Clinical Procedures in Treating Terminally Ill Cancer Patients with Vitamin C
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Clinical Procedures in Treating Terminally Ill Cancer Patients with Vitamin C Abram Hoffer, M.D., Ph.D.1 Let me tell you what I am not. I am not an cut down the production of adrenalin, and if we oncologist, I'm not a pathologist, I'm not a GP, I could also prevent the oxidation of adrenalin to am a psychiatrist. Therefore you may want to adrenochrome, then we might have a therapy for know what a psychiatrist is doing messing about our patients. And that immediately led us to look with cancer. I think that's a legitimate question so at two chemicals. One is called nicotinic acid or I'd like to tell you briefly how I got into this very vitamin B3. Vitamin B3 is known to be a methyl interesting field. acceptor, which, by depleting the body of its In 1951, I was made director of psychiatric methyl groups could cut down the conversion of research for the Department of Health for the noradrenaline to adrenalin and that would be province of Saskatchewan. I didn't really know helpful, we thought. Secondly, we wanted to use what to do. I had one major advantage, I think, vitamin C as an antioxidant. Looking back now it over my colleagues. I didn't know any seems that we were 30 or 40 years ahead of psychiatry. You may laugh but that's very antioxidant theories. We wanted to decrease the important because I didn't have anyone who oxidation of adrenaline to adrenochrome. could tell me what we could not do. The most Vitamin C will do it but not very effectively. important problem at that time was the And that drew our attention to these two schizophrenias. (They still take up half the vitamins, vitamin C and vitamin B3. I had an hospital beds, and we still don't have an effective advantage because I had taken my Ph.D. at the treatment.) Dr. Humphry Osmond and I began to University of Minnesota on vitamins, so I knew research schizophrenia. We developed the their background. That's why we started working hypothesis that those with schizophrenia were with these two compounds. producing a toxic chemical made from adrenalin, Why did we start working with cancer? We adrenochrome. Adrenochrome is an hallucinogen were very curious about what these compounds which we felt was producing toxemia, in the would do. I recall that in 1952 when I was sense that the adrenochrome worked on the brain working as a resident in psychiatry at the Munroe in the same way as LSD. That was our Wing which was a part of the General Hospital hypothesis. in Regina, a woman who had her breast removed We knew that most hypotheses turn out to be for cancer was admitted to our ward. She was wrong. We didn't think we were going to be psychotic. This poor lady had developed a huge correct but we felt that since we didn't have ulcerated lesion, she wasn't healing, and she was much choice we ought to work with it and we in a toxic delirium. Her psychiatrist decided that also wanted to develop a treatment for our he would give her shock treatment, which was schizophrenic patients. Those were the days the only treatment available at that time. I before tranquilizers. We didn't have any effective decided I would like to give her vitamin C treatment. We had shock treatment which was instead. As director of research, I had the option only temporarily helpful and insulin coma was of going to the physicians and asking them if I going out of style. could do this with their patients. A friend of mine Adrenochrome is made from adrenalin, so we was her doctor and he said, "Yes, you can have thought if we could do something to her." He said, "I'll withold shock treatment for three days." I had thought that I would give her 1. 3A - 2727 Quadra Street, Victoria, B.C., Canada V8T 4E5. three grams 155 Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine Vol. 6, Nos. 3 & 4, 1991 per day, which was our usual dose at that time, for terminal list. I discovered that he was on our a period of weeks, but when he told me I could ward, so I though he may have some mauve have three days only, I decided that this would not factor in his urine. On analysis he revealed huge do. Therefore, I decided to give her one gram quantities. I had discovered by then that if we every hour. I instructed the nurses that she was to gave large amounts of B3 along with vitamin C to be given a gram per hour except when she was these patients, regardless of their diagnosis, they sleeping. When she awakened, she would get the tended to do very well. He was started on three vitamin C that she had missed. We started her on grams per day each of nicotinic acid and ascorbic a Saturday morning and when her doctor came acid on a Friday. On Monday he was found to be back on Monday morning to start shock treatment normal. A few days later I said to him, "You she was mentally normal. I wanted to know, if understand that you have cancer?" He said, "Yes, vitamin C would have any therapeutic effect. To I know that." He was friendly with me because I our amazement her lesion on her breast began to had treated his wife for alcoholism some time heal. She was discharged, mentally well, still before. I said to him, "If you will agree to take having cancer and she died six months later from these two vitamins as long as you live, I will her cancer. This was an interesting observation provide them for you at no charge. In 1960, I was which I had made at that time and which I had the only doctor in Canada that had access to large never forgotten. quantities of vitamin C and niacin. They were There was another root to this interest. In 1959, distributed through our hospital dispensary. He we found that the majority of schizophrenic agreed. That meant he had to come to my office patients excreted in their urine a factor that we every month in order to pick up two bottles of call the mauve factor, which we have since vitamins. I didn't know that it might help his identified as kryptopyrrole. I was looking for a cancer. I was interested only in his psychological good source of this urinary factor. We had state. However, to my amazement he didn't die. thought that the majority of schizophrenics had it. After 12 months, I was having lunch with the We thought that normal people did not have it but director of the cancer clinic, a friend of mine, and I was interested in determining how many people I said to him, "What do you think about this who were stressed also had the factor. Therefore, man?" And he said, "We can't understand it, we I ran a study of patients from the University can't see the tumor any more." I thought he'd say, Hospital who were on the physical wards. They "Well, isn't that great." So I asked, "Well, what's had all sorts of physical conditions including your reaction?" He responded, "We are beginning cancer. I found to my amazement that half the to think we made the wrong diagnosis." The people with lung cancer also excreted the same patient died, 30 months after I first saw him, of a factor. By 1960, a very famous gentleman of coronary. Saskatchewan, one of the professors retired and Here's another case that is very interesting. A was admitted to the psychiatric department at our couple of years later, a mother I had treated for hospital. He was psychotic. He had been depression came back to see me. Once more she diagnosed as having a bronchogenic carcinoma. It was depressed. She said she had a daughter 16, had been biopsied and was visualized in the x-ray who had just been diagnosed as having an and it had also been seen in the bronchoscope. osteogenic sarcoma of the arm. Her surgeon had While they were deciding what to do, he became recommended that the arm be amputated. She was psychotic so they concluded that he had very depressed over this and so I asked her, "Do secondaries in his brain. Because he became you think you can persuade your surgeon not to psychotic, he was no longer operable and instead amputate the arm right away?" And I told her the they gave him cobalt radiation. It didn't help the story about the man with the lung cancer. She psychosis any. He was admitted to our ward brought her daughter in and I started her on where he stayed for about two months, niacinamide, 3 grams per day, plus vitamin C, completely psychotic. He was placed on the three grams per day. She made a complete 156 Clinical Procedures in Treating Terminally Ill Cancer Patients with Vitamin C recovery and is still well, not having had to have unusual but I think it is. The last case I'm going to surgery. But this time I concluded that maybe B3 give details of was born in 1908. His mother died was the therapeutic factor. The reason for that, of of cancer and his father had a coronary at the age course, is very simple.