THEY SAY THAT VITAMIN C
CAN INCREASE THE RISK OF CANCER
by Steven Ransom

Oh yes? And who’s ‘they’?


“VITAMIN C CANCER FEAR. High doses of Vitamin C could increase the risk of
cancer, scientists warn today….”

So begins the 15th June 2001 UK Daily Mail front-page report, outlining the
work
of Dr Ian Blair, resident researcher at the University of Pennsylvania
Pharmacology Unit. The Mail headline appears to be in direct conflict with Dr
Blair’s own statement: “Absolutely, for God's sake, don't say Vitamin C causes
cancer.” (Yahoo News, Thursday June 14th, 2001) But of course, The Mail and
others have shamelessly done exactly that. To the less discerning reader, the
story raises worrisome questions as to the wisdom of high-level Vitamin C
supplementation. If these worldwide headlines have served any useful purpose at
all, it has been to confirm the moral/intellectual void currently reigning in
today’s mass media ‘news’ departments.
At a more fundamental level, why is Dr Blair conducting tests on the efficacy
of Vitamin C at all? We are about to discover that certain parties have a very
definite interest in casting aspersions upon Vitamin C. Yet again, we are being
taught what to think about a certain subject, but not how. To our knowledge,
the information you are about to read has not been included in any of the
latest, and now worldwide ‘Vitamin C Cancer Scare’ headlines generated by Dr
Blair’s findings.


A GOLDEN RULE
Dr Blair postulates that high consumption of Vitamin C (a most beneficial
adjunct in non-toxic cancer recovery treatment) might actually cause human
tissue degeneration, which in turn could lead to a heightened risk of
contracting cancer. And it is here that we arrive at our first golden rule:
when it comes to assessing the veracity of any scientific claim, we must always
read between the lines – we must search for what the report does not say. We
must especially be on the look-out for those hoary old chestnuts, otherwise
known as vested interests. A University of Manchester research methodology
handbook contains the following valuable advice:
“Science and research must be studied in the context of all the interested
parties involved. The questions centre on determining the relative weight of
the various allies in the ‘fact-creating’ process - e.g. funding bodies,
businesses, departments of state, professions and other scientists. In
analysing scientific debates, one should always ask what social, institutional,
political and philosophical interests lie behind often apparently ‘neutral’ and
‘technical’ knowledge claims.” (University of Manchester Institute of Science &
Technology (UMIST) research methodology course handout, 1994) (emphasis mine)
On the matter of the ‘fact creation’ process, renowned author John Le Carre
recently stated:
"Big Pharma [the industry in general] is engaged in the deliberate seduction of
the medical profession, country by country, worldwide. It is spending a fortune
on influencing, hiring and purchasing academic judgment to a point where, in a
few years' time, if Big Pharma continues unchecked on its present happy path,
unbought medical opinion will be hard to find." (The Nation, New York,
Interview
with John Le Carre, 9th April 2001)


BOUGHT?
With the above in mind, lets put Dr Blair’s University of Pennsylvania under
the spotlight and see what encouragement Dr Blair might have had in taking his
extraordinary position and apparently misquoted position against Vitamin C. We
must ask the following questions: what Big Pharma influences might there be
supporting the University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center (UPCC) and its mother
ship, the University of Pennsylvania Health Service? What is the relative
weight of the funding bodies? If industry sponsorship is taking place, are UPHS
personnel free to exercise unbiased critical thinking? Or are there grounds to
suspect that UPHS been ‘bought’ - that somewhere along the line, vested
interests have ‘purchased academic judgment’?
Before tackling the Vitamin C issue itself, the following UPHS general
statistics are very revealing.



CERTAIN ALLIANCES
In May 2000, Dr Ian Blair’s employers at UPCC received a $26 million, five year
Core Grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) - the largest and most
influential conventional cancer treatment institution in the world. In fact,
UPCC has been continuously funded by the NCI Core Grant mechanism since the
grant was created by the National Cancer Act in the early 1970’s. Currently,
UPCC is awash with more than $100 million in cancer research funding: $37
million is from the National Cancer Institute; $43 million from closely
affiliated organisations, such as the National Institutes of Health, the
organisation which actually funded Dr Blair’s Vitamin C research; another $12
million from foundational support such as the American Cancer Society and the
Leukaemia Society; and between $8 and $10 million from various pharmaceutical
companies. Earlier, in June of 1999, UPCC received a $4.5 million gift from the
William H. Gates Foundation to research conventional treatments for
non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Aside from the Bill and Melinda Gates connection, OncoLink, the University of
Pennsylvania Cancer Center,[28] is sponsored very generously by the following
corporations: Amgen, the world's largest independent biotechnology company;
Aventis, Ortho Biotech, Inc., Varian, Inc., Janssen Pharmaceutica, AstraZeneca,
Pharmacia Upjohn and Pfizer. These corporations are very big indeed, and their
names represent no mean sponsorship committee.


MORE ALLIANCES
In March 2001, UPHS announced a strategic alliance with Siemens Medical
Systems, Inc. Under the terms of the purchasing agreement, UPHS will make an
initial discounted purchase of cardiology, radiology and radiation oncology
equipment from Siemens, who will also service and maintain the biomedical
equipment already in place at designated UPHS sites over the life of the
agreement. In the year 2000, Siemens Medical Solutions, based in Iselin, New
Jersey, reported new orders of $5.65 billion, sales of $5.44 billion and
employs 27,000 worldwide. "This is the kind of alliance that will be
critical in
our continuing financial recovery and to assure our position as a leading
national health system," said Robert D. Martin, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer
of UPHS.
A good relationship with Siemens may well be critical to UPHS’ financial
recovery, but does this kind of dependent alliance foster the aforementioned
necessary climate for critical thinking? What if there are privately held UPHS
reservations over the Siemens equipment, methodology or ethos? Who will break
rank first? Will anyone? What kind of commercially gagged framework are the
UPHS staff now locked into with Siemens?



YET MORE CORPORATE ALLIANCES
On April 26, 2001, UPCC announced a business partnership with Integral PET
Associates, the nation's leading operator of fixed-site Positron Emission
Tomography (PET) cancer scanners. A patient receiving a PET scan today is
injected with a radiopharmaceutical, such as flurodeoxyglucose (FDG), about 45
minutes before the scan, which takes about two hours. The radiopharmaceutical
tracer emits signals which are then picked up by the PET scanner. A computer
reassembles the signals into recognisable images to determine if a cancer has
spread, if a particular treatment is effective, or if a patient is
disease-free. IPA will now be seeking to supply major hospitals throughout
Pennsylvania with this very expensive equipment. Installing and operating a PET
scanner typically costs around $1,600,000 in up-front capital costs, plus an
additional $800,000 in yearly staff and operational costs.
A short visit to the UPHS website at www.med.upenn.edu will not only
confirm all
of the above information, but will also confirm that these alliances represent
only a small percentage of the long-standing conventional ‘friendships’ UPHS
has fostered with Big Pharma over the years. Given the strictly conventional
source of sponsorship monies received at UPHS, what chance will the following
statements have of being ‘allowed’ to feature on the UPHS cancer information
page?


“If I contracted cancer, I would never go to a standard cancer treatment
centre. Cancer victims who live far from such centres have a chance.” Professor
Charles Mathe, French cancer specialist


“...as a chemist trained to interpret data, it is incomprehensible to me that
physicians can ignore the clear evidence that chemotherapy does much, much more
harm than good." - Alan C Nixon, PhD, former president of the American Chemical
Society


“Doctors are too busy to dig into the statistics of cancer treatments, they
assume that what they are taught at school or what is demonstrated in the pages
of briefing journals is the best treatment. They cannot afford to suspect that
these treatments are only the best for the pharmaceutical companies that
influence their ‘institutions of higher learning’.” Paul Winter, The Cancell
Home Page.


“To the cancer establishment, a cancer patient is a profit center. The actual
clinical and scientific evidence does not support the claims of the cancer
industry. Conventional cancer treatments are in place as the law of the land
because they pay, not heal, the best. Decades of the
politics-of-cancer-as-usual
have kept you from knowing this, and will continue to do so unless you wake up
to this reality.” - Lee Cowden MD


“Almost every patient treated with IL2 (a current conventional cancer
treatment) suffered fever, malaise, nausea or vomiting, diarrhoea, sharp drops
in blood pressure, skin rashes, breathing difficulties, liver abnormalities and
irregularities in blood chemistry. Rosenberg himself details a number of
horrifying case histories, and one in particular where the administration of
IL2 had precipitated amongst other things, vomiting, swollen joints, lung fluid
and ‘vascular leak syndrome’ where blood would ooze through the vessel walls
and collect under the skin.” Steven Rosenberg, The Transformed Cell, 1992. (IL2
is still used today.)


“Dr Linus Pauling, often known as the ‘Father of Vitamin C’ and twice awarded
the Nobel Prize, declared that large intakes of up to 10g of the vitamin each
day aids anti-cancer activity within the body. Pauling was largely derided for
making these declarations, but today, large doses of Vitamin C are used by many
practitioners for cancer patients in nutritional therapy, who believe Pauling
was right and that the popular nutrient is indispensable to the body in its
fight to regain health from cancer.” Phillip Day, Cancer, Why We’re Still Dying
to Know The Truth, Credence Publications, 2001.


“Do not let either the medical authorities or the politicians mislead you. Find
out what the facts are, and make your own decisions about how to live a happy
life and how to work for a better world.” Linus Pauling
http://www.cforyourself.com



The above remarks are representative of a vast library of well-sourced contrary
information which sensibly questions the validity and efficacy of conventional
cancer treatments based on a huge amount of clinical research and data.
Naturally, with all these expensive and patented treatments available to fight
cancer, the cancer rates should be going down. They are not. They are
increasing.



STAGGERING AMOUNTS
UPHS is totally locked into the conventional cancer framework - a framework
which today, rightly stands accused of achieving no measurable success at all
in its approach to the treatment of cancer, immense success in causing
widespread, unnecessary death through its application of lethal and highly
toxic pharma-radiation treatments, and even greater success in rewarding itself
absolutely staggering amounts of money in the whole grisly process. That these
cancer corporations have become incredibly wealthy through their ‘chemo ’til we
drop’ approach is a fact which Messrs Siemens, Zeneca, Upjohn, Glaxo, Rhone
Poulenc cannot deny.


COMMON SENSE
Pauling was right. We have been seriously misled. Taking the Siemens
$multi-million technology as an example, it may well detect certain forms of
cancer, but upon detecting it, what happens? Quite simply, a bewildered,
obedient, grateful and unsuspecting cancer sufferer is then immediately
directed towards the door marked ‘iatrogenic (doctor-induced) illness and
probable death.’

Closer examination clearly reveals that the conventional path is fraught with
toxic danger. But the CEO of UPHS has made it quite clear that ‘the Siemens
alliance [one of so many] is critical to the financial security of UPHS’. Glad
someone has their priorities straight.

This is why we will hear no publicly dissenting voices from UPHS as to the
horrific realities associated with 20th and 21st Century conventional cancer
treatments. The corporate big boys’ riches must continue to flow…. and a
handsome proportion of it into the coffers of the very dependent UPHS, of
course, ‘to assist in their financial recovery’.


SO WHY THE SLUR ON VITAMIN C?

As has already been stated, conventional cancer treatment represents a
$multi-billion a year industry. These vast profits are fiercely protected by
the industry giants. But their treatments in no way address the underlying
causes of cancer. Cancer is a nutritional/toxic/environmental condition, which,
in a great number of instances, can be successfully reversed through the
application of a sound nutritional approach and common-sense lifestyle changes.
Linus Pauling, dubbed the father of Vitamin C, sensibly promoted the benefits
of consuming high doses Vitamin C in the prevention of and battle against
cancer.


HALF-TRUTHS AND LIES
So why aren’t we hearing about these natural treatment successes? Why aren’t
they being heralded across the world? The answer is money. Despite the
multitudinous successes in cancer regression through nutrition, and through
extensive application of vital elements such as Vitamin C, Vitamin B17,
pancreatic enzymes and other co-factors, Big Pharma is doing all it can to
silence these success stories. To have it become widely known that cancer can
be successfully treated without toxic and profitable pharmaceuticals would be
catastrophic for its business. Who would continue to purchase these products?
What would the Siemens, Glaxo and Upjohn shareholders have to say about that?

To their shame, vested interests are keeping well-proven, non-toxic cancer
treatments from the public domain.

This is why, under ‘cancer treatments’ the UPHS website says this of vitamin
B17: http://cancer.med.upenn.edu/pdq_html/6/engl/600093.html

“Several patients displayed symptoms of cyanide poisoning, including muscle
weakness and impaired reflexes, or had life-threatening levels of cyanide in
their blood. (Laetrile can release cyanide, which is a highly toxic chemical.)
The researchers concluded that Laetrile is not effective as a cancer treatment
and is harmful in some cases.”


But now read this contrary extract from a radio talk show, featured in Phillip
Day’s Cancer, Why We Are Still Dying To Know The Truth:

Radio host Laurie Lee: “So this is verified, that laetrile [B17] can have this
positive effect?”

Dr Ralph Moss: “We were finding this and yet, we in Public Affairs were told to
issue statements to the exact opposite of what we were finding scientifically.”


At the time, Ralph Moss was former Assistant Director of Public Relations at
Memorial Sloan Kettering, NY, a leading American conventional cancer research
facility.
Of course Laetrile, or Vitamin B17, is not approved by the FDA, but not because
it isn’t beneficial – it is, as the links provided at the bottom of this report
will demonstrate. No, Vitamin B17 has not approved by the FDA simply because
the FDA have been leaned on. That’s the way it goes in the self-preserving,
self-serving, conventional cancer business. To put it bluntly, biddable FDA
officials are only a phone call and a golfing lunch away from the NCI and the
NIH. A classic example of these conflicts of interests and double standards can
be appreciated when one learns that sodium fluoride is also not approved by the
FDA due to its toxicity, and yet drug giant Proctor and Gamble and others can
market the stuff in their toothpastes with complete impunity.


The UPHS statement on Laetrile is a fabrication. Such is the wealth of evidence
overturning the conventional stance on Laetrile and Vitamin C, that one can
only assume the UPHS statement falls into the following category:

FALSE SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ‘ENDANGERING THE PUBLIC’, Independent News, 13.12.
2000 Doctors are fabricating research results to win grants and advance their
careers, but the medical establishment is failing to protect the public from
the menace of these scientific frauds, a committee of medical editors said
yesterday. Eighty cases of fraudulent research have been detected in the past
four years, and 30 have been investigated in the past year. In some cases,
institutions have covered up wrongdoing to protect reputations….


THE NUB OF IT
In an effort to subvert this mass-awakening to the horrors of conventional
cancer treatments, a devious attack on all genuinely beneficial, natural (and
therefore un-patentable) anti-cancer products is now being waged by a rather
worried conventional cancer establishment The ever-so-gentle slur on our most
vital of vitamins, namely Vitamin C, will soon be extended to a wide range of
essential minerals and vitamins. This is just the beginning of the subtle, but
concerted attack. The latest conventional legislation surrounding the codifying
and banning of efficacious natural treatments is being instituted, purely
because there is no money in it for Big Pharma. It is profit before human
health, but couched in respectable-looking, ‘sciency’ reports. And this veneer
of respectability is fooling the unsuspecting minions lower down the UPHS
research chain.


NAIVE
The two UPHS officials I spoke to regarding Dr Blair’s Vitamin C report were
extremely pleasant, open and helpful and displayed no intention to supply
misleading information. But both persons were entirely locked into their
superiors’ way of thinking. Media Relations officer Olivia Fermano was curious
as to my interest into who funded the Vitamin C report. When I pointed out that
if Dr Blair’s funding could be traced to a pharmaceutical company producing
conventional cancer treatments, then the results would have to be very
seriously questioned, Ms Fermano was genuinely supportive.

“My goodness! That is a good question. I will be right back to you.”

Her word-for-word courteous reply, some two minutes later was as follows: “You
had me genuinely worried for a few minutes there, sir. But I am pleased to tell
you that our funding came directly from the National Institutes for Health
itself. I am so relieved.”

Ho Hum.

Similarly, Dr Garret Fitzgerald, chair of UPHS Centre for Cancer Pharmacy
Department stated: “The evidence supporting Vitamin C as a useful adjunct in
cancer treatment ranges from scant to non-existent. Linus Pauling’s work was
framed around a tenuous hypothesis only.”

Whilst the courtesy displayed by Ms Fermano and Dr Fitzgerald is commendable,
their naivety is the result of them both working in a commercially cocooned
workplace, purposefully insulated from the many success stories attributed to
non-toxic, metabolic cancer treatments, and from the amazing health benefits
accrued from consuming a lot more Vitamin C than the FDA’s recommended daily
intake of a miserable 60 mg – barely enough to keep one out of rags and scurvy.

Long live Vitamin C and let’s have even more of it! For a more in-depth study
of the conventional cancer industry, and of the very good news concerning
alternative cancer treatments, readers are encouraged to visit www.credence.org
and take the cancer tour.


Steven Ransom
Campaign for Truth in Medicine
www.campaignfortruth.com