Linus Pauling’s and Matthias Rath’s Unified Theory of Human Cardiovascular Disease
t is a strange world we live in. Did you know that there is a theory for the cause of heart disease that explains many of the things the traditional cholesterol theory of heart disease fails to explain. This theory proposes a treatment that involves completely safe nutrients that reliably reverses atherosclerosis in animals and humans. There are a lot of studies that support the theory, it makes more sense on many levels, but there have been no serious attempts by mainstream medicine to evaluate if the treatment works or not.
It has in fact been completely ignored.
Linus Pauling Ph.D, two-time winner of the Nobel Prize and Matthias Rath M.D. published “A Unified Theory of Human Cardiovascular Disease Leading the Way to the Abolition of This Disease as a Cause for Human Mortality” that gives an explanation for the mechanisms of cardiovascular disease and provides a safe and reliable way to control it, supposedly more effective than any treatment discovered to this date. Although the science is impeccable and solidly supported by animal data, it has been completely ignored. No studies have been published. No efforts have been made to evaluate if this can control cardiovascular disease.
You may say that it takes time to design and execute studies, but that is not the problem here. The theory was first published in 1991. Since then, nothing has happened, even though it could potentially save half a million lives every year in the US alone.
Why would a potential cure for heart disease be ignored? Could it be because it threatens a $600 billion industry? A formidable broadside of news stories, ridicule, and fake studies has managed to divert Linus Pauling’s theory to the scientific junkyard. Without it ever being investigated!
THE THEORY
This is what Linus Pauling and Matthias Rath claimed: It is well known that most animals are able to internally manufacture the vitamin C they need. Humans and other primates have lost that capability at some time during evolution, but the loss didn’t present any problems at that time since the diet contained large quantities of Vitamin C. This situation then was radically changed because of human migration, and the climate changes leading to the ice ages.
As food sources rich in vitamin C to a large degree disappeared during the ice age, scurvy must have been a serious threat to survival. Scurvy is caused by a lack of vitamin C and always leads to death if not treated. Vitamin C is needed for the formation of collagen which provides structural integrity for blood vessels. Without this structural integrity, you bleed to death internally.
So, this period in human history presented a very strong evolutionary pressure – we had to adapt or die. We survived this difficult time, but the adaptations that were needed for survival are still with us. One such adaptation is the ability to plaster damages to the blood vessel walls with a sticky substance. Does that ring a bell?
This saved us from extinction back then, but today it will cut our life short because of our current low intake of vitamin C.
- So what you are saying is that atherosclerosis is a repair process?
Yes, this is not disputed; this discovery led to the 1985 Brown-Goldstein Nobel prize in medicine.
Matthias Rath and Linus Pauling claimed the reason our blood vessels needs repair is mainly due to the fact we still eat a diet low in vitamin C. We suffer from sub-clinical chronic scurvy leading to weakened blood vessels. A blood lipid: lipoprotein(a), or Lp(a) for short binds to form plaque deposits. This explains many characteristics of heart disease that mainstream medicine still has not been able to explain.
For example, plaque buildup mostly happens where the arteries are subject to high pressure and mechanical stress, closer to the heart. Other parts of the vascular system are spared. The cholesterol theory of heart disease claims that it is high levels of oxidized cholesterol that causes lesions in the blood vessel walls, but if this was true, you would expect plaque buildup to be more evenly distributed, which it is not.
Linus Pauling’s theory makes more sense. The Lp(a) binds only to the walls of blood vessels if the lysine and proline binding sites for Lp(a) has been exposed through damages caused by mechanical stress to the weakened vessel walls. Damage by oxidized cholesterol or homocysteine or infection can of course be a factor, but not alone. You have to account for the localization of the damages first.
Careful studies with guinea pigs which also do not make their own endogenous vitamin C, prove that when the dietary intake of the vitamin is low, collagen production is limited, and blood vessels tend to become thinner and weaker from wear and tear. Lp(a) then form plaque deposits to compensate for this weakness. Feeding them vitamin C and lysine clear the plaque and reverses the process.
HOW MUCH VITAMIN C
- OK, so humans cannot manufacture vitamin C internally, but have to get it from the diet. But doesn’t most of us already get enough? How much do we get and how much do we need?
It is difficult to get any reliable data on the exact amounts of vitamin C consumed by our ancestors, but if you look at our closest relatives in the animal world, the higher primates1, you will see that they consume 10 to 20 times more vitamin C than the human recommended daily allowance (RDA) of 90 milligrams per day. That amounts to 900 - 1800 milligrams. Linus Pauling often recommended 3000 mg. His personal use varied between 6,000–18,000 milligrams per day. Most animals make vitamin C in their livers or kidneys in large amounts (9,000 mg to 12,000 mg adjusted for body weight), do not have Lp(a) in their blood, and rarely suffer cardiovascular disease.
It is starting to become very clear that the current low RDA for vitamin C has more to do with politics and prejudice than science. The research behind the RDA values for vitamin C is biased, out-of-date and insubstantial.
Current medical textbooks used in education contain very little mention of vitamin C and its importance for collagen formation. Most doctors arrive in the real world, woefully undereducated in disease prevention. They regard Vitamin C as mostly useless. Why?
Most studies cited by industry and mainstream medicine use very low amounts and you don’t see that many beneficial effects at those low levels. If you compare dosage in relation to effect on cardiovascular disease risk for a number of studies, you see the following:
- 1 study showed favorable response when under 500 mg was administered 2
- 30 studies showed favorable response when over 500 mg was administered 3
- 3 studies showed no response when under 500 mg was administered 4
- 4 studies showed no response when over 500 mg was administered 5
In Germany and Norway, where the Codex Alimentarius proposals are already enshrined in law, it is illegal to sell Vitamin C in strengths above 200 mg. This low level ensures that there will be no benefit at all on cardiovascular disease risk.
In France, a woman was arrested for selling 500 mg vitamin C tablets.
You can feed people truckloads of trans fats and sell as much tobacco and alcohol as you like. Causing disease is perfectly legal, but if you try to prevent disease, you are thrown into jail.
- So, you are saying that the Pharmaceutical industry wants to restrict our abilities to prevent disease and that explains why there has been no efforts to evaluate Linus Pauling’s work on vitamin C?
There are several factors at work here. If you make extraordinary claims that you are able to cure major diseases using very simple nutrients, in this case vitamin C and lysine, and you are not a member of the medical profession yourself, you have to be very careful about how you present it, especially if you are going to butt heads with the pharmaceutical industry.
Linus Pauling is a very well respected scientist. He was included in a list of the 20 greatest scientists of all time by the British magazine New Scientist, with Albert Einstein being the only other scientist from the twentieth century on the list. Some have claimed that Pauling was one of the greatest thinkers and visionaries of the millennium, along with Galileo, Newton, and Einstein. Linus Pauling was way ahead of his time in many of the diverse areas he worked in during his lifetime.
Unfortunately, this time he was threatening a multi-billion dollar industry.
His credibility was attacked, he was called a quack, and his work on vitamin C and cancer together with the British cancer surgeon, Ewan Cameron 6 on the use of intravenous and oral vitamin C as cancer therapy was questioned after trials conducted by Moertel et al. at the Mayo Clinic failed to prove a benefit for megadoses of vitamin C in cancer patients. 7
Pauling called Charles Moertel’s conclusions and the handling of the final study as “fraud and deliberate misrepresentation.” Pauling criticized the flaws of Moertel cancer trial’s over several years. But the adverse publicity generated by Moertel and the media damaged Pauling’s credibility and his vitamin C work for a very long time.
VINDICATION
Now, 35 years later, he is vindicated. With a growing body of evidence mounting, National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers finally conceded that intravenous vitamin C may be an effective treatment for cancer. One study 8 in 2005 clearly confirmed Dr. Linus Pauling’s research. It was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and showed that intravenous vitamin C killed cancer cells selectively, sparing healthy cells. The treatment showed no toxicity. The ability to kill lymphoma cells was remarkable – almost 100% at easily achievable blood serum concentrations.
In 2006 the Canadian Medical Association Journal published in vivo research that demonstrated that intravenous vitamin C can subdue advanced-stage cancer. 9
In January 2007 the US Food and Drug Administration approved a new trial of intravenous vitamin C as a cancer treatment. 10
Now we can see that the delay caused by Moertel’s flawed studies robbed a very large number of cancer patients of an effective treatment. Only Moertel himself knows if the flaws in the study design were the results of honest mistakes, incompetence or it all was a deliberate attempt to bury a promising therapy. Moertel’s had been responsible for the debunking of another alternative cancer treatment, laetrile, which continues to be controversial.
At any rate, much of Linus Paulings credibility was destroyed, causing the “Unified Theory of Human Cardiovascular Disease” to be completely ignored by the scientific community for decades.
Now, when the scientific community finally is starting to re-evaluate his research on cancer, maybe the “Unified Theory of Human Cardiovascular Disease” will be investigated properly. If it turns out that Linus Pauling was right about this as well, the medical community will have to dress in sack cloth and cover themselves in ashes.
Mainstream medicine has been wrong about the Atkins diet, vitamin C and cancer, the cholesterol connection to heart disease, the control of Chrohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis through diet, Helicobacer pylori and stomach ulcers – the list goes on and on, so we shouldn’t be so surprised if it turns out that they also are wrong about the connection between vitamin C and heart disease.
Maybe this is a good time to sell your stocks in the pharma business?
Whatever the context and whatever the audience, he was clear, he was committed, he was compassionate, and, far more often than most, he was right — or if not, at least on the side of the angels.
– Derek A. Davenport (about Linus Pauling)
The Pharmaceutical companies cannot be said to be on the side of the angels. If they succeed in their efforts to restrict access to vitamins, making it impossible to buy vitamin C supplements in higher potencies than the laughable RDA, you will not be able to enjoy many of the powerful disease preventing qualities of Vitamin C.
It is a strange world we live in.
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