The Politics of Therapeutic Evaluation: The Vitamin C and Cancer Controversy

References

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• , Creagan & Moertel, ‘Vitamin C Therapy of Advanced Cancer’, op. cit. note 74. This letter from Creagan and Moertel which sparked off the exchange of hostilities in the pages of the NEJM, had been initially negotiated among Pauling, Moertel and Relman (editor of the NEJM), as a ‘correction’ to the statement in the published report of the Mayo Clinic trial that half of the Vale of Leven patients had received prior chemotherapy: Moertel to Pauling, 18.9.79, 16.10.79; Pauling to Relman, 7.11.79; Relman to Pauling, 14.12.79, Pauling-Cameron Correspondence. The publication of Pauling's response involved prolonged negotiations between Pauling and Relman (twelve letters in all), in the course of which Pauling alleged a lack of symmetry in the Journal's treatment of the Mayo Clinic and the Linus Pauling Institute: Pauling to Relman, 22.2.80, ibid
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• , Interferon had been thought commercially interesting by UK drug companies in the early 1960s, and they formed a syndicate to commercialize it with the Medical Research Council. However, by the mid-1960s they had abandoned this scheme. I am indebted to Ed Yoxen for this point, and for his reference to I Laurence, Some Historical Aspects of the Commercial Development of Interferon (unpublished MSc Thesis, University of Manchester, 1983)
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• , In 1980, it was estimated that interferon had a potential world market of around $3 billion, and that its use by an estimated 5.4 million cancer patients in the USA alone would represent a market value of around $270 million per year: European Chemical News (14 April 1980), 18
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• , Krim's husband was a close associate of President Lyndon B. Johnson and treasurer of the Democratic National Committee: Panem, op. cit. note 123, 16–20
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• , Cameron & Pauling, Cancer and Vitamin C, op. cit. note 15, 115. It should also be noted that interferon is assimilable to the militaristic metaphors that have characterized conventional cancer research. In an interview with Time journalists, Matilde Krim referred to interferon as ‘a kind of chemical Paul Revere’. According to Krim, when a virus ‘invades’ a cell, it takes over the cell's ‘factory’ and uses it to turn out carbon copies of itself which then invade other cells. Enter interferon, the body's Paul Revere. The initial invasion by the foreign virus triggers the production of interferon which assumes the role of intercellular messenger and travels to neighbouring cells to warn against virus attack and stimulate the defence forces. Vitamin C's association with disarmament and peaceful coexistence was thus ideologically outmatched by Krim's astute appeal to patriotism and cold war ideology. See ‘The Big IF in Cancer’, Time (31 March 1980), 40–46, at 42–43
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