It was disconcerting and distressing for me to read your analysis of the recent American Heart Association (AHA) advisory - one that is scaring patients away from the use of antioxidants for heart disease. This is dangerous advice and thoroughly misguided. Had you been aware of the successes of heart patients who adopt Linus Pauling’s vitamin C therapy you wouldn’t have been so quick to accept the results of the AHA. As the use of antioxidants for cardiovascular disease have not yet been put to fair tests, it would have been better advice to have suggested that patients take antioxidant supplements on the outside chance that they do work, until they are proven to be ineffective.

However, contrary to the AHA advisory, the jury is not out on the value of antioxidants for heart disease, in reality. Dr. Linus Pauling had identified the general problem of cardiovascular disease to be chronic vitamin C deficiency. It’s as simple as that. Perhaps, it’s just too simple; nevertheless, Pauling has been dead for ten years, it would be easy to verify his findings, yet no scientist has disproved it, or even made the attempt (See the recent book ASCORBATE: The Science of Vitamin C by pharmacology professors Hickey and Roberts. [lulu.com/ascorbate].)

Curiously, the AHA advisors examined studies only during the years of 1994-2002, a period remarkable for the paucity of Vitamin C studies. (At the end of this message there will be a list of ten links to substantial studies occurring on both sides of the time-period the AHA chose for its ‘review’.)

The AHA cites the Brown, et. al. papers as evidence that antioxidants may be harmful. In this regard, I challenge you, and anyone who is interested in such studies, to read the Brown paper and note the objective laboratory measurements which are given, but not commented upon. These lab values suggest that rather than being harmful, antioxidants provide profound protection and should be taken by everyone who has been prescribed a statin drug.

The Oxford Heart Protection study that claims such remarkable benefits for Zocor is suspicious because they will not release their raw data. Why? That paper may be making the claim on the basis of the Zocor and Zocor plus the other anti-antioxidant groups versus the placebo. It seems to me that if it were merely Zocor versus Placebo, they would be willing to release their data.

If you doubt the value of antioxidants, especially Vitamin C, I challenge you to undertake the following experiment: Give to a deathly ill heart patient in pain and with no hope of recovery, daily doses of 10,000 mg of Vitamin C, along with 5,000 mg of the amino acid lysine. For even more remarkable results, add 200 mg of the antioxidant CoenzmeQ10 and 400 IU natural vitamin E. Observe the patient, and record the results. The overwhelming majority of the patients report the resolution of pain within 30 days. There are many documented reports of the cessation of angina pain within 24 hours. Results are significantly better if the patients are weaned from all cardiovascular medications currently on the market, and in those that have not been taking high doses (greater than 10 mg) of the statins cholesterol-lowering drugs that inhibit co10 and that can destroy the heart muscle.

It is not likely that a cardiologist trained to believe that antioxidants are ineffectual would undertake such an experiment. But, what a boon it would be to the myriad of doomed heart patients if they did so. What have they got to lose?

Yours truly,



Owen R. Fonorow