Vitamin C Forum

"In my 1983 paper, presented at the Orthomolecular Medical Society meeting in San Francisco, I reported on the remarkable case of Joseph Kieninger, chemist and patent attorney, terminal cancer victim turned successful therapist. Joe is a prostatic cancer victim, whose cancer has spread throughout his body. He was declared terminal in 1977 and given about one year to live. By his innovative daily treatments, both systemic (beginning with 80 to 100 grams sodium ascorbate a day, every day) and topical megascorbic applications, he has survived to the present, living a painfree, relatively normal life, going to work each day and feeling good most of the time. I believe Joe is a prototype for survival in terminal disease and has shown us a new way of handling these highly scorbutic patients that Medicine has given up, and prevent them from dying of scurvy. Joe, a keen observer, wrote up and submitted his case history to the New England Journal of Medicine, but they returned his manuscript and refused publication."

Abstract

This study was designed to examine the effect of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) on various death pathways of mouse T cells. Unlike humans, mice produce their own ascorbic acid and our study tested the effect of additional ascorbic acid on murine T cells. Our data show that three T cell death pathways (growth factor withdrawal-, spontaneous-, and steroid-induced death) were inhibited when T cells were incubated with ascorbic acid. The data show that both activated and resting T cells were responsive to ascorbic acid since both populations were resistant to death stimuli when treated with ascorbic acid. Additionally, effector T cells were more likely to enter S phase if treated with ascorbic acid. Our data implicate ascorbic acid as a potent inhibitor of various forms of T cell death and suggest that vitamin C may function as an immune booster through this mechanism.