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The Dark Side of Linus Pauling’s Legacy
Stephen Barrett, M.D.
September 14, 2014
Linus Pauling, Ph.D. (1901-1994), was the only person ever to win two unshared Nobel prizes. He received these awards for chemistry in 1954 and for peace in 1962. He contributed greatly to the development of chemical theories. His impact on the health marketplace, however, was anything but laudable.
Pauling is largely responsible for the widespread misbelief that high doses of vitamin C are effective against colds and other illnesses. In 1968, he postulated that people’s needs for vitamins and other nutrients vary markedly and that to maintain good health, many people need amounts of nutrients much greater than the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs). And he speculated that megadoses of certain vitamins and minerals might well be the treatment of choice for some forms of mental illness. He termed this approach “orthomolecular,” meaning “right molecule.” After that, he steadily expanded the list of illnesses he believed could be influenced by “orthomolecular” therapy and the number of nutrients suitable for such use. No responsible medical or nutrition scientists share these views.
Vitamin C and the Common Cold
In 1970, Pauling announced in Vitamin C and the Common Cold that taking 1,000 mg of vitamin C daily will reduce the incidence of colds by 45% for most people but that some people need much larger amounts [1]. (The RDA for vitamin C is 60 mg.) The 1976 revision of the book, retitled Vitamin C, the Common Cold and the Flu, suggested even higher dosages [2]. A third book, Vitamin C and Cancer (1979) claims that high doses of vitamin C may be effective against cancer. Yet another book, How to Feel Better and Live Longer (1986), stated that megadoses of vitamins “can improve your general health . . . to increase your enjoyment of life and can help in controlling heart disease, cancer, and other diseases and in slowing down the process of aging.” [3] Pauling himself reportedly took at least 12,000 mg daily and raised the amount to 40,000 mg if symptoms of a cold appear [4]. In 1993, after undergoing radiation therapy for prostate cancer, Pauling said that vitamin C had delayed the cancer’s onset for twenty years. This was not a testable claim. He died of the disease in August 1994.
Scientific fact is established when the same experiment is carried out over and over again with the same results. To test the effect of vitamin C on colds, it is necessary to compare groups which get the vitamin to similar groups which get a placebo (a dummy pill which looks like the real thing). Since the common cold is a very variable illness, proper tests must involve hundreds of people for significantly long periods of time. At least 16 well-designed, double-blind studies have shown that supplementation with vitamin C does not prevent colds and at best may slightly reduce the symptoms of a cold [5]. Slight symptom reduction may occur as the result of an antihistamine-like effect, but whether this has practical value is a matter of dispute. Pauling’s views are based on the same studies considered by other scientists, but his analyses are flawed.
The largest clinical trials, involving thousands of volunteers, were directed by Dr. Terence Anderson, professor of epidemiology at the University of Toronto [6-9]. Taken together, his studies suggest that extra vitamin C may slightly reduce the severity of colds, but it is not necessary to take the high doses suggested by Pauling to achieve this result. Nor is there anything to be gained by taking vitamin C supplements year-round in the hope of preventing colds.
Another important study was reported in 1975 by scientists at the National Institutes of Health who compared vitamin C pills with a placebo before and during colds. Although the experiment was supposed to be double-blind, half the subjects were able to guess which pill they were getting. When the results were tabulated with all subjects lumped together, the vitamin group reported fewer colds per person over a nine-month period. But among the half who hadn’t guessed which pill they had been taking, no difference in the incidence or severity was found [10]. This illustrates how people who think they are doing something effective (such as taking a vitamin) can report a favorable result even when none exists.
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