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Current allegations that vitamin C causes clogging or hardening of the arteries are based on an Associated Press mis-reporting of a paper presented at a cardiologist conference last March.

"News reports are filled with the latest breakthroughs, but they are often exaggerated by inexperienced reporters, over-eager editors and self-interested scientists," contends David Shaw in a Los Angeles Times article Medical Miracles or Misguided Media?

Such scare mongering would appear to serve those vested interests in the sickness care industry. These stakeholders fear the kind of health education that will lead consumers to take personal responsibility for their health through prevention rather than rely on costly drugs that only suppress symptoms rather than get at causes.

In this latest scare story, Vitamin C causes clogged arteries, an Associated Press medical editor alleges a link between vitamin C and clogging of the carotid artery. It is based on a report Dr Dwyer and the University of Southern California (USC) team presented to an American Heart Association conference in San Diego. These researchers made no claim that arteries might get clogged with increased vitamin C intake.

Last year, the same USC research team (Dwyer, et at) wrote a paper finding vitamin C helps to prevent arterial clogging. They found that stress (some would say a vitamin C deficiency) leads to early atherosclerosis in men. There is no evidence of clogged arteries, only thickening. This latest study would seem to indicate vitamin C offers protection against aneurysms (stroke) in the elderly, since thinning of the arterial wall is one of the problems of aging.

In the case of a scare story last year that claimed that vitamin C caused cancer, the claim was based on a test tube experiment. It was later discovered the DNA damage occurred because of sloppy handling by graduate research lab technicians when they transferred the DNA from one media to another.

The Yerkes Primate Center monkeys get the equivalent of 10 grams of vitamin C, on a per kilogram of body weight basis, in their daily ration of Monkey Chow. There are no reports of harm associated with this high intake of vitamin C. A 57-kilogram adult goat daily synthesizes 10 grams of vitamin C in its liver. There is not an epidemic of hardening or clogging of the arteries, cancer or pernicious anemia among the goat population or other mammals known to synthesize equally large quantities of vitamin C.

Since 1996 over 20 clinical reports published in peer reviewed journals have reported on the health benefits of vitamin C supplements in dosages of 500 milligrams per day or higher.

It is a disservice to the public when the media doesn't follow up with reports of the clinical and epidemiolog-ical studies that refute the vitamin C "scare stories."

Croft Woodruff is president (since 1991) of the EDTA Chelation Association of British Columbia.

Source: alive #212, June 2000