Linus Pauling, PhD A Decade After His Last Interview, His
Reputation Continues to Grow © By Peter Barry Chowka
(April 1, 2004) On August 19, 1994, Linus Pauling, PhD died
of cancer at age 93 at his home in Big Sur, California. The
only person to win two unshared Nobel prizes (for Chemistry
in 1954 and Peace in 1962), Pauling, during the last 25
years of his life, became a vocal and uniquely effective
advocate for vitamin C and nutritional medicine. He has
been given credit by many people for almost single handedly
making vitamin C the most popular and widely used
nutritional supplement in the world and for helping to
significantly advance the fields of clinical nutrition,
primary prevention, and "orthomolecular" medicine (a term
he coined).
On April 9, 1994, four months before his death, Pauling gave
his last feature-length interview, to this writer. It was
the eighth time since 1980 that I had interviewed him. The
venue for our final conversation was a live radio talk show
in San Diego, California that I was hosting. On that
Saturday morning at 9 am, Pauling appeared on the program by
telephone live from his ranch in Big Sur.
The anniversary of that interview is April 9, 2004. The
decade that has passed provides an opportunity to reflect on
both the content of the interview and the fact that a talk
radio program provided the context for
it.
During the quarter of a century after his involvement with
vitamin C and orthomolecular medicine began in 1970,
Pauling used the media - particularly radio and TV talk
shows - to discuss his work and to spread the gospel of
natural healing. Over the years, he was a frequent guest on
every kind of program from nationally syndicated television
talk shows like the one hosted during the 1970s and '80s by
Merv Griffin to radio call-in programs in local markets,
like that one I was doing in San Diego in 1994 on station
KCEO AM 1000.
As media guru (and later, founder of the Fox News Channel)
Roger Ailes explained in his 1987 book You Are the Message,
an author or thought leader is only as successful in the
media as the reality and legitimacy of his personality and
message. Pauling unequivocally embodied the messages he was
espousing: independence, empowerment, and health.
In the decade since his death, much of what Pauling
pioneered, in terms of vitamin C, the antioxidants, and
nutritional medicine, has been validated. For example, the
Canadian Medical Association Journal published several
articles in its February 6, 2001 issue about vitamin C. The
editorial notes, "In the past decade, however, interest in
vitamin C has been revitalized with a new understanding of
its biochemistry. Ascorbic acid, an antioxidant, is now
known to be a specific electron donor for 8 enzymes, and it
may have more biologic functions than just preventing
scurvy. In this issue, Sebastian J. Padayatty and Mark
Levine review these developments and argue that subclinical
vitamin C deficiency may be more common than we think (page
353).
"On page 351 L. John Hoffer argues that it is also time to
re-evaluate vitamin C's possible usefulness in managing
cancer. Pointing out errors in the design of the randomized
trials of vitamin C therapy published in the 1970s, Hoffer
argues that although there are other possible explanations
we cannot rule out high-dose intravenous vitamin C as the
cause of the remissions in [Ewan] Cameron's patients.
[Cameron, a Scottish surgeon (1922-1991), became Pauling's
close collaborator and the medical director of the Linus
Pauling Institute for Science and Medicine.] Such a thing is
no longer implausible. As science advances, so does the
potential for a miracle."
An excerpt from Pauling's last interview is interesting to
consider now, a decade after it was first broadcast:
PETER CHOWKA: For many years you and your colleagues faced
an uphill battle with the medical powers-that-be in terms of
your inability to get a fair hearing for your ideas about
vitamin C and for nutritional medicine in general. Has that
situation changed?
LINUS PAULING, PhD: Oh I think it has been changing.
Scientists have tended to follow my recommendations, but
I've had more trouble with the medical establishment--they
seem to me to be biased, not to have an open mind with
respect to information that becomes available about
vitamins and other nutrients in relation to cancer and
other diseases.
Recently, in the last year or so, part of my effort has been
to counteract a strange stance on the part of the medical
establishment: They have now accepted the fact that
antioxidants taken in foods cut down on the incidence of
cancer. But in their books and articles they still say "but
don't take vitamin supplements." This is completely
illogical from my point of view. They don't give any
arguments at all to support the statement. A paper by James
Enstrom, Ph.D., and his associates shows how valuable even a
little extra vitamin C in the form of a supplement is.10
CHOWKA: Your comments about the medical establishment
suggest another question. In 1982 you said that, in your
view, it was the American public that was primarily
responsible for the changing face of modern medicine,
especially for most of the progressive momentum. Is that
still your view today?
PAULING: Oh yes! I think that the public as a whole
responded better to the statements that Cameron and I or
Hoffer and I were making than the medical establishment. Ten
years ago people were telling me, "I told my doctor I was
taking a gram of vitamin C per day or three grams of vitamin
C per day and he said 'You mustn't do that, that'll kill
you, those vitamins are poisonous.'" Five years ago people
began reporting to me, "I told the doctor I was taking
several grams of vitamin C per day and he said, 'Well, that
won't hurt you. Go ahead if you want to. It probably won't
do any good. But if you want to take it, go ahead.'" Today,
of course, doctors are apt to say "That's fine, perhaps it
is doing good for you," especially when the patient shows up
in much better shape than the doctor had expected and says,
"I think the reason is high doses of vitamin C and vitamin E
and so on that I've been taking." Doctors tend to agree with
that point of view now. I don't know to what extent doctors
take the initiative in prescribing vitamins for their
seriously ill patients. But I think many of them are at
least open to it now.