Sequel Thread To Holistic Doctors, and medicine

Hey Mod,I have a question and I'm asking you because I feel you will give a kind and informative answer for a layman. I've had no chemistry classes.The chemical name for vitamin C is L-Ascorbic acid plus a few others.Is this the chemical name of the synthetic vitamin?I've seen the argument that a difference in natural and synthetic vitamins is in how they deal with plane-polarized light.
Their chemical and physical properties may be identical, but their ability to rotate plane-polarized light isn't.Is this true?

What part of "I share your concern" don't you understand?I was objecting to your claim that Zyprexa shouldn't be prescribed for depression because your claim was not based upon evidence that Zyprexa is contraindicated for depression, and your unqualified declaration seemed to imply some sort of information to that effect. In reality your declaration was based upon your more general skepticism about off-label prescriptions, and not on any specific knowledge about the effectiveness of Zyprexa on depression. This is consistent with my theme that conclusions should derive from valid studies.And I was not saying I'm not concerned about off-label prescriptions. I didn't want to get more specific than that because we'd be drifting off-topic, so let me just briefly say that though I share your concerns, your characterizations of such prescribing as unsupported by clinical data is untrue. For example, here's a study on olanzapine (Zyprexa) and depression, and it was just the first item of a Google Scholar search: But whether Zyprexa is appropriate for depression, psychotic or not, is a separate issue from how you reach your conclusions. What I was criticizing was not your conclusion that Zyprexa shouldn't be described for depression, but the way you reached your conclusion, which was from your more general opinion that off-label prescriptions are always bad practice. Off-label means not approved for that purpose. It doesn't mean no clinical studies have been performed, and so it would a mistake to automatically draw such a conclusion as you have done.Your arguments against traditional medicine seem to be not against the scientific procedures themselves but against the people and groups involved, accusing them of greed, lack of concern for patients, and turf-protection. Unfortunately for your argument, the people working in alternative medicine, being just as human, are as prone to these foibles as anyone else. In addition, alternative medicine has a huge profit advantage over traditional medicine, since there's no regulation and no testing. Homeopathy is the greatest scam on earth: no testing required and they're selling the cheapest possible concoction imaginable: water. I think you're continuing to confuse me with others you're discussing with. I'm not dismissing Breggin because I'm not discussing him. I'm not really interested in addressing the specifics of any of your claims, or Breggin's claims, or Hoffman's claims. I'm not questioning your claims, but the methods upon which your claims are based, which rely heavily on anecdote, and upon the work of people who publish in their own journals, and whose work has not persuaded the larger scientific community, and, in Hoffman's case and even to a lesser extent Breggin, whose work is ancient.Concerning the question of what one should do when traditional medicine has failed, all I can say is that the only reliable way of ferreting out reliable information about the real world is the scientific method. If you happen to chance upon effective treatments by other methods then I'm happy for you, you were very lucky, but that doesn't change the fact that the scientific method is superior by far to all others for gaining accurate knowledge.I also continue to believe you're doing a great disservice to uninformed laypeople by encouraging them toward unscientific approaches.--Percy

He has also been published in The Lancet and the American Journal of Psychiatry. These were studies involving niacin. He hasn't changed his fields of study since he started publishing in his own journals. Linus Pauling got studies published in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine as well. Here is what Wikipedia says about Hoffer's reasons for his decisions: If I read you right, you will say that he was a crank who was rightly ignored. I see him as a humanitarian who was deeply frustrated, as Pauling was, that an establishment increasingly interested in the biological psychiatric approach was ignoring the positive work he was doing in orthomolecular medicine. The "advancements" being . . . more drugs? None of them cure schizophrenia, and neuroleptics can cause some terrible side effects, such as TD. People here seem to be dismissing TD. It is quite common on those drugs. I'll repeat what I said in another post: if a drug is capable of causing this in patients, it should be banned. It is a horrendous affliction for anyone to deal with.Back when lobotomies were in vogue, would you have been arguing in favour of those because they were tried and tested? The mentally ill have been, and continue to be, given "treatments" that are capable of causing severe and permanent damage. ECT is still legal too, and still recommended to people. And I work with many people who have seen whole decades of their lives destroyed by psychiatric drugs. I wish the two groups could meet. When you research a new drug, do you ever pause to think about the people out there who will suffer severe reactions from it -- for the greater good? Do they not matter as long as the statistics are small enough?You criticise me for giving anecdotes; I presume you have given some yourself in an attempt to beat me at my own game? I'm not familiar with the case but there are certainly aspects of it that wouldn't apply to my own methodology. Let me explain.If I had physical symptoms, I might well decide to go to my GP and ask for some tests. If I had cancer then presumably mainstream medicine has some good ways of diagnosing it; I don't know, fortunately neither I nor my family have had that experience. But in order to treat it, I would not accept chemotherapy unless it was absolutely the last resort.Naturopathy says that cancer cells appear quite commonly in the body, and that a healthy immune system is able to attack and kill them. It's when something goes wrong with the immune system that the cancer grows. In order to heal, the immune system needs a boost. I would expect to take very large amounts of vitamin C, preferably intravenously, and couple it with a good diet. I would want to be under the care of a naturopath with a good track record, who can monitor my progress and suggest changes to my regime as necessary. I would want this person to be an MD who also has knowledge of nutritional medicine.So I would be very picky about whom I put my trust in. I am skeptical about very many people who claim to practice naturopathic medicine and I want them to have the same knowledge as my GP, plus more, before I put them in charge of my or my family's health. With those qualifications, they would not make the mistakes of the ND in your anecdote; they would have proper tests performed. I could list you 100 cases of what psychiatric meds have done to people on the lists I belong to, and how they are healing with the advice of my ND. Let's not have a war of anecdotes here, it's a waste of time and nobody else would be interested.BTW I couldn't figure out how "diet" was involved in the anecdote you gave, the details aren't there. And if anyone told me that all I had to do to cure myself was take a herbal concoction, I would consider them a charlatan. I'm at a loss for words. This is deeply disturbing. I mean this rhetorically, I don't expect a reply, but have you ever taken an SSRI yourself? Have you experienced what it does to your brain and body? I think it's ludicrous that anyone would want to prescribe it for physical ailments. No, not everyone will experience side effects, but many will. And I think it would be a rare person who experienced no mental effects at all. SSRIs by their very nature are mind-altering substances.I had IBS. I got attacks that were so bad that I was completely laid up for 24 hours at a time, and vomited whenever I tried to get up. The pain was excruciating. I ended up in the ER once, and I saw a consultant as an outpatient. None of this helped me. They gave me drugs that did no good. I lived in terror of the next attack because they were unpredictable.I no longer have IBS. It's been a couple of years since the last attack. I changed my diet and it was gone. It sends a chill down my spine to think that at some point, someone might have offered me an SSRI for it. By the way, I don't get headaches anymore either, or indigestion. It's all gone.Lastly, if you want to discuss ADHD or overmedication, I would ask you not to start a new topic just now, because I won't go there until I'm finished here. You started the Poltergeist thread and while I'm enjoying that (and learning a lot), I find I'm spending a huge amount of my time here trying to defend my views. My house needs cleaning from top to bottom and I've got other things I need to do. While I'm here at the computer, life is passing me by LOL.

There’s plenty of evidence that doctors get it wrong too often, and sometimes people say
doctors do the right thing only about half the time. I’ll let you do the Googling to find out. But I am probably wrong about generalizing such statistics across the entire med establishment. I can’t prove that they are wrong half the time. So, you may be more right about this than I am. Do you have any statistics to offer?Still, I have personal experiences to consider, which led me to make the statement you have criticized. These bad experiences, involving either myself or people I know or knew, were pretty bad; at least four people have lost their lives as a result. Those cases were associated variously with wrong diagnoses, treatments, and prescriptions. Most recently one of my closest friends allowed his doctor to insert radiation pellets in his cancerous prostate, which eventually gave rise to 26 cancerous polyps in his bladder. "Over-radiation," they say. Now he has neither his prostate nor his bladder and he's asking if he should have taken that medical advice or just let nature take its course. He's probably going to die either way.But as I have said elsewhere, many doctors are well intentioned and try to do the right thing. Many are saints for their dedication to helping people. Yet the profit motives or their clinics and pharmaceutical companies, not to mention those greedy lawyers and insurance companies, often confound the practice of medicine more than improve it.You can form your own opinions and make your own choices about going to doctors. I have done likewise. And I'll try to stay away from them until some dire situation befalls me. Then I may have to eat my words and go get their dubious services.”HM

I've not seen any different, they are the same molecule. I've seen something similar, and I think this is a criticism primarily at Vitamin E (Tocopherol). My chemistry is not strong enough to completely follow the argument, but I can say that Vitamin E comes in 8 naturally occurring flavours. If you were to buy it, wiki advises you would get either

• Fully synthetic vitamin E, "d, l-alpha-tocopherol", the most inexpensive, most commonly sold supplement form usually as the acetate ester;
• Semi-synthetic "natural source" vitamin E esters, the "natural source" forms used in tablets and multiple vitamins; highly fractionated natural d-alpha tocopherol
• Less fractionated "natural mixed tocopherols" and high gamma-tocopherol fraction supplements
  

I'm not sure if similar things should be mentioned with regard to the other vitamins, but I'm almost certain that it doesn't come into the equation with Vitamin C.I imagine that their interaction with light would differ, but that would be because their properties differ.

I see your point. It's a good one. And you seem to have a personal experience with the med-pharm complex that was positive. The way you phrase your challenge is also good. Yes, you're right. We need the drug industry and the doctors and the check and balances our society offers.But I still object to the commercial side of the med-pharm complex. It promotes a dependence culture as it profiteers on people's willingness to find the easy way out...beaches at sunset, hand in hand, Viagra in his pocket...he'll be hard when he needs to be (...but if his erection lasts too long, so as to be a walking hazard, he'll need to go see a doctor right away). Is this really a good thing for men? No, it's downright unnatural. I can't image how Tarzan could have swung on any vines after using Viagra.Maybe I'm the only one who worries about where the American body-and-mind is evolving. I have to agree with those who think we might be entering a post-Darwinian phase in our evolution, and our growing reliance on drugs may be part of that. Don't you think we ought to question the values that are forced upon us by capitalism?”HM

I object to many evils, but I cannot see any alternatives that are less evil. Still - perhaps the difference comes from the differences in our culture. Capitalism seems much bigger in the states. And before Big Pharma, mankind didn't look for aphrodisiacs? I'm afraid the hunt for aphrodisiacs is completely natural. The difference is that getting Viagra doesn't involve killing rhinos or bull elephants.Oh - and it works.Also - I'm fairly sure there is still a billion dollar industry in 'natural' viagras. Edited by Modulous, : No reason given.

You are quite right, Mod. Entantiomers are different structures. They have different chirality (aka handedness).Chiral molecules have different chemical properties.Just as different as H2O:H202 (water:hydrogen peroxide).Almost all important molecules are chiral: amino acids, sugars, DNA. In order to be "handed", a molecule has to have 4 different "groups" attached to a central molecule.Vitamin C can be chiral, but it isn't industrially produced in a racemic mixture ( a mixture of D and L forms). For one very important reason.The D enantiomer of vitamin C shows no biological activity whatsoever.Viamins E, D3 and K can be chiral and when industrially manufactured, can be racemic mixtures.

A pubmed search reveals nothing. Cites, please. Lindalou, stop for a minute. Think about this. The man published his work in the 60s.If his work (from the 70s on) were publishable (that is, if it stood up to scrutiny in any way) his work would have continued to be published in repsected journals.Just as Dr. Pauling's controversial work was published.The need for this quack to start his own journal speaks to his bankrupt ideas, not his persecution.Believe it or not, controversial work is published all the time.Just one example: Granted, this was the result of a bone headed error.But it illustrates my point.Research is vetted even after it's published. Dr. Pauling's frustration should offer you a clue as to the effectiveness (and importance) of peer review.Journals didn't publishing Dr. Pauling's work "just because" he was a respected scientist.They published (some of) his vitamin C work because it stood up to scrutiny.I found 20 of Dr. Pauling's vitamin C papers listed on pubmed.His work, however, was heavily criticized. You'll notice that his claims were taken seriously and tested extensively ... and found to be lacking.(btw. Before you start in on Dr. Barrett. There are over 2800 papers re: vitamin C and cancer.)An interesting side note: So much for BigPharma not dumping BigBucks on vitamin research.Another interesting side note: Any honest scientist would report significant negative findings.Dr. Robinson's results were published.Mech Ageing Dev. 1994 Oct 20;76(2-3):201-14.
Suppression of squamous cell carcinoma in hairless mice by dietary nutrient variation.Experientia. 1976;32(7):848-9.
Degradation of encephalitogenic protein in aerobic ascorbic acid solutions.Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1973 Jul;70(7):2122-3.
Acceleration of the rate of deamidation of GlyArgAsnArgGly and of human transferrin by addition of L-ascorbic acid.Dr. Pauling's negative results were not published.Not only did Dr. Pauling suppress negative findings, he testified on the behalf of quacks. The mark of a True Believer. You know, penicillin has serious side effects. Up to and including death.To reject a medication because it can have a serious side effect in a small percentage of patients is to reject all medication. Huh. No more penicillin for you! Lobotomies (of a sort) are still performed.Neurosurgery for psychiatric disorders: from the excision of brain tissue to the chronic electrical stimulation of neural networks.
Acta Neurochir Suppl. 2007;97(Pt 2):365-74. J. Child Neurol. 2007 Apr;22(4):456-61.
Differentiating between benign and less benign: epilepsy surgery in symptomatic frontal lobe epilepsy associated with benign focal epileptiform discharges of childhood. I suppose you object to these procedures as well.The rest of your post is more anecdotal "evidence".As such, it isn't worth commenting on.I will say, however, that you ignored an important comment I made in my last post.I am trained to think thru the principles behind any given claim made in a paper.I don't simply accept a paper's conclusions based on its publication in a respected journal.No research scientist does.One final note: Ah yes. A waste of money.

1. Beta-carotene facilitates carcinogenesis. The carcinogenic response in lung tissue to high-dose beta-carotene supplementation reported in the human intervention trials is caused by the instability of beta-carotene in the free radical-rich environment in the lungs, particularly in cigarette smokers.Procarcinogenic and anticarcinogenic effects of beta-carotene. Nutr Rev. 1999:57:263-72.2. Iodine is essential for thyroid function. Yet supplementing with iodine can do more harm than good. High iodine intake can permit thyroid tissue damage as a result of low thyroidal GSH-Px activity during thyroid stimulation.Dietary Iodine and selenium interact to affect thyroid hormone metabolism of rats. J Nutr. 1997;127:1214-8.3. The homocysteine raising effects of niacin have been noted in human studies. In a multicenter randomized, placebo-controlled trial, the effects of niacin compared with placebo on homocysteine levels in a subset of 52 participants with peripheral arterial disease were examined. During the screening phase, titration of niacin dose from 100 mg to 1000mg daily resulted in a 17% increase in mean plasma homocysteine level from 13.1 to 15.3 micromol/L. At 18 weeks after randomization, there was an absolute 55% increase from baseline in mean plasma homocysteine levels in the niacin group and a 7% decrease in the placebo group.Elevated homocysteine is a known risk factor for the development of cardiovascular problems and the build-up of unwanted material in blood vessels, such as plaque. Some studies have shown that for each 5 micromoles per liter increase in homocysteine level, your risk for heart challenges may increase by as much as 60 to 80%.Niacin treatment increases plasma homocyst(e)ine levels. Am Heart J. 1999;138:1082-7.4. High dose vitamin A "therapy" has well known phototoxicity and photomutagenicity effects. Such intakes are associated with greatly increased exposure to toxic metabolites of vitamin A such as retinyl palmitate, 13-cis-retinoic acid, and 13-cis-4-oxo-retinoic acid.Exposure to retinoic acids in non-pregnant women following high vitamin A intake with a liver meal, Int J Vitam Nutr Res 75 (2005), pp. 187-194.5. High dose vitamin A "therapy" during pregnancy leads to retinoic acid syndrome. This includes defects of the craniofacies (small or absent external ears and auditory canals, cleft palate micrognathia, low-set ears), central nervous system (micro- or anophthalmia, cerebellar or cortical defects, microcephaly), thymus, and cardiovascular system (transposition of the heart vessels, aortic arch hypoplasia, ventricular septal defects).WHO (1994). Assessing human health risks of chemicals: derivation of guidance values for health-based exposure limits.
Environmental Health Criteria, 170.6. High dose vitamin A "therapy" leads to bone loss.Excessive dietary intake of vitamin A is associated with reduced bone mineral density and increased risk of hip fracture.
Ann Intern Med 1998;129:770-8.7. Manganese is highly neurotoxic in megadoses.J-Appl-Toxicol. 2000 May-Jun; 20(3): 179-87
Neurotoxicity of manganese chloride in neonatal and adult CD rats following subchronic (21-day) high-dose oral exposure.8. High dose iron "therapy" produces ocular toxicity (damage/loss of vision). Not to mention nausea and vomiting.Haematologica. 1991 Mar-Apr;76(2):131-4.
Toxic effects of high-dose deferoxamine treatment in patients with iron overload: an electrophysiological study of cerebral and visual function.9. High does vitamin C "therapy" can lead to renal failure.Renal failure secondary to massive infusion of vitamin C.
JAMA 252:1684, 1984.10. High dose "therapy" of beta carotene leads to orange discoloration of skin, weakness, low blood pressure, and low white cell count. Supplemental beta-carotene may increase the risk of lung cancer, prostate cancer, intracerebral hemorrhage, and cardiovascular and total mortality in people who smoke cigarettes.Effects of beta-carotene supplementation on azoxymethane-induced colon carcinogenesis.
Biofactors. 2006;27(1-4):137-46.11. High dose zinc "therapy" leads to genitourinary problems.High dose zinc increases hospital admissions due to genitourinary complications.
J Urol. 2007 Feb;177(2):639-43.12. High dose copper "therapy" results in fatigue, poor memory, depression, insomnia, increased production of free radicals, and suppressed immune function. Not to mention violent vomiting and diarrhea.The effect of copper supplementation in humans on plasma lipids, antioxidant status and thrombogenesis.
J Am Coll Nutr. 2006 Aug;25(4):285-91....You know, I could research the adverse effects of calcium, chromium, folic acid, iodine, magnesium, B5, phosphorous, potassium, B6, and selenium.All have well documented toxic effects.But I think you get the picture, right, Lindalou?

I'll risk the wrath of an Admin for saying that my youngest grandson's kindergarten teachers give the kids Happy Bucks for being good. And then the kids get to go spend their Happy Bucks at the Happy Mall. That's a play shopping mall where their rewards can buy them the things they want in make-believe capitalism. When I complanied to my daughter about this she said: "Dad, we live in a capitalistic country! What do expect? Get over it!"Sorry for veering.”HM

I feel about the same, having been a research scientist myself. If authors will tell me upfront and unambiguously what key principles and assumptions have led them to their conclusions I'll take their findings for a ride. And many if not most research scientists will enlist numerous publications from respected journals to support their conclusions. But if they happen to use bad ones somebody's going to spot them and their arguments will suffer. In the labs and firms where I worked the internal peer-review systems were so severe that no paper ever got to any respected journal without a harsh wire brushing.But now I like to run with just about anything...like tsetse-fly genes in your genome.”HM

I would like to draw an analogy.As I grazed ScienceBlogs this evening, look what I found in the comments section of tsmith | ScienceBlogs ... Crank "scientist" with book?
Check.Accusations of "conflict of interest"?
Check.Protestations that "more studies need to be done"?
Check.Halfassed "understanding" of the biochemical processes involved?
Check.Remind anybody of anything?

I have a question for you Molbiogirl. You're keeping me very busy by pulling chunks off of the Quackwatch site, posting them here, and expecting me to respond. Do you attempt to verify anything Barrett says for yourself? This is feeling very similar to debates I have had with creationists. They pull chunks off of AiG and say "There, it's true because Duane Gish (or whoever else) says so." And then, being a non-scientist, I end up spending hours having to painstakingly do the research for myself and explain how this is wrong. Only to be answered with another chunk of text.You are an intelligent person. Why are you letting Barrett do your thinking for you? Look at his page on Pauling; look at the language. This is a person with a propagandist agenda. "No responsible medical or nutrition scientists share these views." His definition of "responsible" equating with "mainstream," no doubt. "NHF promotes the gamut of quackery." Do you know who the NHF are? Do you care? Trust Barrett because he does, right? ". . . his late-in-life beliefs in vitamin megadoses have been thoroughly discredited." That is what he would like you to believe.You are getting all of this through the filter of Stephen Barrett, and you're OK with that because you trust him. Do you also trust that he is not cherry-picking the facts he presents, and the studies? That he is not leaving out any information which does not support his claims? Or even that he is not lying? How do you actually know?So you're not happy with Hoffer. I've been citing Pauling and Hoffer here because they are the two figures in orthomolecular medicine with whom I am most familiar. There are others. Pauling was not the first to study vitamin C and its effects with the common cold. He cites quite a number of other people who did this work before him in his book. You can see some details about the work of other scientists into vitamin C and other vitamins here. Do you want to attempt a demolition job on them too? Or are you going to decide to be open at any point to the idea that these people might have had something useful to say? Do you consider anyone who has ideas about using anything other than conventional drug therapy a quack?I found an interesting abstract on an article in JSTOR called "The Politics of Therapeutic Evaluation: The Vitamin C and Cancer Controversy." Unfortunately I can't read the full text without paying, but possibly you would have open access. Here is an excerpt: Conventional drug therapy, and the biological model of psychiatry, are king. All challengers are mere pretenders. I find this to be a rather closed-minded attitude.You have found some information on the Mayo Clinic's clinical vitamin C trials which claimed to have reproduced Pauling's methods exactly, but which did not repeat his results. It looks like you got this from Quackwatch. This is a case in point for why you should not blindly trust everything Barrett says. The Mayo Clinic did not reproduce Pauling's methods exactly, in at least one crucial way. The patients on the Cameron-Pauling protocol were given vitamin C not only orally, but also intravenously. An April 2004 study by NIH showed that much more vitamin C gets taken up when it is given intravenously rather than orally. Blood concentrations were found to be 6.6 times higher, and plasma concentrations 60 times higher. This study concluded that The efficacy of vitamin C treatment cannot be judged from clinical trials that use only oral dosing. You can read the details here, in an article titled "War on Cancer." Look here on PubMed and you will find a wealth of studies by Padayatty and Levine. I am becoming more aware all the time that contemporary research supporting the use of large doses of vitamin C does exist. If I can find it, you can. My guess is that you are not looking. I thought you weren't bothered about who funds clinical studies? When I've pointed out that clinical drug trials are almost always sponsored by the companies that make the drugs, you didn't seem to mind. Why are you (or, I should, say Barrett, where this came from yet again) bothered about the Pauling Institute getting funding from a vitamin C manufacturer?What's more, there's more to it than this. I don't know who continues to fund the Linus Pauling Institute, but the Hoffmann firm's vitamins division was bought by a Dutch firm called DSM in 2002. Hoffmann seems to have been more focused on its pharmaceutical division anyway, as the manufacturer of the benzodiazepines Librium and Valium. In 1970 they reported that 2/3 of their sales came from drugs, mainly these two. 1/4 of their sales were from the supply of bulk vitamins, of which vitamin C was a part. This is hardly a firm whose financial survival depended on vitamin C. What's more, the Linus Pauling Institute resorted to this kind of funding because it failed to obtain the government funding it was hoping to receive. The money had to come from somewhere. Finally, the institute is criticised today for not remaining true to Pauling's theories about vitamin C, and it is also using very small amounts in studies. There are other groups that claim to be more accurately following on with his work.I spent a lot of time finding all this out, because of a quote mined from Quackwatch. I honestly have to say I feel a little resentful.About the dispute between Pauling and Robinson. I have attempted to find more of the facts but have been unsuccessful. Maybe the only one who really knows now is Robinson himself. Yes it sounds like Pauling's conduct was deplorable, but I hesitate to make judgements without knowing more of the facts. It is possible that Robinson's work honestly was flawed. I can't look up the studies of his that you cited here to see what his methodology was; and even if I could, I would need an honest interpretation from someone who understood it because I am not a biochemist. All I can say here is I simply don't know.However, as I said, the studies you cited are not the death-knell for the study of vitamin C. It carries on today. Here are some studies I found. This one concludes that [Vitamin c's] administration in moderate to high doses may protect against atherosclerosis and hypertension. This is an article that talks about how vitamin C can inhibit the growth of some tumors. The PubMed study can be found if you type "Chi Dang vitamin C" (can't make the link to the study work for some reason.)Here is what my ND says about vitamin C studies and Stephen Barrett. To address some of your final comments: TD does not appear in a "small percentage" of patients taking neuroleptics. Breggin's quoted estimates of its occurrence, with citations, can be found in Message 8. I shouldn't have to have any. I haven't had more than a sniffle since I started megadosing vitamin C two years ago (neither has my little girl). These aren't the same operational procedures that were used several decades ago to "treat" the mentally ill. I am not a doctor, I don't honestly know anything about brain surgery, and I cannot comment on the examples you have given here. I know, though, that I would not want myself or any of my loved ones to undergo psychosurgery unless it was the absolutely last resort, and it would have to be in utter desperation. I don't personally feel these people know enough about the brain to fully understand the effects of what is being done and I would be worried about brain damage, maybe which isn't immediately obvious. Then why do you not verify Barrett's claims yourself? Your skepticism does not appear to be applied to his website. I haven't been debating natural vs. synthetic vitamins with you. This is not an issue for me regarding vitamin C.

I am getting very weary of these lists of clinical studies. Tell me. Did you read the abstracts of any of them before you cut and pasted them here? Do you know why any of these studies were conducted? Why these particular doses of these substances would be given to anyone, what the circumstances would be? What were the amounts of the vitamins and minerals used, and in what form? Do you know? Do you care? This is all important information. When you show an interest in actually looking in detail at one of these studies, I will be willing to engage in a more detailed discussion.I am tired of going to Pubmed to refute link for link with you. It is clear that your agenda is to mine the site for as many links that sound like they're a condemnation of orthomolecular medicine as possible. I have no doubt that if I spent more of my time searching, I could find positive studies, but I'm beginning to think that this is a waste of time. I've done enough of it. My family is pissed off at me for spending so much time on the computer as it is. Go to Orthomolecular.org. Evaluate what is being said there. Educate yourself.To address your list again, I don't know why these substances would be given in large amounts, apart from the niacin. Anyone who gives iron in large amounts, if there in no anaemia present, is an idiot. There might be good clinical reasons for giving some of these other things but that is knowledge my ND has, not me. Vitamin A has a known toxicity limit, and a lot can depend on the form in which it is taken. The vitamins that are most commonly taken in large amounts are C, E, and the B vitamins. I don't see anything here regarding those apart from your niacin citation. And again, I have no idea of the methodology of that study. Why don't you go to PubMed and find other studies there that use niacin and see what they were about? Try to honestly evaluate what's going on without trying to use one study as proof that the whole idea is wrong. Do the same for vitamin C. If the positive studies are there to be found, I think you need to be aware of them before you criticise.Edited by LindaLou, : No reason given.