IV Vitamin C Fights Cancer, Yet is Ignored by Pharma Status Quo

Recent research indicates the healing potential of intravenous vitamin C improves quality of life for cancer patients receiving chemotherapy. The IV Vitamin C is delivered at higher dosages than oral vitamin C, one would need to consume over 2,000 oranges to get this much of the vitamin in the body to fight cancer cells.

The inability of pharma corporations to patent vitamin C may be suppressing further research and availability of the alternative treatment.


(NaturalNews) Groundbreaking new research on the cancer-fighting potential of vitamin C has made the pages of the peer-reviewed journal Science Translational Medicine. A team of researchers from the University of Kansas reportedly tested the effects of vitamin C given in high doses intravenously on a group of human subjects and found that it effectively eradicates cancer cells while leaving healthy cells intact.

Building upon earlier research pioneered in the 1970s by the late Linus Pauling, a chemist from Oregon State University who today is recognized as the world's foremost proponent of therapeutic vitamin C, the new research involved injecting high doses of vitamin C into human ovarian cells. The tests were conducted in vitro in a lab, as well as directly in both mice and a group of 22 human subjects.

According to BBC News, the tests showed favorable results in all three models, as the vitamin C effectively targeted the ovarian cancer cells while avoiding healthy cells. The benefits of high-dose vitamin C were also observed in conjunction with conventional chemotherapy treatments, which destroy all cells, both healthy and malignant, eventually leading to patient death.

"Patients are looking for safe and low-cost choices in their management of cancer," stated Dr. Jeanne Drisko, a co-author of the study, to BBC News concerning the findings. "Intravenous vitamin C has that potential based on our basic science research and early clinical data."


Researchers admit more human trials on intravenous vitamin C unlikely because drug companies cannot patent vitamins

The next step for this type of research would typically involve applying these same parameters in a large-scale clinical human trial to see if they can be replicated and confirmed. While this new study is admittedly convincing on its own, the hurdles to gaining widespread acceptance of its findings include replicating them across a much larger human sample size.

But this may never actually take place. And the reason, says the research team, is that such trials require major funding that typically comes from pharmaceutical companies interested in developing a patented drug. Drug companies, in other words, are hardly interesting in promoting the medicinal benefits of natural substances like vitamin C, which stands to decimate the multibillion-dollar conventional cancer industry if word gets out about its benefits.

"Because vitamin C has no patent potential, its development will not be supported by pharmaceutical companies," says Qi Chen, lead author of the new study. "We believe that the time has arrived for research agencies to vigorously support thoughtful and meticulous clinical trials with intravenous vitamin C."

The conventional medical industry's response to these and similar findings over the years has been nothing short of derisive, which is to be expected. Having to rationalize decades of ushering cancer patients through the gauntlet of chemotherapy, radiation and surgery -- with dismal results -- while ignoring natural cancer-fighting alternatives like vitamin C is a hard pill to swallow for this powerful, high-profit industry, which would rather everyone ignore such findings than think critically about them.

"[A]scorbate is processed by the body in different ways when administered orally versus intravenously," writes Heidi Ledford for Nature about this commonly misunderstood variance. The medical-industrial complex, it turns out, intentionally corrupts the conversation on vitamin C by convoluting the distinct effects of these very different delivery routes.

"Oral doses [of vitamin C] act as antioxidants, protecting cells from damage caused by reactive compounds that contain oxygen. But vitamin C given intravenously can have the opposite effect by promoting the formation of one of those compounds: hydrogen peroxide. Cancer cells are particularly susceptible to damage by such reactive oxygen-containing compounds."



Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/043972_vitamin_C_cancer_treatment_intravenous_injections.html#ixzz2uFhShrJc







Vitamin C injections ease ovarian-cancer treatments


Heidi Ledford

05 February 2014

Vitamin C may reduce chemotherapy side effects when given intravenously.

People with ovarian cancer who receive high-dose vitamin C injections are less likely to report toxic side effects from chemotherapy than people who had chemotherapy alone, according to the results of a small clinical trial.

The study, published today in Science Translational Medicine1, was too small to assess whether the combination of chemotherapy and vitamin C combats cancer better than chemotherapy alone. But accompanying work in mice suggests that the two treatments could be complementary.

The results are the latest salvo in long-running controversy over the use of vitamin C against cancer. Early studies championed by Nobel-prizewinning chemist Linus Pauling in the 1970s suggested that vitamin C could help to fight tumours2. But larger clinical trials failed to substantiate those claims3, 4.

As a result, the very topic of vitamin C in cancer treatment is taboo among many scientists and physicians, says Melanie McConnell of Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, who has studied the effects of high doses of vitamin C on cancer cells grown in culture. “When you present this kind of work and you put up the first slide, everyone snickers,” she says.




Administrative matters

Despite such attitudes, people with cancer are flocking to the treatment, says Jeanne Drisko, a physician who practises integrative medicine at the University of Kansas Hospital in Kansas City. Drisko and her colleagues, including cancer researcher Qi Chen, who is also at the University of Kansas, decided that the purported effects of the vitamin warranted a closer look. They noticed that earlier trials had partially relied on intravenous administration of high doses of vitamin C, or ascorbate, whereas the larger follow-up studies had used only oral doses of the drug.

This, they reasoned, could be an important difference: ascorbate is processed by the body in different ways when administered orally versus intravenously. Oral doses act as antioxidants, protecting cells from damage caused by reactive compounds that contain oxygen. But vitamin C given intravenously can have the opposite effect by promoting the formation of one of those compounds: hydrogen peroxide. Cancer cells are particularly susceptible to damage by such reactive oxygen-containing compounds.

Drisko, Chen and their colleagues found that high concentrations of vitamin C damaged DNA and promoted cell death in ovarian cancer cells grown in culture. In mice grafted with human ovarian cancer cells, treatment with intravenous vitamin C combined with conventional chemotherapy slowed tumour growth, compared to chemotherapy treatment alone.


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The team followed up on these results with a clinical trial in 25 people with ovarian cancer, 13 of whom received both chemotherapy and vitamin C injections. These people were less likely to report side effects from the chemotherapy treatment than those who received chemotherapy alone.

McConnell, who was not involved in the study, cautions that the approach might not work for every type of cancer. She notes that some cancers express low levels of a molecular transporter that takes up vitamin C, and therefore may not be as susceptible to the treatment.

But she agrees that it is time to do a larger trial to find out whether the approach is worthwhile, especially because people are already seeking out the treatment. “There’s a long way to go before people stop snickering,” she says. “If it works, then great. And if it’s doing more harm than good, then that’s something we need to know, too.”


http://www.nature.com/news/vitamin-c-injections-ease-ovarian-cancer-treatments-1.14673



After a personal loss of a family member to cancer following years of chemotherapy caused rapid aging, this research on IV vitamin C being suppressed is bothering me. The oncologist treating my family member said that the doctor in our area administering intravenous vitamin C was a "charlatan" and never recommended this alternative treatment.

Was the fear of pharma losing their chemotherapy monopoly on cancer treatment so great that they would purposely suppress an alternative or complementary treatment? This really takes the "competitive spirit" of U.S. capitalism to a new low.