Chapter 2

CURING, REVERSING, AND
PREVENTING INFECTIOUS DISEASES

Everything that is written in books is worth much

less than the experience of one physician who

reflects and reasons.

 

Rbazes (850-923 A.D.)

Paving the Way: Frederick R. Klenner, M.D.

 

Even today only a very small number of medical researchers and clinicians completely appreciate the enormous benefit that can be obtained for a wide variety of infections and diseases by the proper use of what is considered very large doses of vitamin C. Frederick R. Klenner, M.D. led the way in both advocating and using the routine administration of these high doses of vitamin C for a wide variety of diseases, many of them infectious. Although primarily a clinical doctor rather than an institution-based researcher, Klenner also managed to publish at least 20 significant papers that documented the successful outcomes that he repeatedly achieved with many patients in Reidsville, North Carolina (see references at the end of this chapter).

After obtaining bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology, Klenner went on to earn his medical degree from Duke University in 1936. He spent three more years in postgraduate training before deciding to go into the general practice of medicine. It was only in the late 1930s and early 1940s that vitamin C became readily available and economically affordable as a pharmaceutical. In his early medical practice Klenner subjected only himself to the initial large doses that he would later use on his patients. He then proceeded to use similarly large doses on his patients, and the results were absolutely unprecedented.

 

Polio (Curable and Preventable)

 

Although the viral syndrome known as polio is seen only very infrequently in the United States anymore, it still takes a substantial toll in some of the poorer countries around the world. However, even though the terror that polio inflicted on so many babies and children was at its peak about 50 years ago, many individuals in the younger generation who did not see its effects firsthand still appreciate that it was (and is) considered an incurable disease. In fact, the 21^st edition (copyright 2000) of the Cecil Textbook of Medicine clearly asserts that “no specific treatment is available” for polio, adding that “supportive care” is essential for dealing with pain and increasing the chances of survival. Both the general public and the medical specialists share the view that polio has to “run its course” if it cannot be prevented by vaccination or otherwise avoided. It is also generally appreciated that many of the polio victims fortunate enough to survive the acute infection have to subsequently endure a lifetime of being crippled to a lesser or greater degree. A great deal of the public awareness of this disease also stems from the vivid images of our polio-stricken former president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who struggled greatly to be seen in his wheelchair as little as possible in public. President Roosevelt’s condition also made it clear to the public that polio and its crippling side effects were not limited to only babies and small children, but included unfortunate adults as well.

The data demonstrating the ability of vitamin C to cure polio is of worldwide concern, since polio outbreaks still occur. From August 16 to October 17, 2000, 33 cases of “acute flaccid paralysis” considered to be secondary to polio were reported in Cape Verde (MMWR, 2000). From July 12, 2000 to February 8, 2001, 12 “laboratory-confirmed poliomyelitis cases” were reported in the Dominican Republic (MMWR, 2001). These latter cases were attributed to “vaccine-derived poliovirus type 1.” Regardless of the cause, however, polio continues to infect babies and children, and doctors must be prepared to treat these patients with the best therapy available.

When I first came across Klenner’s work on polio patients, I was absolutely amazed and even a bit overwhelmed at what I read. I had already worked on a number of different medical conditions with large intravenous doses of vitamin C, so I was not completely surprised by the fact that the poliovirus could be easily eradicated by vitamin C. However, I was not prepared to easily deal with the spectrum of emotions that would grip me. To know that polio had been easily cured and so many babies, children, and some adults still continued to die or survive to be permanently crippled by this virus was extremely difficult to accept. As a child, I swallowed the little sugar cube polio vaccination along with all of my elementary school buddies, and we all prayed the same prayer, hoping against hope that the virus bogeyman wouldn’t attack us as we slept.

Even more incredibly, Klenner briefly presented a summarization of his work on polio at the Annual Session of the American Medical Association on June 10, 1949 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Galloway and Seifert (1949) reported on Klenner and the other presenters in their article in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Landwehr (1991) discussed this occasion and commented on its possible significance. Klenner’s comments followed an extensive presentation on the best-known ways to support the ability of advanced polio patients to continue breathing. Klenner made the following remarks:

 

It might be interesting to learn how poliomyelitis was treated in Reidsville, N.C., during the 1948 epidemic. In the past seven years, virus infections have been treated and cured in a period of seventy-two hours by the employment of massive frequent injections of ascorbic acid, or vitamin C. I believe that if vitamin C in these massive doses—6,000 to 20,000 mg in a twenty-four hour period—is given to these patients with poliomyelitis none will be paralyzed and there will be no further maiming or epidemics of poliomyelitis.

 

One doctor made comments before Klenner, and four doctors made comments following him. The four doctors who commented after Klenner did not have anything to say about his assertions. They were only concerned with making their own observations about how a polio patient who had difficulty breathing could best be assisted and given a better chance to survive.

Although Klenner managed to publish his landmark article only a month later, which documented his cure of 60 out of 60 cases of polio during the 1948 polio epidemic, his comments at the Annual Session apparently were little heeded and quickly forgotten. Perhaps his results were just too fantastic to be believed.

In the journal Southern Medicine & Surgery Klenner (July 1949) gave an in-depth accounting of his impressive treatment and results on polio patients. He noted that all 60 of his patients presented with all or almost all of the same signs and symptoms during the epidemic: fever of 101^oF to 104.6^oF, headache and pain behind the eyes, bloodshot eyes, reddened throat, nausea, vomiting, constipation, and pain between the shoulder blades, in the back of the neck, in the lower back, and in one or more limbs. Fifteen cases had confirmatory spinal taps, and eight had been in contact with another proven case of polio, helping to confirm the clinical diagnoses. Spinal taps were generally avoided since they were felt to promote the access of the blood-borne virus into the nervous system through the puncture site. Also, with the sameness of symptoms occurring during an acknowledged epidemic of polio, spinal taps were not justifiable for diagnosis. Even if a skeptical reader does not think that all 60 of the patients had polio, there is no question that the vast majority of them did indeed have the disease.

After diagnosis, Klenner promptly initiated the massive vitamin C therapy. He even noted that the administration of the vitamin was much like that of an ordinary antibiotic. For children and babies under the age of four, the vitamin C was given as an intramuscular injection. The initial dose varied between 1,000 and 2,000 mg (one or two grams). Body temperature was utilized as a practical guide to continuing treatment, and the same dose was repeated in two hours if no drop in fever had been observed. If the temperature did show a clear drop, the next dose was held back for another two hours. This dosing schedule was followed strictly for the first 24 hours. Klenner noted that the presenting fevers were consistently down after the first 24 hours, and vitamin C was then given at the same dose but only every six hours. This dosing schedule was continued for 48 more hours. Klenner noted that all of the patients were clinically well after this 72-hour period of treatment. However, when three patients had a subsequent clinical relapse of symptoms, Klenner decided it was best to continue the vitamin C administration for all of the patients under treatment at the same dosage for an additional 48 hours. During this final 48-hour period, vitamin C was dosed at either eight-hour or 12-hour intervals, and a complete and permanent resolution of the symptoms resulted. It is also very significant to note that none of the 60 patients treated by Klenner had any of the residual deformities so characteristic of many polio survivors. It would appear that the cure of all 60 polio patients was complete and absolute.

Klenner even noted that two of the patients already had advanced disease to the point where fluids were coming back through the nose. This was a symptom that typically heralded the progression of the disease to the point that breathing support would be required, and the chance of deformity and even death would be significantly increased. However, the recoveries of these two patients were also complete.

Klenner (September 1956) also published some of his clinical observations on the use of vitamin C to treat polio in two older patients. One 21-year-old woman presented with deep eye pain, leg pain in the hamstring area, pain in the neck and lower back, and a general desire to keep her entire body in a fixed position to avoid painful movements. She had a fever that reached 104.6^oF, along with a sore throat that had relapsed after an initial treatment with antibiotics, aspirin, and fruit juice two weeks earlier. It is interesting to note that the small amounts of vitamin C in the fruit juice may very well have kept the symptoms from evolving more quickly and definitively. In any event, Klenner felt the clinical diagnosis of polio was straightforward, and this 118-pound patient was immediately given 22,000 mg of vitamin C by slow intravenous injection with a 100 cc syringe. She then took 1,500 mg of vitamin C with juice every two hours at home. Twelve hours later she was free of her headache and had a fever of only 101.4^oF. Klenner then gave her another 22,000 mg injection of vitamin C. There was some nausea and vomiting for the next 30 minutes, but after 24 hours she had a temperature of 100.8^oF, with definite clinical improvement noted. Seven 18,000 mg injections of vitamin C were then given every 12 hours. Then five 10,000 mg injections were given every other day. Oral vitamin C was continued for an additional week at 1,500 mg every three to four hours. Klenner noted that the patient had an almost complete elimination of pain, except at the knees, after the first 48 hours. Temperature had normalized after 84 hours. Other than some thiamine (vitamin B₁) injections to help nervous tissue recovery, vitamin C was the only medication given to achieve a prompt and complete recovery.

Another patient, a 28-year-old female, presented with a very comparable clinical picture. She also demonstrated the same type of response after 96 hours of similarly dosed intravenous and oral vitamin C therapy. Even if one were to argue that both of these patients had a severe form of influenza rather than polio, the clinical responses they demonstrated to these large doses of vitamin C are nonetheless very dramatic. Getting over the flu in only three to four days would still be a modern medical miracle, regardless of the treatment used.

In another case reported by Klenner (1953), an eight-year-old boy presented to Klenner’s office with a history of flu-like symptoms during the prior week. The child was continuing to be bothered by nausea and vomiting, sore throat, and a deep-seated headache at the back of his eyes that had even failed to respond to adult-sized doses of aspirin from his mother. Klenner took note of this clinical picture along with a few other classical symptoms, and he had little doubt the boy was having difficulty recovering from the poliovirus. By any standards the boy’s recovery was remarkable even if the syndrome had been due to another virus. He had a fever of 104^oF and continued to cradle his head in his own hands in an attempt to find relief. He was also beginning to have some localizing symptoms characteristic of polio in his lumbar area (lower back) and left hamstring. Klenner gave 2,000 mg of vitamin C intravenously immediately in the office. The boy was then sent to the hospital where he promptly received another 2,000 mg of vitamin C intravenously. Repeated injections were then given every four hours. Only six hours later, with no other pain medication, the severe headache was completely relieved. The nausea and vomiting had resolved as well. Klenner commented that this previously miserable child was actually now in a “jovial” mood. The boy was discharged after a hospital stay of 48 hours during which he had received a total of 26,000 mg of vitamin C. A lesser oral regimen was continued to prevent a relapse that Klenner realized could occur whenever vitamin C therapy was severely tapered or discontinued too soon. Whether it was flu or polio, the response was prompt, and the cure was complete. Even today, modern medicine does not have a single effective and non-toxic virus-killing drug.

In an especially incredible case, Klenner (1951) described a five-year-old girl stricken with polio. This child had already been paralyzed in both her lower legs for over four days! The right leg was completely flaccid (limp), and the left leg was determined to be 85% flaccid. Pain was noticed especially in the knee and lumbar areas. Four consulting physicians confirmed the diagnosis of polio. Other than massage, vitamin C was the only therapy initiated. After four days of vitamin C injections the child was again moving both legs, but with only very slow and deliberate movement. Klenner also noted that there was a “definite response” after only the first injection of vitamin C. The child was discharged from the hospital after four days, and 1,000 mg of oral vitamin C was continued every two hours with fruit juice for seven days. The child was walking about, although slowly, on the 11^th day of treatment. By the 19^th day of treatment there was a “complete return of sensory and motor function,” and no long-term impairment ever resulted. Vitamin C not only completely cured this case of polio, it completely reversed what would undoubtedly have been a devastating, crippling result for the remainder of this girl’s life.

As one reviews the work of Klenner, it can readily be seen that he did not stick to hard and fast formulas on how much vitamin C to give to a certain patient. He always based subsequent dosing on the degree of general clinical response and the extent to which a elevated temperature had been lowered from the previous vitamin C dose. Although this is completely appropriate, it may make some potentially adventurous physician readers a bit reluctant to try using large doses of vitamin C on different viral syndromes without a fixed schedule of dosing based on diagnosis and body size. As will be shown later in this book, this fear is completely groundless due to the lack of toxicity of vitamin C at even the highest doses. The greatest practical concern of high-dose vitamin C therapy is not an overdose of vitamin C, but an underdose. Typically, the acutely ill patient will not get a high enough dose of vitamin C for a long enough period of time, and the treating physician will then think that the less aggressive vitamin C dosing represents all that can be done with this agent. Some viral diseases, to be discussed later, can metabolize as much as 300,000 to 400,000 mg of vitamin C daily. In these cases the only way to assure a complete recovery, or even survival, is to maintain such an elevated dose until the virus has been completely destroyed. There are some viral syndromes that may even require still larger amounts of vitamin C. The rule of thumb in vitamin C treatment of viral diseases is to continue increasing the dose as long as the clinical response is inadequate or unsatisfactory, and to continue the treatment period until all clinical symptoms have disappeared.

 

Vitamin C and Polio: Supportive Research

 

Although the clinical cures that Klenner achieved with the vitamin C treatment of polio stand completely on their own merits, it should be of interest to note that earlier basic research had already suggested that vitamin C was a very effective killer of the poliovirus. Jungeblut (1935) demonstrated that vitamin C could completely inactivate the poliovirus outside of the body (“in vitro”), rendering it non-infectious even when injected directly into the brains of monkeys. Salo and Cliver (1978) demonstrated this in vitro inactivation of the poliovirus by vitamin C more recently. Peloux et al. (1962) also showed that vitamin C, along with hydrogen peroxide, inactivated the poliovirus. Jungeblut (1937) later induced experimental polio in monkeys by this same direct injection technique into the brain. He found that about 30% of the 62 infected monkeys, which had also received injections of vitamin C, escaped developing paralysis. In the control group only about 5% of the survivors escaped paralysis. This demonstrated that vitamin C could kill the poliovirus in an infected animal (“in vivo”) as well as in a test tube (“in vitro”). Although Jungeblut’s use of lower doses of vitamin C, relative to Klenner’s dose levels, did not demonstrate the level of clinical efficacy achieved by Klenner, Jungeblut’s results clearly showed that vitamin C was an agent capable of killing the poliovirus in research animals and preventing subsequent neurological damage. This virus-killing effect alone deserved significant recognition since vitamin C was such a non-toxic therapy. Furthermore, Jungeblut’s much smaller doses of vitamin C were given by a different route of administration than used by Klenner. Also, the virus had already been injected directly into the brain before the vitamin C treatment began, thereby giving the virus the ability to quickly progress to an advanced state of infection. Jungeblut (1937a), desiring to make sure that the data in his work was statistically significant, repeated his efforts with another 181 monkeys and again found that approximately 30% of them survived their infections without paralysis. Jungeblut (1939) later demonstrated a comparable virus-killing ability of vitamin C in monkeys when a different infecting strain of the poliovirus was used. These studies allowed Jungeblut to clearly confirm that vitamin C by itself could kill the poliovirus in infected monkeys. It remained only for doctors such as Klenner to discover the most effective protocols for the administration of vitamin C in humans for diseases such as polio.

Greer (1955) also reported excellent clinical results in his treatment of five polio victims with only oral vitamin C, given 10,000 mg at a time. This vitamin C dose was given as often as every three hours for up to 10 days. The total daily oral dose of vitamin C would range from 50,000 to 80,000 mg. His patients ranged in age from five to 43 years of age, and two of the patients did have slight residual weakness in a leg after treatment was complete. Baur (1952) also reported positive effects using only 10,000 to 20,000 mg of vitamin C daily, shortening both the total time of illness and the time it took to normalize the elevated body temperatures. However, in light of Klenner’s success at seeing no residual damage in 60 out of 60 patients, it would appear that intramuscular and intravenous administrations of vitamin C get tissue levels of vitamin C to an optimal range more effectively than only oral administrations. Using oral vitamin C appears to best serve as an adjunct to the other forms of vitamin C administration, and oral vitamin C is obviously the form of choice for long-term daily usage to stay healthy and prevent disease.

ADDITIONAL VIRAL DISEASES AND VITAMIN C

 

Viral Hepatitis (Curable and Preventable)

 

Acute viral hepatitis, a serious infection of the liver, afflicts between 0.5 and 1.0% of the United States population annually. Conservatively, this incidence of hepatitis translates to at least one million new cases every year. The current medical textbooks still maintain that there are no specific curative therapies for this disease, and provide only nonspecific recommendations aiming to treat symptoms while avoiding whatever might aggravate the underlying process. When the acute syndrome has not completely resolved or subsided on its own after a six-month period, the patient is generally considered by definition to have chronic hepatitis. Roughly 2% of the United States population is felt to have chronic hepatitis. Chronic hepatitis results in upwards of 10,000 deaths annually in the United States, and roughly another 1,500 patients with this disease survive to receive liver transplantation.

Acute viral hepatitis, which keeps many people sick for extended periods of time even if it does not result in chronic hepatitis, is easily and readily completely curable if treated promptly with adequate doses of vitamin C. The effects of vitamin C on hepatitis patients who have already proceeded to the chronic stage is less well-defined, although some evidence indicates that a high enough dose of vitamin C for a long enough period of time would probably resolve this disease as well in many of the cases.

Klenner (1974) considered vitamin C the drug of choice for viral hepatitis. His general recommended dosing of vitamin C for hepatitis was 500 to 700 mg per kilogram of body weight, given every eight to 12 hours by vein. He would also give at least another 10,000 mg daily by mouth in divided doses. Routinely, a complete resolution of the hepatitis could be expected in two to four days. On occasion, Klenner would achieve a cure of viral hepatitis with only oral vitamin C (as sodium ascorbate). Presumably, such patients were less ill or more reluctant about being stuck with needles. One case reported by Klenner was given only 5,000 mg of vitamin C in water or juice every four hours. All signs and symptoms of the hepatitis were gone by 96 hours. This involved a total of 120,000 mg of vitamin C by mouth over the four-day period.

Smith (1988) reported on further dramatic successes that Klenner had with viral hepatitis. One 27-year-old male who was acutely ill with jaundice (yellowed eyes and skin), nausea, and 103^oF temperature received a total of 270,000 mg of vitamin C intravenously and 45,000 mg of vitamin C orally over the next 30 hours. After this relatively brief period of time, the patient stopped spilling bile in his urine, his temperature was no longer elevated, and he returned to work. Another Klenner hepatitis patient, a 22-year-old male acutely ill with chills and fever, was treated over a six-day period. He received a total of 135,000 mg of vitamin C intravenously and 180,000 mg of vitamin C orally. He, too, had resolution of his symptoms and went back to work. Of particular interest was that this man’s roommate also contracted hepatitis, but he had to remain in the hospital for 26 days with only bed rest as treatment. Klenner treated another male hepatitis patient over a six-day period with a total of 170,000 mg of vitamin C intravenously and 90,000 mg orally. During this six-day period, the patient’s SGOT (a liver function test abnormal in acute hepatitis) had gone from 450 to 45 (very high to near-normal).

Smith also reported on a case of chronic hepatitis that Klenner treated successfully. This 42-year-old male had already been treated unsuccessfully with steroids over a seven-month period. Although Klenner wanted to treat this patient much more aggressively, he was wary that some of the other doctors on the hospital staff would eventually deny the patient any vitamin C therapy if too large a dosing regimen of vitamin C was ordered. Nevertheless, he still managed to administer 45,000 mg of vitamin C intravenously three times a week and 30,000 mg of vitamin C orally daily for about five months, finally achieving resolution of the disease. Chronic hepatitis will generally prove more difficult to completely eradicate than acute hepatitis with vitamin C therapy, even though the acute viral form of this disease is virtually always a completely curable disease if treated promptly and vigorously with vitamin C. As you may surmise from the above information, Klenner would always use his clinical expertise in determining how vigorously to treat his patients with vitamin C. He prescribed vitamin C by general guidelines according to clinical and temperature responses. Part of the reason for this clinical approach pertains to how deficient the patient was in vitamin C body stores before the disease ever took hold. Any given patient can require far more vitamin C than a seemingly comparable patient if the body stores of the two patients were not comparable in amount prior to the onset of the infection. However, patients with chronic active hepatitis have decreased blood vitamin C levels and laboratory indicators of increased oxidative stress (Yamamoto et al., 1998), and this indicates that some vitamin C supplementation is always appropriate in such patients.

Other clinicians have achieved clinical successes similar to those of Klenner in the vitamin C treatment of acute viral hepatitis, and often much less total vitamin C was administered. Dalton (1962) reports on a 20-year-old female presenting with the typical clinical picture of acute hepatitis. For the first three days of her illness, while she received only complete bed rest as her primary treatment, little clinical improvement was seen. However, she was then started on a series of vitamin C injections, and over the remaining six days of her hospitalization received a total of six 2,000 mg vitamin C injections. After only the second injection, she remarked that she no longer had the feeling of “being sick.” Although she remained hospitalized for several more days, she wanted to go home the next day. Dalton, a medical doctor, commented that this case was the most dramatic recovery from hepatitis that he had ever observed. Even though the patient appeared to be completely cured of hepatitis, she did require a longer period of treatment with vitamin C than Klenner typically needed with his higher dosing regimen.

A dentist, Orens (1983), reported on his personal experience with hepatitis B. By taking a combination of 25,000 mg of vitamin C intravenously and 20,000 mg orally Orens had a near-normalization of extremely elevated liver enzymes (SGOT, SGPT, and LDH) over only a five-day treatment period. Orens also indicated that he only took vitamin C for a period of 10 days. Although Orens was originally advised by his physician that he might be out of the dental office for a period of six to 12 weeks, he was back to working full-time by the end of his 10-day course of vitamin C. By the time two additional months had passed there was a total normalization of his liver function tests. Bauer and Staub (1954) also reported that acute viral hepatitis responded positively to 10,000 mg of vitamin C a day, accelerating the resolution of symptoms and shortening the overall duration of the illness. Kirchmair (1957, 1957a, 1957b) similarly reported that 10,000 mg of vitamin C daily for only five days markedly improved the clinical status of 63 children with acute hepatitis. The vitamin C was administered either intravenously, by rectal infusion, or both. The jaundice was noted to clear more rapidly, and hospitalization times were cut roughly in half. Swollen livers were noted to subside much more quickly as well. Baetgen (1961), again using 10,000 mg of vitamin C a day, reported similar excellent clinical responses in 245 children with acute hepatitis.

Calleja and Brooks (1960) reported on a case of acute hepatitis treated with intravenous vitamin C. A liver biopsy on this patient revealed that he already had cirrhosis (chronic scarring) of the liver with superimposed acute hepatitis. The cirrhosis was attributed to long-term heavy alcohol intake. A 5,000 mg dose of vitamin C was given intravenously daily for 24 days. On this regimen the patient had a dramatic clinical response. His anemia (low blood count) resolved, and his white blood cell count and analysis returned to normal. He gained weight, recovered his appetite, and lost all of the abdominal fluid that he had been accumulating due to the progressive failure of his liver. His only liver function test that did not normalize with the treatment was the one that reflected the irreversible cirrhosis part of this liver disease. Perhaps most significant was the complete resolution of the inflammatory changes on a repeat liver biopsy. Such changes classically accompany acute hepatitis and end up persisting to some degree whenever chronic hepatitis subsequently develops. Of further interest is that this study utilized much smaller doses of vitamin C compared to those used by Klenner. Nevertheless, a complete clinical success was eventually achieved.

Cathcart (1981) is another physician who has repeatedly witnessed the ability of vitamin C to easily eradicate the infecting virus in acute viral hepatitis and achieve a complete clinical cure. He reported that he never had a single case of acute viral hepatitis fail to respond to properly dosed intravenous vitamin C. Cathcart also noted that he has never observed any of his vitamin C-treated acute hepatitis patients subsequently develop chronic hepatitis. He noted that the acutely elevated liver enzyme levels (SGOT and SGPT) typically started dropping dramatically after only the first intravenous administration of vitamin C. He also noted that the yellowing effect of the associated jaundice would take four to five days to clear, well after the patient feels better. He attributed this to an actual staining of the skin by the excessive amounts of bilirubin that circulate in the blood during acute hepatitis. Cathcart lamented in his writings that he was simply confounded by the fact that such an inexpensive, simple, nontoxic, and extraordinarily effective therapy was not routinely used for a disease that disables and/or kills so many people worldwide.

Further evidence for the ability of vitamin C to destroy hepatitis-causing viruses can be found in the work of Morishige and Murata (1978). From 1967 to 1973 hospitalized patients who received whole blood transfusions also received anywhere from 2,000 to 6,000 mg of vitamin C daily after the transfusions were given. Twelve cases of hepatitis were seen in a group of 170 patients who received little or no vitamin C after their transfusions (incidence 7%), and only three cases of hepatitis were seen in a group of 1,367 patients who received 2,000 mg or more of vitamin C daily after their transfusions (incidence 0.2%)! With even higher doses of vitamin C, especially if given intravenously, this incidence of post-transfusion hepatitis should be virtually zero. Knodell et al. (1981) published data claiming to refute the positive data outlined above. However, the vitamin C dosing administered by these investigators continued only 16 days after the transfusions as contrasted to almost six months by Morishige and Murata. Also, Morishige and Murata gave their patients substantially larger daily doses of vitamin C for this longer period of time. Unfortunately, the scientific literature on vitamin C, both past and present, continues to attempt to debunk the many incredible clinical effects of vitamin C on various conditions by conducting studies that use much smaller doses for much shorter periods of time. Furthermore, few debunking studies ever use the highly effective intravenous administration of vitamin C, at any dose.

Russian investigators, using much smaller doses of vitamin C in their viral hepatitis patients than the curative doses noted earlier, nevertheless documented significant improvements in laboratory test results. Komar and Vasil’ev (1992) administered only 300 or 400 mg of vitamin C daily along with several other vitamins (B₃, B₆, and B₁₂). They noted significant improvements in levels of immune proteins in the blood as well as in the function of immune cells. Vasil’ev et al. (1989) had earlier made the same finding using only 300 mg of vitamin C daily for two to three weeks. Vasil’ev and Komar (1988) also determined that this same dose of vitamin C clearly resulted in a more rapid recovery of the depressed T-lymphocyte levels seen in acute viral hepatitis.

Part of the reason for vigorous vitamin C therapy in acute hepatitis is that the disease process itself rapidly utilizes the existing body tissue stores and blood levels of vitamin C present prior to the disease. This increased rate of vitamin C utilization is actually seen in all infectious diseases and virtually all non-infectious medical diseases. Dubey et al. (1987) looked at the plasma levels of vitamin C in patients with viral hepatitis and found those levels to also be significantly decreased.

The scientific evidence has clearly established that acute viral hepatitis can be easily cured when enough vitamin C is administered in the early stages of the disease. This early treatment also provides strong assurance that the acute hepatitis will not just appear to spontaneously resolve while actually evolving into the long-term infection of chronic hepatitis, which can sometimes occur in acute hepatitis untreated by vitamin C and given only supportive care. The symptoms of chronic hepatitis nearly always respond well to vitamin C therapy, and some cases of chronic hepatitis may actually be curable if enough vitamin C is given for a long enough period of time. However, clearly supporting data for the cure of chronic hepatitis by vitamin C could not be found and probably has yet to be definitively gathered.

The data on the decreased incidence of post-transfusion hepatitis in patients taking enough daily vitamin C is also compelling evidence that a high enough daily dose of vitamin C should ensure that acute viral hepatitis is a completely preventable and curable disease. Although less readily apparent, a very significant benefit of properly dosed vitamin C would be the elimination of any need or reason to vaccinate people against hepatitis. This would further protect the population from any of the negative consequences that are sometimes seen with such vaccinations.

Klenner also had striking success in the effective symptomatic treatment and eventual cure of virtually all viral diseases that he treated with vitamin C. More viral diseases, only some of which Klenner had the opportunity to treat with vitamin C, will now be addressed and discussed separately.