From casual reading, it appears that the two times Nobel Laureate was into some sort of Vitamin C woo.
Quote from How Linus Pauling duped America into believing vitamin C cures colds - Vox
So was Pauling right about Vitamin C curing the common cold ? What about curing other diseases that Pauling claimed ?
No, Pauling was full of shit. (You would have noticed if there was an acknowledged cure for the common cold.)
Yes, yes he was. He is a particularly infamous case of a brilliant scientist who fell deeply into woo when commenting on an area where he had no expertise.
No, no he wasn’t. It’s right there in the article you linked to:
It is possible to have dietary and/or metabolic deficiencies in vitamins, probably the best known of which is the scurvy that sailors often used to suffer from. For some specific people, who specifically have a vitamin C deficiency which for whatever reason isn’t easily corrected by an improved diet, taking vitamin C is useful. For the vast majority people, whether for preventing colds, treating them, or general disease-fighting and life extension, as Linus Pauling advocated, it’s useless. Maybe worse than useless. Also from the article: “In one study, Swedish researchers found that men taking vitamin C were twice as likely to develop kidney stones as their peers who happened to not be taking the vitamins.”
I did find this
However, thats probably not a fair study since zinc is known to fight the cold. Zinc is the ingredient in zicam and cold lozenges that makes it work, as zinc blocks the ICAM-1 receptor that the cold virus attaches to.
So I don’t know if that study counts.
This study seems to look at vitamin C in isolation.
An issue with vitamin C is that the body just dumps excess. So you have to redose every 3-5 hours or so to keep plasma levels high.
Yes thanks, I saw that but there is also this page from the Linus Pauling Institute at the Oregon State University (his alma Mater):
It has a whole page of diseases that “benefit” from Vitamin C with Ph.D. Authors. The diseases range from Alzheimer’s to cardiovascular diseases. Are these authors still claiming woo as science?
It’s hard to see how this was really a factual question given that the word “myth” is in your own link, and the headline it links to is “How Linus Pauling duped America into believing vitamin C cures colds”. Another thread on the theme of how scientists get things wrong - is there a broader point you want to make?
Did Pauling himself engage in p-value abuse or other dodgy research to support woo claims? It’s one thing merely to spout bullshit, another to falsify data.
I’m willing to try something with a 9-27% potential for reducing cold symptoms. Hell, my chemo only increased my likely longevity by less than that.
Please note that Zicam brand cold lozenges are a homeopathic product. That means that Zicam brand lozenges do not actually have to contain any detectable amount of zinc.
I am not saying that zinc lozenges do not work. In fact, I take them and feel better, which does not prove that they actually did anything. But if you want to try zinc lozenges for your cold, at least make sure that they are real zinc lozenges. Most of the lozenges sold in major drug stores (including the store brand) are homeopathic. A good way to tell if they are homeopathic is to look at the “active ingredients” label. If the quantity of the active ingredient has an “X” after it (instead of grams or mg, etc), that means the product is homeopathic. For example, the active ingredients label on Zicam brand Wild Cherry Lozenges says:
Zincum aceticum 2x
Zincum gluconicum 2x
The quality of Pauling’s research purporting to show that vitamin C was useful in treating cancer has been questioned.
“Unfortunately, as experimental clinical protocols go, (Pauling’s initial study of vitamin C treatment in terminal cancer patients) was a complete mess. Linus Pauling was not a clinician and had no experience in clinical trial design, and it really showed. Even as a restrospective analysis, the paper was a total embarrassment. There was no standardization, no good matching of controls by age, stage of cancer, or performance status; given the terrible design, there was clearly serious selection bias going on at a minimum. The study’s flaws, which were too numerous to mention, rendered its results essentially meaningless.”
Every few years the news media goes gaga about a new study purportedly “vindicating” Pauling’s beliefs about vitamin C and cancer (a few months back a paper reported intravenous high-dose vitamin C could prolong survival by a few months in glioblastoma). This mildly encouraging data needs to be balanced against the finding that vitamin C may actually promote cancer growth through a protective effect extended to neoplastic cells, or interfere with other cancer drugs. A 2018 review had this to say:
“The potential synergy of IV C with chemotherapy or radiation treatment, and the effect on overall outcomes, including survival, of a combined treatment approach, warrant further study. Studies that have already explored the effects of IV C in supportive care have design flaws such as small sample sizes and lack of a control group; thus, future studies could add a placebo control in a parallel-arm or crossover design. Studies that include blood biomarkers are also needed. How long any potential effect of an individual IV C treatment lasts is unknown.”
I believe “X” means a 10-fold dilution, and the number preceding it indicates the number of serial dilutions. So 2X would mean 1% zinc, which I would think is a significant dose? And this product claims scientific evidence for efficacy, which implies (if it’s not a lie) that it’s not really homeopathic in the usual sense, it’s just being marketed under that guise.
More commonly, homeopathic remedies might be something like “30C” mean 30 serial 100-fold dilutions, i.e. 10^-60, so that not even one molecule of the original substance is present. I know that the laws on labeling supplements and woo are shockingly lax, but can a homeopathic product label something as an “active ingredient” if it’s not present?
Sure they can.
Boiron Arnica Montana 30C 3 Tubes (80 Pellets per Tube) Homeopathic Medicine for Pain Relief
See the Active Ingredients on the Drug Facts label. Click on the second image in the left-hand column. “Arnica Montana 30C HPUS”
This is fairly common, particularly in controversial areas like climate change where there is money to be made, so one always has to be careful with the notion of “scientists say …” without knowing just who those scientists are. The physicist Freeman Dyson developed a fixation around debunking climate science in his old age, presumably due to dementia, believing that his putative expertise with computer models was sufficient to disclaim the validity of climate models. Others have done it strictly for the money, like Frederick Seitz, who was prominent enough to become president of the National Academy of Sciences, yet deceitful enough to become a consultant for RJ Reynolds helping to deny that tobacco was harmful before he became a climate change denier. He was a founder of the right-wing George C. Marshall Institute and in fact helped spread damaging misinformation about tobacco smoke, acid rain, CFCs, and pesticides as well as about climate change.
That’s appalling. Real drugs cost billions of dollars and years of testing to bring to market. Yet homeopaths can pull nonsense out of their recti and label something that’s simply not present an “active ingredient”? The FDA should be ashamed of themselves.
The FDA is not allowed to regulate homeopathic products. Blame congress, which passed an exception for homeopathy for that. The scientists and staff of the FDA try hard to be a force for drug safety but often find themselves hamstrung by both the laws and the political oversight aimed at them.
As this thread seems to be winding down, here are a couple of FWIWs.
There does seem to be some evidence that Vitamin D can prevent colds. Here’s a NHS article with links to the meta study they discuss (which does have some weaknesses; though a subsequent meta study reached similar conclusions).
There is (of sorts). It’s called pleconaril. The FDA declined to licence it because of the side effect profile - essentially, they had problems with pretty much any side effects due to a drug used to treat (if I can remember the phrase correctly) a trivial and self-limiting disease. But it undeniably works (somewhat). Here’s an interesting discussion from the time.
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That’s an interesting article. Love the title, by the way. “Cold Comfort.” bah-dum
A bit chilling that a primary “benefit” of the treatment is that patients wouldn’t be as motivated to seek/take inappropriate antibiotics.
Which makes me wonder, who the fuck are these doctors who still prescribe antibiotics that recklessly, though?
Sorry, hijacking a bit. I’ll see myself out, and maybe take a Vitamin C supplement as I go.
Or perhaps you could type ‘ZINC’ on a piece of paper and stare at it intently for 15 seconds. You’d probably still pick up more Zinc molecules than the average homeopathic cure.
At least Orrin Hatch and Tom Harkin (big “natural remedy” boosters) are no longer in the Senate.
Hatch was an influential buddy not only to supplement manufacturers* but big drug companies too (an article in today’s Wall. St. Journal talks about how pharma is ramping up lobbying efforts to try to defeat pricing restrictions and how things have changed since Orrin retired).
this article mentions Hatch’s “noxious offspring” which I first thought was a slam against his son, a longtime supplement industry lobbyist*, but it’s actually a reference to DSHEA, the legislation which allows Big Supplement to get away with making outrageous claims for its products.
**a bunch of former Hatch aides have been involved in similar lobbying efforts, and his grandson helps run a chiropractic clinic which sells various kinds of dubious remedies. It’s multi-generational woo and the $$$ that goes with it.