Linus Pauling and Irwin Stone, 1977.
[Part 2 of 2]
Four years after Irwin Stone first convinced Linus Pauling to start taking megadoses of vitamin C, Pauling decided to share with the world the successes that he had observed in his own improved mental and physical health.
In 1970 Pauling began to work on a book, Vitamin C and the Common Cold, and he wrote to Stone asking permission to dedicate it to him. He also sent Stone a copy of the manuscript to review. Stone wrote back praising the work.
The book is excellent and should go far to eliminate this thoroughly unnecessary and annoying condition, at least among your readers. The audience will increase over the years, especially if Medicine can eventually see the light.
Stone continued to encounter difficulty getting his own scientific articles about ascorbic acid published and he certainly did not have the funding to run his own clinical trials. Partly as a result, he too was writing a book about vitamin C and all of the many diseases that he thought were related to hypoascorbemia. A major thrust of the book was its plea for large scale research on the topic. Stone hoped to get popular opinion on board with his ideas in order to place pressure on physicians and nutritionists to do research in this area.
Pauling’s Vitamin C and the Common Cold was a popular success. Many readers around the world were persuaded by his ideas and began to take vitamin C supplements to prevent and treat colds. Some of his acclaim rubbed off on Irwin Stone, who wrote to Pauling telling him that he too was finally receiving recognition from popular media sources, including NBC.
In 1971 Stone retired to San Jose, California and devoted the rest of his life to researching and promoting the need for high consumption of vitamin C by humans. That same year he finished his book, The Healing Factor: Vitamin C Against Disease, and asked that Pauling write a foreword for it. Pauling was glad to do so, calling it “an outstanding contribution to knowledge.”
Stone’s inscription to Pauling in a first edition of The Healing Factor, 1972.
Despite their popular appeal, Pauling and Stone continued to encounter problems convincing medical practitioners and researchers to take their ideas about ascorbic acid seriously. Stone believed that this was so because vitamin C would be a much more inexpensive cure than the current treatments of the time, causing pharmaceutical companies and doctors to lose money.
One medical doctor, Ewan Cameron, did believe in the effectiveness of vitamin C against cancer and was treating his terminal cancer patients with megadoses of it in Glasgow, Scotland. He formed a trans-Atlantic research partnership with Pauling in 1971 and they began to collaborate on papers discussing the use of vitamin C against cancer, eventually publishing ten articles together.
Through his partnership with Pauling, Cameron also began to correspond with Stone about the implementation of vitamin C against cancer and their shared difficulties getting the medical community to accept their hypotheses.
Cameron maintained a unique viewpoint on the treatment of cancer and how ascorbic acid might fit into a clinical regimen. In December 1974, he explained his views to Stone.
It is completely contrary to all contemporary medical thought to even suggest that such a mundane substance as ascorbic acid could have any value in such a complicated disease as cancer. This is because cancer research is concentrating all its energies in searching for more and more sophisticated ways of selectively destroying cancer cells. The research is becoming so complex and so unproductive, that it is natural to assume that ‘the answer’ must be extraordinarily complex and almost beyond human comprehension….We would make much more progress if we accept that cancer cells are normal cells that merely happen to be behaving in an abnormal way. We would then accept that cancer cells have an equal right to live, and concentrate our energies in suppressing the abnormal behavior pattern.
Throughout their correspondence, Cameron described his successes treating cancer with ascorbic acid. But he also noted that a number of patients showed no improvement from it or, at best, their cancer was brought to a standstill. He was disappointed that his primary successes were mostly by way of increasing patients’ survival time, not in curing them. Cameron thought that the greatest success would be in prophylaxis – taking megadoses of ascorbic acid throughout one’s life in order to prevent cancer.
In 1978 Stone wrote a letter to the editor of Nutrition Today in response to the publication’s recent issue focusing on ascorbic acid. His letter shows how fervently he believed in hypoascorbemia.
I regard our most serious medical problem to be the dangerous complacency that the orthodox medical establishment exhibits toward Chronic Subclinical Scurvy and its refusal to do anything to correct and alleviate this potentially-fatal human birth defect. Chronic Subclinical Scurvy has killed more human victims, caused more disease and misery among Mankind than any other single factor in the past and is continuing this evil record in the present. I’m worried about the future, because that is where I’m spending the rest of my life.
Meanwhile, Stone and Pauling’s relationship continued to flourish. In 1977 Pauling invited Stone to become a member of the Board of Associates of the Linus Pauling Institute of Science, an offer that was accepted. Pauling also attended Stone’s surprise 70th birthday party that year. In 1981 Stone was unable to make it to Pauling’s 80th birthday, but he did pass along a message.
You will recall the promise I made you in 1966 of 50 more healthy years of life with Megascorbics. You thought I was exaggerating and said you would be satisfied with 15 years. Well the 15th year is now and I am looking forward to attending your 115th birthday party in 2016. Megascorbics makes you practically indestructible.
In response, Pauling wrote, “I am glad to express my thanks to you for having written to me in 1966. Your letter and the reprints of your papers changed my life.” While Pauling did not make it to 2016, he did live until 1994, passing away at 93 years of age.
The last letter that Pauling wrote to Stone concerned a joint award from the Academy of Orthomolecular Psychiatry and the Orthomolecular Medical Society that Stone was to receive. The Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine was also going to surprise him with a second award. Pauling wrote,
For many years you have been an inspiration to me, because of your devotion to vitamin C and your conviction that a high intake of vitamin C has great value in improving the health of human beings. You have rendered a great service to the people of the world through your continued study of vitamin C over a period of fifty years.
Unfortunately, Dr. Irwin Stone died on May 4, 1984, at the age of 77, while in Los Angeles to receive the award. He died by choking on regurgitated food, the result of a constricted esophagus that had plagued him ever since his car accident many years prior.
Irwin Stone received two honorary doctorates, many additional awards, and 26 patents. He also published over 120 scientific papers throughout his life (at least 50 were about vitamin C) and wrote one book, The Healing Factor, published in 1972. He was father to one son, Steven, and was married to his wife Barbara for over 50 years.
In December 1986, two years after his death, Barbara Stone sent Pauling a card congratulating him on the publication of his latest book, How to Live Longer and Feel Better. She wrote “Irwin would have enjoyed reading it and noting the many references to him and other colleagues.” Pauling hadn’t exaggerated in his 1981 letter: Irwin Stone really did change his life and made a profound impact on the scientific legacy that Pauling leaves behind today.