M.B., Ch.B., chief surgeon at Vale of Leven Hospital in Scotland. Cameron gave 10 grams of vitamin C a day to patients with untreatable, terminal cancer. These patients were then compared by Cameron and me to patients with the same kind of cancer at the same terminal stage who were being treated in the same hospital but by other doctors–doctors who didn’t give vitamin C, but instead just gave conventional treatments.

Cameron’s terminal cancer patients lived far longer compared to the ones who didn’t get 10 grams a day of vitamin C. The other patients lived an average of six months after they were pronounced terminal, while Cameron’s patients lived an average of about six years.

More recently I’ve been collaborating with Hoffer, a physician in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Hoffer has treated 300 cancer patients and has recommended to all of them essentially the same treatment [as Cameron]. But about a quarter or a third of the patients didn’t follow the treatment for one reason or another: The family doctor might have said that those high doses of vitamins would kill them, or the patient might have had a stomach upset and not wanted to continue taking the vitamins.

The terminal cancer patients who didn’t follow Hoffer’s regimen had a survival time of only about six months. But the ones who followed Hoffer’s therapy have done even better than Cameron’s patients. On the average they lived about 12 years after being pronounced terminal with untreatable cancer.

Hoffer’s regimen includes 12 grams of vitamin C per day, about the same as Cameron’s. But it also includes significant amounts of other nutrients: 800 units of vitamin E, 1,000 or 2,000 mg of niacin, large amounts of the other B vitamins and vitamin A in the form of beta carotene. Apparently the other vitamins cooperate with the vitamin C to give even greater control over cancer.
http://www.corvalliscommunitypages.com/Americas/US/Oregon/corvallis/pauling_on_vitamin_c_and_t.htm

(Warning: Do not even think about going on a Vitamin C treatment program until you have read my entire tutorial on alternative treatments for cancer.)

Actually, there were multiple experiments done by Cameron and Pauling. Their treatment protocol was very simple:

  1. Pick cancer patients who were diagnosed as terminal,
  2. Who had never had chemotherapy or radiation (there were exceptions),
  3. Give them 10 grams (or more) of liquid Vitamin C every day (instead of chemotherapy) (note: these days people use crystal Vitamin C or pills),
  4. For the rest of their lives,
  5. Then measure how long they live.

It’s a pretty simple protocol. A high school student could easily follow their protocol. The results of their experiments were also very simple, the patients who took Vitamin C lived several times longer than patients who took orthodox treatments with chemotherapy and radiation. Some of their patients (remember all of their patients were considered terminal) went into complete remission, just using Vitamin C.

Their studies were designed to compare a Vitamin C treatment protocol, without chemotherapy and radiation, to a typical orthodox protocol using chemotherapy and radiation.

Note that they did not use a tricky statistic, such as determining what percentage of the patients lived for one year, but rather they measured how long each patient lived.

Their experiments proved beyond reasonable doubt that Vitamin C is a superior treatment for terminal patients versus orthodox therapy. Excuse me for stating the obvious, but if it is a superior treatment for terminal patients, then it is a superior treatment, instead of orthodox treatments, for the vast majority of cancer patients.

Orthodox treatments are extremely painful, destroy a person’s immune system, destroy their vital organs, and have a whole slew of other painful and dangerous side-effects. Vitamin C is an antioxidant that: is completely painless, builds the immune system and adds quality time and quantity time to the life of terminal cancer patients.

So you might wonder, since these studies were done many years ago, why do doctors today use toxic chemotherapy instead of Vitamin C, and the other vitamins of Hoffer?

Big Pharma’s Reaction To Cameron and Pauling

Well, it turns out that Big Pharma was not happy with Linus Pauling and Dr. Cameron. It was time for damage control. There was a smear campaign to discredit Dr. Pauling that continues to this day. The reason is that the patients who took Vitamin C did not take chemotherapy. Thus, Big Pharma did not stand to profit from the extended lives of these patients. In fact, Big Pharma did not stand to profit from these patients at all.

Now you know why Big Pharma has been attacking Vitamin C and Linus Pauling for many years. If cancer patients took mega doses of Vitamin C, instead of chemotherapy, they would live longer and have far less pain. I will translate that into something a businessman can understand: less “earnings per share” for Big Pharma.

The truth about what Cameron and Pauling had discovered had to be crushed. But since the studies were already published, and because Pauling was already world-famous, what was Big Pharma going to do? The answer was to conduct bogus studies which came to different conclusions. But how can a scientific study follow the same treatment protocol and come to a different conclusion? It can’t. However, what can be done is to refuse to follow the same protocol and use very fancy statistical tricks. That is exactly what happened.

But who would do such a bogus study, the treatment protocol was so simple an idiot could have followed it? You track down a doctor known to hate alternative medicine, one Dr. Moertel of the Mayo Clinic.

In response to the success of the Cameron/Pauling studies, the NIH funded a totally bogus “study” at the Mayo Clinic on Vitamin C that did not even remotely follow the same patient selection protocol or the same treatment protocol. Of course since they made no attempt to replicate the Cameron and Pauling study, they did not get the same results. Was the protocol too complicated for them to follow?

When Cameron and Pauling complained that the study was so overtly and grossly bogus (this ridiculous study was actually published in a major medical journal – the New England Journal of Medicine), a second bogus “study” was commissioned by the same NIH. You might call this: “a bogus study replacement technique” for Big Pharma and corrupt scientists. Needless to say, the Mayo Clinic again refused to follow the simple treatment protocol and again they did not obtain the same results. There was even a third study, and guess what, again they did not follow the same treatment protocol and did not get the same results (Note: technically this third study was done by a different group, but this group was affiliated with the Mayo Clinic). Do you see a pattern here?

The fact of the matter is, the doctors at the Mayo Clinic knew the Cameron/Pauling protocol worked and they knew that if they followed their protocols they would have come to the same results. So they never did follow their protocols and obviously never did replicate their results. The most educational thing about their studies was the incredible statistical tricks they used to avoid the truth.

Not only did Hoffer follow the Cameron/Pauling protocols, but a Japanese study also replicated their selection and treatment protocols and also replicated their results! Four totally independent studies (two by Cameron) used the same treatment protocol and got the same results. Three bogus studies at Mayo Clinic did not use the same treatment protocol and did not get the same results.

The Mayo Clinic studies were done specifically to discredit the work of two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling. Linus Pauling was getting people to believe there was “scientific evidence” for Vitamin C, and he had to be stopped. It is totally unacceptable (from the viewpoint of Big Pharma) for our corrupt government to allow any scientific evidence for alternative treatments of cancer. Because there was scientific evidence for Vitamin C, and because they could not shut-up a two-time Nobel Prize winner, there had to be bogus studies designed to divert people’s attention from the valid studies. Once the bogus studies were finished, the media could then take over the suppression of truth and immediately start blacklisting the valid studies.

A Little Logic

Which of these seven studies do all government agencies, quackwatch, the BC Cancer Agency, American Cancer Society, ad nauseum, depend on to justify the use of chemotherapy instead of mega doses of Vitamin C? Duh. They quote the three Mayo Clinic studies and complain that Pauling and Cameron did not know what they were doing. In other words, the Mayo Clinic refused to follow the simple protocol, and it was Cameron and Pauling’s fault! Hmmm.

Did you follow all of that? Let me summarize it this way:

Group A (Cameron and Pauling) found that Vitamin C extends the lives of terminal cancer patients several-fold. Group B (Hoffer and the Japanese), using the same protocol as Group A, confirmed their findings. Group C (the Mayo Clinic), which said they were going to test the validity of the Group A study, did not use the same selection protocol or treatment protocol as Group A, and obviously did not replicate their results. Group A complained that Group C made absolutely no attempt to use the same treatment protocol as Group A. Thus, Group C did a second study, and again did not follow Group A’s protocols, and again did not replicate their results. This happened a third time. Group D (quackwatch, etc.) then comes along, and claims that Group C knew what they were doing and that the studies of Group A and Group B were bogus.

Now you know what is going on in medicine. The treatment protocol is irrelevant to scientists who defend Big Pharma, they are only interested in making sure Vitamin C doesn’t look good because Vitamin C is not profitable to Big Pharma.

Quackwatch

You might be interested to know exactly what the NIH, quackwatch, etc. complained about in the Cameron/Pauling study. They complained it was not a “double blind” study.

Now let’s think about this for a moment. Suppose two groups are selected for a study and the patients are not told which group they are in. The first group is secretly given Vitamin C in an IV, which builds their immune system, provides zero pain, and the patients feel fine. The second group is secretly given chemotherapy in an IV, which destroys their immune system, destroys their vital organs, makes them feel sick, and causes enormous pain. Do you think the patients could figure out which group they were in? Do you think you could do a “double blind” study with Vitamin C versus chemotherapy? Don’t be ridiculous. Within a matter of days each group would know what kind of treatment they were on.

But it gets deeper than that. Let me quote from quackwatch, a defender of orthodox medicine and one of the major servants of Big Pharma. See if you can figure out what tricks of logic they are using before you read my comments about their statement:

The Pauling/Cameron study was not a clinical trial in which patients were compared to carefully matched patients chosen at random and followed using a standardized [selection] protocol. Instead, Pauling and Cameron attempted to reconstruct what happened to the control group by examining their medical records. Most cancer specialists and journal editors are extremely reluctant to accept [medical records] for evaluating the validity of contemporary cancer therapy, primarily because bias may occur in selecting controls.
quackwatch.com

First of all, it is a blatant lie that medical records are not acceptable in medical research, they are frequently used. Second, there was nothing unethical about using a single group. These patients were going to die in any case, it was only a matter of when and the difference at most would only be a matter of weeks. Furthermore, by not taking chemotherapy, the patients would be in much less pain even if they did not live as long.

There are many cancer patients who would rather have a less painful treatment plan, even if they don’t live as long. In fact many cancer patients drop out of chemotherapy because they lose interest in a treatment plan that makes them so sick and causes them so much pain and misery.

But to go a little deeper, image that two cars collide in an intersection, a red car and a green car. The red car ran a “red light” several seconds after the light had turned red and was speeding as it entered the intersection. The green car, which did not enter the intersection until after the light turned green, had one tire that was low in air pressure. Imagine the judge saying that the green car was at fault because the air pressure in one of its tires was low. Imagine the judge ignoring the fact that the red car ran a red light and was speeding! Using Barrett’s logic, the green car was at fault.

What Barrett’s (the M.D. owner of quackwatch) site was saying was that there was no placebo control group. In other words, when they picked the control group, they used medical records rather than a placebo control group. The key question is this: “if Cameron and Pauling had used a placebo group, instead of medical records, would the psychological effect of taking a placebo have resulted in the placebo control group living several times longer than they did?” Barrett must that thought the answer to that question was “yes.” As already mentioned, such a study would be impossible when comparing Vitamin C to chemotherapy, which is what Cameron and Pauling were comparing.

But there is another problem. If a placebo group were required, what two groups would you use? It could not be Vitamin C versus chemotherapy, because one group must be given nothing (i.e. a placebo). But if you compare the placebo group to the Vitamin C group (which actually would have been acceptable if that is what you were studying), you still have to ultimately compare the Vitamin C group to the chemotherapy group by using medical records. Thus, you cannot get around using medical records if you want to compare Vitamin C to chemotherapy.

The main reason for doing a double-blind study is to gauge any psychological factor that may exist in the minds of the participants. In other words, if both groups think they are getting the real medication (Vitamin C in this case), then you eliminate any psychological factor.

Is it possible that in four different studies, done in three different countries (Scotland, Canada and Japan), that a psychological factor caused a several-fold increase in survival time? If so, why didn’t both groups in the Mayo Clinic studies survive several times longer than expected, because both groups thought they were getting Vitamin C? Even if the psychological theory was true, I would still give people Vitamin C, if their psychological state of mind caused them to live several times longer!

If fact, Barrett’s argument is total nonsense. The purpose of the study was to compare Vitamin C to chemotherapy, and that is impossible to do using a double blind study. The real reason the two groups of studies yielded different results was the treatment protocol, not the psychological effect of a placebo.

Here is the important thing, quackwatch didn’t even mention that there were any differences in the treatment protocols between Pauling and Moertel (i.e. they didn’t mention that the red car had run a red light or that it was speeding). Their focus was on the selection protocol (i.e. the air pressure in the tires of the two cars).

Do you see how quackwatch twists the facts and uses sensationalism to divert your attention from the most important issues. It is as if Dr. Cameron did not know how to determine which hospital the patients were at, what kind of cancer they had, which stage of cancer the patients were at, and which doctors treated which patients. Let me re-quote from above:

These patients were then compared by Cameron and me to patients with the same kind of cancer at the same terminal stage who were being treated in the same hospital but by other doctors–doctors who didn’t give vitamin C, but instead just gave conventional treatments.

To quackwatch, this wasn’t good enough because it didn’t come to the correct answer – use prescription drugs. The vastly different treatment protocol used by the Mayo Clinic is more “scientific” because it leads you to take prescription drugs. Get used to this type of propaganda, you will see it all the time. They love to divert your attention with irrelevant issues.

A normal, open-minded researcher, if they studied the Pauling/Cameron studies and the three Mayo Clinic studies, would quickly look at the selection protocol and see nothing significant to complain about. They would then focus their attention on the treatment protocol. Since the two groups of studies had vastly different results, it would be absolutely obvious to the legitimate researchers that something significant was different about their studies. By far the thing that was most significant was the treatment protocols.

Barrett also has a page on Linus Pauling himself. The title to the quackwatch page on Linus Pauling is titled: “The Dark Side of Linus Pauling’s Legacy.” Ohhhh, it sounds like Linus Pauling joined the “Dark Side” before he died. The article starts:

Linus Pauling, Ph.D., was the only person ever to win two unshared Nobel prizes. He received these awards for chemistry in 1954 and for peace in 1962. His recent death has stimulated many tributes to his scientific accomplishments. His impact on the health marketplace [sic], however, was anything but laudable.

Yes, I agree Pauling’s impact on Big Pharma was not laudable. He was a pain in their neck. He had integrity, which is something they cannot tolerate. He also cared about people more than money, and they view people no deeper than a “source of money to increase earnings per share.”

You should realize that Vitamin C, by itself, is not a cure for cancer, but if it can extend the life of terminal cancer patients by 5 1/2 years or even 1 year (depending on how advanced they were when treatment began), that gives them plenty of time to use the natural treatments that do cure cancer. That makes Big Pharma even madder.

Later, I will talk about the “top 100” most effective alternative treatments for cancer. Where does Vitamin C therapy fit in this list? It is not on the list. Not even close. It’s cure rate is far too low. It is used in alternative medicine largely to extend the life of the patient so far more effective treatments have more time to work.

The Bogus Mayo Clinic Studies on Laetrile

Largely the same people at the Mayo clinic also did two bogus studies on laetrile therapy to discredit the tens of thousands of testimonials of people cured by laetrile therapy. The public was beginning to believe that laetrile actually worked. Time for damage control. Guess what, the Mayo Clinic did not follow standard American protocol and dosages.

For example, if they had followed the standard laetrile diet, which is virtually the same thing as a “raw food” diet, the diet alone would have significantly extended the lives of the patients.

But in this case it was the watered-down and phony “laetrile” the NIH provided to the Mayo Clinic that was perhaps the most bogus part of these studies. The NIH, which funded the bogus studies, did not allow an alternative treatment vendor to supply the laetrile for at least one of the studies, even though they offered to supply the laetrile for free.