When my wife was alive, some people in her group tried it. There's not much evidence.

>> that have promising anti cancer effects

I don't know why people gravitate towards the "simple" remedies for cancer, or pose that money making is a barrier for these remedies. Remember, research costs money! DO the funding yourself if you think there's a miracle cure here. (hint: there's not.)

I am sorry for your loss, you lived through my biggest fear. It must be so frustrating to read this kind of thing over and over.

One must wonder if the therapy works if it's as trivial and simple as you say.

Rarely are these things straightforward and clear cut.

That being said, I recently broke my ankle, and found that the protocols still often include 6 weeks off it, despite modern evidence largely showing zero downsides (and some benefits, especially in terms of early recovery) to weight bearing immediately - Probably costing possibly billions of dollars in lost productivity and unnecessary PT every year.

I probably shouldn't get too high on my horse about random unexplored therapies - plenty of things in medicine that are just done some way because that's how it's always been done.

Medical trials to prove its safety in human subjects -- pretty essential -- is a lengthy, multi-stage process that is extremely expensive to carry out.

IIRC medical research is really expensive, hence money-seeking is to fund it within capitalism.

Also IIRC the rewards are oversized compared to the costs, but that doesn't change that the costs are also huge. Does mean I'm generally in favour of getting every government to quadruple public spending on this though. Whatever the current spend is, we can do more.

Rare diseases fund research through philanthropy. And let's not forget Biden's Cancer Moonshot program!

https://www.whitehouse.gov/cancermoonshot/

I don't see how something like high dose vitamin C IV is very expensive. I would assume a handful of oncologists could do the whole thing themselves. We get X patients a year, we randomly suggest the vitamin C IV to half, the half with vitamin C did better or worse by these metrics. Vitamin C is not expensive and they have to collect the outcome data for everyone involved anyway - so where is the expense coming from?

If it has benefits then more doctors will start to do it and more data will become available. If not, onto the next thing.

I'm not a physician and not in the medical field, but I would hazard a guess that a lot of the expense comes from just doing the work. What specific doctor will administer the vitamin C and monitor the patients? How do you isolate that the vitamin C dosage increase is effective? Who is going to create the vitamin C in the proper dosages? Who is going to write about it to make sure that it's legally approved? The human body is very sophisticated. The trials have to be done in a scientific way, following the established procedures of ethical medical treatment, peer reviewed, etc. And let's say you start giving vitamin C to some of these patients and they start having bad reactions and it makes their disease worse? Who covers the hospital stay? Who pays for their care?

Just looking at a few things there I'm guessing that's a few million dollars at the very least.. and even so you have to look at opportunity cost. Is this the best and most promising path of research for the physicians and researchers? Are there more promising compounds? Etc.

It happens already. You just have to find the docs who do it. Which usually means attending conferences which focus on specific diseases.

You mean the sort of conferences that attract charlatans and conspiracy theorists?

> That's interesting. I was just reading about how high dose IV vitamin c can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers, but somehow, despite this being known for decades, nobody has done rigorous research on it.

Sigh. Vitamin C quackery again.

Vitamin C at high doses is cytotoxic, so it works against rapidly dividing cells. Cancer cells also preferentially concentrate vitamin C because they are under oxidative stress.

However, just like with most of other generally cytotoxic treatments, cancer cells quickly evolve resistance to it. And the overall toxicity of vitamin C makes it uninteresting as a treatment.

This was just published by UI showing a potent effect of high dose vitamin C + chemotherapy: https://medicine.uiowa.edu/content/high-dose-iv-vitamin-c-pl... and https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221323172...

That's actually pretty interesting. Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive cancers, and without many therapeutic options. Vitamin C is basically another drug to complement the existing standard-of-care drugs. Not a silver bullet, but definitely helpful.

Thanks for providing a plausible explanation. Do you know of any links (ideally peer- reviewed research) supporting the quick evolution of resistance to vitamin C? If not I'll google around.

That's a generic cancer resistance mechanism. That's why most of cancer treatments fail eventually, the cancer cells evolve to tolerate the levels of chemotherapy agents that are lethal to regular cells.

In the articles linked in this thread, large-dose vitamin C prolonged survival, but didn't clear the cancer. It's exactly what you'd expect from a chemo treatment.

There is evidence that high doses of antioxidants can make cancer worse, probably because cancer cells are under oxidative stress.

https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2015...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8127329/

Vitamin C in large doses becomes a pro-oxidant because it reduces metal ions, and they in turn then become catalysts for oxidative reactions or even directly oxidize stuff.

It’s pretty unlikely that this is true for a few reasons:

- Doctors want the best outcomes for their patients. They’ll use whatever treatment is most effective

- Doctors want the best outcomes for themselves. If they’ve found an effective treatment that others are overlooking then they’ll seek to publish

- Patients want the best outcomes for themselves. If there is an overlooked treatment then they’ll communicate it to their doctor

it’s unlikely for an effective treatment to exist and be ignored by the medical community for decades just because something can’t be patented

> Doctors want the best outcomes for themselves. If they’ve found an effective treatment that others are overlooking then they’ll seek to publish

However often the work required to prove something is effective is beyond a capacity of a single Doctor. Also in terms of wanting the best outcome for themselves - sometimes that involves not putting their career at risk by trying unproven treatments on patients ( you are focussing on the outcome when it works, not the more likely outcome and consequence of it not working ).

So sure 'miracle' cures are unlikely to lay undiscovered - but most improvements in medicine are incremental, rather than miraculous.

I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying. But it sounds like the parent said there’s a miracle treatment that the medical community is ignoring for lack of a financial incentive (and they then go on to mention a financial incentive?)

That's a ridiculous reading of my comment. Vitamin C induces cell death in a variety of cancers. That's what I wrote and it's not controversial, it's documented in dozens of studies. I went on to link an article by medical doctors and cancer experts (on cancer.gov) who explain how this works and also explicitly state that it's not being researched due to lack of financial incentive.

I can't stop you from refusing to read sources - but you should know that you're totally wrong here. I can, and have in this thread, cited multiple high quality sources.

Not read the Vitamin C literature but there is an obvious contradiction in what you say.

ie how can you have sometime which is both obviously beneficial - backed up by dozens of studies and yet complain about lack of research - if it's so clear then why do we need more research?

I also suspect doctors don't require FDA etc approval if they wanted to prescribe vitamen C - so what's stopping them? Lack of research? But I thought you knew?

Having said all that it is beyond all doubt true that commercial organisations can't afford to spend money on researching drugs with no prospect of return - however I wouldn't characterise that as evil big pharma blocking something - it's simply just that's it's not their role.

That role belongs to organisations either funded directly by the public ( charities ) or indirectly ( taxes ) for the greater good.

>> If there is an overlooked treatment then they’ll communicate it to their doctor

Hah sure.

Try this and tell me how the egomanical "gods in white" react.

Go through some stuff the RFK says about vaccines etc... and you'll see that in real life it's the opposite.

I’m not saying all doctors are perfect or even good, but surely there would be at least some occasions where a patient tries this supposedly very effective treatment, gets better, and the doctor is left curious.

The only thing you should take away from the stuff RFK says about vaccines is that RFK is a complete kook.

Very wrong on all 3. It's an extremely naive world view.

What do you think is correct instead?

> - Doctors want the best outcomes for their patients. They’ll use whatever treatment is most effective.

They will often do what make them the most money. Also remember that is doctor is subject to rules and regulations. He risks loosing his license if he does not toe the line. Your average medical student is about half a million dollars in debt when he/she graduates.

> - Doctors want the best outcomes for themselves. If they’ve found an effective treatment that others are overlooking then they’ll seek to publish.

Doctors do want the best outcomes for themselves, but if you manged to become a doctor, it means that you have never learned to question authority. Many doctors believe that what they are taught is Gospel. A doctor or a medical student who questions authority, will either not make it through medical college, or will have a license revoked.

>- Patients want the best outcomes for themselves. If there is an overlooked treatment then they’ll communicate it to their doctor.

A patient is generally ridiculed, or ignored by the doctor if he suggests something that he thinks is better.

It goes without saying that there are exceptions both among doctors and patients.

Either you are not from the USA, are trolling, or don't really know the U.S. medical system. Yes, maybe a few private practice doctors are greedy, but generally, doctors "in the system" don't personally generate more funds by doing things different, prescribing more drugs, etc. They are on salary. As far as other types of doctors (eg. chiropractors), they DEFINITELY drive home more money by prescribing more, requiring return visits, etc. But I call them doctors only by the loosest of definitions.

I am baffled by your second paragraph. It is just plainly illogical.

The third paragraph tells me that you ARE possibly from outside the USA, or that you have only seen a few doctors and they were proud or rude. We (personally) have seen private doctors, hospital doctors, country doctors, etc. over 50 years (at least 50-60 different ones). And the preponderance of our evidence shows you are either misinformed, or you are a patient who wants to self prescribe treatments that are medically unsound or 'fringe'. And, yes, those WILL be ignored by any average doctor. But then you could always fly to Mexico and get those useless treatments for low cost...

All I will say is this: We have different assessments of the situation. And yes I do live in US.

Some of what you point out is correct: Most doctors are on salary, but they are often (implicitly) required to bring in more business by the organization they work for. If they don't, they risk loosing their license/job on some pretext. In totality what I said overall hold true. These are statements from the renegade doctors themselves. Of course you are going to dismiss them as fringe, quacks etc.

Labeling someone is a fringe and easy way to dismiss them, it does not involve any work. What time have you spend listening to these fringe MDs? What time have you spent examining their patient outcomes/reports? Any yes, it goes without saying one has to be discerning even among the fringe MDs.

Please explain to us all why glory and survival aren't more effective motivators than the money to be made from patenting something.

Things simply don't work that way. It cannot be explained, it has to be experienced.

I was speaking from experience.

No, not your personal experience, but the experiences of the others. For example look up Linus Pauling's writings on the subject, and the writings of his detractors. Spend atleast 50 hours on it.

Also see my post on the same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42266462

Bullets can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers as well.

https://xkcd.com/1217/

This dates back to Linus Pauling: https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/vitamins/vitamin-C/pauling-r...

It seems that once you exceed a certain level the body just dumps it, making megadoses unviable.

You get nicely expensive urine, though.

>That's interesting. I was just reading about how high dose IV vitamin c can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers, but somehow, despite this being known for decades, nobody has done rigorous research on it

Linus Pauling (of the Nobel Laureate fame) working along with some physicians did do 'rigorous' research on it, and I think had published a book on it. You should be able to check the Linus Pauling Institute and find literature on it. I probably did it over a decade back. Predictably he was ridiculed (IMO wrongfully) for it by people who did a very shoddy job of looking into the nuances.

The last I checked in the US the Riordan clinic offers Vit C for Cancer. There are probably several other practitioners who will not publicize that they treat patients for cancer (and several other chronic conditions) for obvious reasons.

Deeply disappointed by the comments replying to this. I would reply to each individually, but feel like I'd get throttled by hackernews, so I'll just reply to everyone here.

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shepherdjerred writes that this is unlikely because doctors want what is best for their patients and would notice a cure were it available.

This is kind of true. Some doctors do know about and prescribe vitamin c with typical therapy. Here is an umbrella review of hundreds of such cases documenting positive results from using vitamin C.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8812486/

The issue is not whether doctors will prescribe it - I expect anyone could ask their doctor for it. Vitamin C is safe, well tolerated, and shown to mitigate symptoms of chemotherapy. Doctors can and do prescribe it.

The issue is why an apparently promising therapy isn't getting better testing to establish whether or not it is effective despite it being known for decades.

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adamredwoods writes that while his wife was still alive people in her group tried it.

I'd love to know more - especially type of cancer and whether the vitamin c was administered orally (no effect expected) or by IV (depending on type of cancer possible effect expected) and at what dosage.

Here's a randomized controlled trial showing substantial benefits of high dose IV vitamin C for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer - they live longer, the cancer progresses slower, and their quality of life is generally better.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39369582/

Adam goes on to suggest I should do the funding myself if I think there is a miracle cure here.

There are a couple ideas here. If I or a loved one ever develop cancer - then of course (depending on type of cancer) I would take high dose IV vitamin C, along with similar therapies that are well established as safe and potentially useful.

As far as "Doing the research myself" - honestly, I might. My path would be to construct a website compiling the research, explaining why people with cancer should try this, explaining how you can get your doctor to prescribe it to you (or, since you don't need a prescription to take vitamin c, how you can DIY), and have functionality to support people registering that they are a cancer patient who has decided to take vitamin c (or not) and give updates.

The hope with the website would be that it could compile enough raw data to become compelling to medical professionals.

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Panzer04 asks "if the therapy works if it's as trivial and simple as you say" - why isn't it being done?

Vitamin C is sometimes used. That's why we have hundreds of case studies and, in some cases, randomized controlled trials and other experiments documenting its use and efficacy.

My comments here aren't based on what I say or think - my original source was an article explaining the research on cancer.gov. Vitamin C (again: high dose and IV administered) is known to have potential benefits for cancer patients.

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cyberax says "Sigh. Vitamin C quackery again" and then offers a partial explanation of the mechanism for how vitamin C causes cell death in cancer cells - which is better explained in the link I originally provided.

cyberax then claims, without evidence, that cancer cells quickly evolve resistance to it. I don't believe there is any such evidence, having read several papers on this and never seeing it mentioned - nor, by my understanding, is it plausible that cancer cells could fundamentally change how they work to get immunity to this. Perhaps I'm wrong though and cyberax could supply some evidence.

I notice in the replies to cyberax pfdietz says "There is evidence that high doses of antioxidants can make cancer worse" - and then links 2 papers exploring the use of vitamin E as a cancer treatment. Vitamin E, despite sharing quite a few letters with Vitamin C, is a different thing.

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dennis_jeeves2 writes that "Linus Pauling (of the Nobel Laureate fame) working along with some physicians did do 'rigorous' research on it".

This is not correct and explained in the first few paragraphs of my original link. Linus Pauling used orally administered vitamin C which results in weaker blood concentrations and therefore less impact on cancer. The modern method uses IV administered high dose Vitamin C (which I was careful to write in my comment).

While Pauling's method shows little effect in randomized controlled trials, high dose IV Vitamin C does show benefits.

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insane_dreamer writes that "Medical trials to prove its safety in human subjects -- pretty essential -- is a lengthy, multi-stage process that is extremely expensive to carry out."

Pretty meaningless comment. The safety of vitamin C is already well established.

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pjc50 also cites Linus Pauling - which, again, is explained in the first couple paragraphs of the link I originally posted. High dose orally administered vitamin C doesn't work - there are limits on how much you can increase blood concentration through oral administration, so most of the high dose is lost.

That's why, as explained in my original comment/link, the modern protocol uses IV administered vitamin C.

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alphan0n quotes an XKCD strip saying "Bullets can induce cell death in a wide variety of cancers as well."

A bad comment because the tests I've been linked to have been in vivo, and my original link explains why this kills cancer cells and not healthy cells.

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That's my review of the comments. I would characterize them as exceptionally uninformed - which is odd. Why would people feel the need to comment on a subject they don't know about and simultaneously refuse to read the outline I originally linked which answers all the questions and criticisms posted here?

This is what I call a cogent, measured and robust rebuttal to several opposing viewpoints. I don't have much to add as a response of my own on the specifics but just want to mention that what your comment tacitly points out repeatedly is very common in the comments on this site, for many subjects and especially those that seem to provoke a certain popular hive-mind response:

People writing completely half-baked, often deeply ignorant opinions on complex, nuanced subjects out of mostly emotional disdain, but phrasing their responses in such a way as to easily fool someone who doesn't know said subject well that they at all know what they're talking about and are thus arguing rationally.

Hi hi.

You may be interested in the VITALITY study out of China from 2022. 400+ people given FOLFOX + Avastin (standard of care, first line for colorectal cancer) vs FOLFOX + Avastin + high dose Vit C.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35929990/

Roughly showed no change for the overall population, but a significant increase in progression free survival for folks with RAS mutations.

As someone with a stage 4 colorectal cancer with a RAS mutation, this is interesting to me!

Hey.

Sorry about your diagnosis.

Thanks for sharing. This is an interesting, though somewhat disappointing, paper.

One thing I didn't get while reading it was the specific blood concentration achieved. I noticed they mentioned 12 rounds with 3 infusion days and 1.5g/kg. I'm assuming they injected that amount daily.

I noticed they injected over a period of 3 hours. To my knowledge the half life of vitamin c in blood is only 2 hours. I wonder if the concentration of vitamin c ever got sufficiently high to induce apoptosis.

At IV clinics near me they offer 75g bags of vitamin c on the website that are administered over an hour. I bet you could go back to back and get a higher concentration. In the same trip I wonder if you could get something fun - an IV clinic near me offers a nootropic, methylene blue, might charge you up for a day of studying cancer treatments.

One final idea I've had, not sure how useful it is to you, is that you can an at home ultrasound for a few thousand dollars. You should be able to use it to see your intestines and the tumors growing inside. You could use this to monitor your own treatment - i.e. take daily pictures and examine before and after vitamin c therapy, to see if it does anything.

Best of luck to you. If you want to bounce ideas for DIY cancer treatments off of anyone let me know and we can exchange emails.

I'd love to be in touch. I don't see your email in your profile. I'm mpnagle at gmail dot com. Thank you!