Orthomolecular Enhancement of Human Development

Linus Pauling

Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine
2700 Sand Hill Road, Menlo Park California 94025

   I believe that there are great possibilities for improving the lot

of human beings, the health of human beings, including the work of the
Institutes for Achievement of Human Potential and I admire the work

that has been done in these Institutes very much.  I know that considerable

emphasis is placed on good nutrition for the people who come to the

Institutes and that large doses of vitamin C are given to them.

   The human body, like the rest of the universe, is composed of

matter and radiant energy.  There are electric oscillations in the brain

that constitute consciousness and ephemeral memory. They are guided
by the material structure of the brain and they interact with it.  I can

understand that the sort of training, the sort of physical experience that

is given to the children in the Institutes, can operate, by way of these

electric  oscillations, to change the material structure so that good

behavioral patterns are laid down.

    A human body is made up of thousands of different kinds of

molecules.  Some of them have structures that are characteristic of the

individual person.  The genes that a person has inherited from his


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parents have determined his structure to some extent. The protein

molecules, including those of thousands of different kinds of enzymes,

may differ somewhat from person to person in structure.  Differences in

enzymes may change the rates of chemical reactions so that the simpler

chemical molecules are produced in different people in larger or smaller

amounts.  Moreover, the structure of our bodies is determined to

considerable extent by the molecules that we put into our bodies.  For

example, by smoking cigarettes many people introduce molecules into

their bodies that are the cause of large amounts of suffering for them

and their relatives and associates, because of decreased life expectancy

and decreased length of the period of well-being and effectiveness.

     The molecules that we introduce into our bodies by way of the

foods that we ingest are especially important.  I have become interested

in these molecules in recent years.  After I had graduated as a chemical

engineer from Oregon Agricultural College, I came to the California

Institute of Technology in 1922 and began graduate work on the determination

of the structure of crystals by x-ray diffraction.  I worked in this field and

the theoretical field of quantum mechanics in relation to molecular


structure for a decade or more.  In 1930 this work was expanded to

include the determination of the structure of gas molecules by the method

of analyzing the diffraction patterns of electron waves.  Then in 1934

I became interested in the hemoglobin molecule and other proteins, and

in 1936 Karl Landsteiner got me interested in the field of immunology,

in which I worked for about ten years.  During the following decade I


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worked on the heditary hemolytic anemias, especially sickle-cell anemia,

and then for another decade on mental illness.  Toward the end of that

time, when I had been working on mental retardation and schizophrenia,

I learned about what Hoffer and Osmond had done in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan

in the control of schizophrenics by giving them a thousand times the amount

of niacin or niacinamide, the pellagra preventive factor, that is usually

recommended - as much as 17,000 mg per day, rather than 17 mg per day.

The idea that a vitamin, a substance that I had always thought of as an

organic compound that is needed in small amounts for life, could have

important additionaL effects when taken in a thousand times the amount

needed to prevent death by the corresponding deficiency disease  astonished



me.  This idea seemed to me to be something new in physiology and

medicine.  I was astonished enough to start reading the literature, and

I found that there were reports about many other substances affecting the

functioning of the brain when they were taken in larger than usual


amounts.  For example, Milner had shown by a double-blind study

that a gram of ascorbic acid per day given to schizophrenic patients

led to a statistically significant greater improvement than the placebo

that was given to similar schizophrenic patients. Glutamic acid taken

in amount 10 grams per day was reported by several investigators to

have a significant effect oq the intellectual ability of borderline mental

retardates, and many other substances were shown to affect the

functioning of the brain.

These facts seemed to me to be so important that I invented


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a word - orthomolecular, meaning having the right molecules in the

right amounts.  In 1967-1968 I published two papers, one entitled

"Orthomolecular Somatic and Psychiatric Medicine" and the other

"Orthomolecular Psychiatry", in which general arguments about

dependence of chemical equilibria and rates of reaction on the

concentrations of the reacting substances were advanced as the
        the value of

explanation of/large doses of nutrients and other substances normally

present in the human body.  Now we have an orthomolecular medical

association and a journal of orthomolecular psychiatry, and there are

orthomolecular institutes in several cities in the United States.

The brain is probably the most sensitive of all organs to

change in its molecular composition. There are no doubt a great many

molecules that must be kept in about the right concentration in order

that the brain function well, and we have developed mechanisms to this

end. In both guinea pigs and human beings these homeostatic mechanisms

function so well that the intake of vitamin C can be varied a thousandfold

with only a twofold  change in the concentration of vitamin C (ascorbate

ion) in the brain cells. Only in the last stages of scurvy, after prolonged

deprivation of vitamin C, does the concentration of ascorbate in the

brain fall sharply. The twofold range of concentration may not seem to

be important, but in fact it probably is important, for really effective

mental function, to have the concentration of the ascorbate .at the high end of this

range, corresponding to a high intake of the vitamin, rather than at the

10~ end.


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    I could give many examples of orthomolecular medicine, but

I shall restrict myself to a few.  There is a disease called tardive

dyskinesia, which is caused by the drugs that are given to young people,

especially, to control mental illness.  Tardive dyskinesia is a very

distressing disease, because the young people find that the involuntary

movements, especially the repeated extrusion of the tongue, make it

difficult for them to go out in public.  It was reported just a few months

ago that an intake of 10 grams of choline per day controls tardive dyskinesia

in many patients. Choline, while not a vitamin, is, of course, important

to the brain.  Acetylcholine was the first of the neural transmitters to be

discovered. The usual intake of choline in food is about a gram per day,

and the human body can also synthesize choline, so that the dosage of

10 Grams per day is not an excessive amount.  This increased intake

may lead to increased synthesis of acetylcholine or in some other way

influence the action of acetylcholine.  Studies ought to be made now of
the possible value of a high intake of choline for other neurological

diseases.

     Also, C. R. Burch, a well-known physicist who invented the

Burch microscope, has discovered by experimenting on himself that

his epileptiform seizures can be controlled completely by an intake of

two grams of inositol per'day.  Inositol is an orthomolecular substance,

present in some foods, and it is understandable, as with choline, that

changing its concentration might be effective in controlling neurological

diseases.


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At about the same time that I was working in the field of

orthomolecular psychiatry I became interested in vitamin C in relation

to the common cold.  Irwin Stone, a biochemist who was then living
                     Mountain View, California,

on Staten Island and has now moved to `. /   c wrote to me, a dozen

years ago, sending me copies of four papers that he had published in

1965 and 1966 about "hypoascorbemia, a molecular disease". He gave

some arguments to the effect that the natural intake of vitamin C is

perhaps 100 times as great as the usually recommended intake.

He suggested that I would be protected against the common cold if I were

to take 3 grams of vitamin C per day.  My wife and I tried this regime,

It was clear that it did protect us against the common cold.  In 1969 I was

asked to speak at the opening ceremonies of a new medical school in

New York - Mt.Sinai - and in my talk there I mentioned that by taking

large doses of vitamin C you could prevent the common cold.  A physician

on the staff wrote a strong letter to me about encouraging the vitamin quacks,

on whom the people of the United States waste six hundred million dollars a

year, and asked if I could point out any double-blind study that had shown

vitamin C to have any greater value than a placebo.  I had not checked the

literature about the common cold before 1969, but I began looking in the

literature, and found that four double-blind studies had been made, each of

which showed that vitamin C had more value than a placebo.  When I pointed

this out to the physician in New York, he refused to accept the evidence.

I was so impressed by this display of bias and by the misrepresentation of

the facts in the medical textbooks and the reference books that I wrote


a book about vitamin C and the common cold, published toward the end

of 1970.  This book "Vitamin C and the Common Cold", was followed

in 1976 by a larger one "Vitamin C, the Common Cold, and the Flu".

In the meantime Irwin Stone had published in 1972 his book "The Healing

Factor: Vitamin C Against Disease".

     During the years from 1970 on I was in correspondence with

members of the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council-

National Academy of Sciences, U.S. A., which every five years puts out a

report on nutrition with recommendations about the daily intake of various

nutrients, including vitamin C.  In earlier years this Board had recommended

75 mg per day, and in 1960 they were recommending 60 mg per day for an


adult.  In its publication the Board states'that the amounts recommended

are enough to prevent for most people the corresponding deficiency

diseases, and also states that vitamin C in large doses has no value in

protecting against the common cold or any other disease.  I pointed out

that epidemiological studies have indicated that there is a considerable

improvement in health and decrease in the age-specific mortality

accompanying the ingestion of even an additional 100 mg of vitamin C per

day.  In 1974, just when I thought that I might be making some progress

with the Board, the Board responded by issuing new recommendations,

dropping the recommended intake of vitamin C from 60 mg to 45 mg per

day.  I have no explanation for this action.

     There are many reasons for believing that the human body


requires, for optimum functioning, about 10.000 mg per day.  One argument

is based upon the fact that most animals manufacture vitamin C.  The

amount manufactured by an animal is proportional to its body weight.

A 70-kg goat manufactures 13,000 mg per day, and in addition gets a

considerable amount in its food.  Other animals manufacture between about

4 grams and 20 grams per day, calculated to 70 kg body, with average about

10 g per day.  This is the main reason why I myself take 10 grams per day -

I do not believe that the animals would manufacture ascorbate in this

amount if it were not important for their health that they do so.

    Irwin Stone in his book has discussed the many published reports

about the control of viral diseases and bacterial diseases by large doses of

vitamin C.  Probably the most important study in this field is that carried

out by Dr. Morishige of Fukuoka Torikai Hospital, Fukuoka, Japan, with

collaboration of Professor A. Murata of the Agricultural College in Saga,

Japan.  Dr. Fukumi Morishige had made a study of vitamin C in relation

to wound healing while he was in medical school.  When he was working

in another hospital in Fukuoka he tried giving various amounts of vitamin C

to surgical patients who were received transfusions of whole blood.  He

observed what seemed to be a protective effect against serum hepatitis,

and when he became the Chief Surgeon of another hospital, Fukuoka Torikai

Hospital, in 1967 he carried out some systematic studies, with some

surgical patients who received transfusions of whole blood receiving little

or no ascorbate and others receiving large amounts.   The incidence of

serum hepatitis in the patients who received little or no vitamin C was


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               none among the
seven percent, whereas there were / patients, in a series of 1380

who received blood transfusions after surgery,' who had been given

two grams per day or more.

A striking example of the value of vitamin C in preventing and

treating disease is provided by the work of Dr. Ewan Cameron, Chief Surgeon

in Vale of Leven Hospital, Loch Lomondside, Scotland. Dr. Cameron

developed the idea that a considerable control of cancer might be

achieved by stimulating the body's natural protective mechanisms.  In

1966 he published a book on this subject, "Hyaluronidase and Cancer",

in which he emphasized the possibility of strengthening the intercellular

cement in the normal tissues around a malignant tumor by inhibiting the

enzyme hyaluronidase that is liberated by the malignant cells, and that

attacks the hyaluronic acid of the intercellular cement that binds the

tissues together.  Then in 1971 R.otman suggested to Cameron that

vitamin C might be involved in the production of an inhibitor of

hyaluronidas e , and I gave a lecture in which I said that Cameron's goal

might be achieved by the ingestion of large amounts of vitamin C, in that

the intercellular cement is strengthened by fibrils of collagen, and we know

that vitamin C is required for the synthesis of these collagen fibrils.

Cameron read an account of my lecture that was published in The New York

Times, and wrote asking ho3v much ascorbate to give to the patients.  In

November 1971 he began cautiously administering 10 grams of vitamin C

per day to a patient with terminal cancer.  The patient responded well,
during

and/the next few months he tried the same treatment with other patients.


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He now has given ascorbate as the only therapy to more than 500 patients

with advanced cancer, and to a smaller number with cancer at earlier

stages.  The results are very promising.  ,In a comparison of 100 patients

with advanced cancer who received 10 grams of vitamin C per day and

1000 matched controls, the same age, the same sex, and the same kind

of cancer (10 controls per patient) who were treated in the same way,

by the same physicians , and in the same hospital except that they did not

receive ascorbate, the ascorbate-treated patients have lived on the

average 300 days longer than the controls.  Fifty times the fraction have

lived more than a year after being pronounced terminal - 22 out of 100

ascorbate-treated patients and 4 out of 1000 controls.  In 1974 Morishige

in Japan began the same treatment, and his observations on the first

55 patients with advanced cancer to be treated with ascorbate are

essentially the same as those reported by Cameron.

     The use of ascorbate and other nutrients in controlling cancer

needs to be thoroughly investigated.  We do not yet know what the best

dosage of ascorbate is for cancer patients , nor do we know about possible

effectiveness of other vitamins, such as vitamin A.  In our Institute we

have been studying nutrition in relation to skin cancer in mice, caused

by ultraviolet light.  We find that there is a significant decrease in the

number of malignant tumors developed by the mice when they are

transferred from ordinary mouse food to a diet of raw fruits and

vegetables.  The increase is far greater, however, when 2.5 percent

of sodium ascorbate is added to the diet of raw fruits or vegetables (or


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to the regular mouse food).  The mice on the best diet have only
       as many

17 percent /malignant tumors as those on ordinary mouse food, and

we think that it might well be possible to protect them completely

against skin cancer caused by ultraviolet light by finding the optimum

diet.

I believe that by improvement in nutrition, especially

increased intake of vitamin C, and by other health practices it will

be possible for people to remain in good health for 25 years longer

than at the present time.  I think also that it is likely that people who

suffer from handicaps of one sort or another can show great improvement

in their condition by following the appropriate nutritional regimes, and

that in this way the amount of suffering in the world can be decreased

s igztiicantly.