Out of the Blue - Responce from Liberal Illinois Senator

[ofonorow]

It has literally been years since I contacted Senator Durbin about our NIH grant proposal. (Hmmm, I may have complained more recently about a newspaper article damning the NIH's work with alternative medicine. ) In any event, I just received this response:

October 1, 2009



Mr. Owen R. Fonorow

xxxxxx

Lisle, IL 60532



Dear Mr. Fonorow:


Thank you for contacting me regarding the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant programs. I appreciate hearing from you.


Throughout my time in Congress, I have consistently worked to secure more funding for medical research, including funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Investments in medical research encourage our nation's scientists and produce breakthroughs that ease suffering, lead to improved treatments, and cures for some of today's most debilitating conditions.


NIH provides grants to foundations to support medical research and advancements. Included in the grant program are funding for new and early stage investigations and unique research projects to encourage the advancement of novel ideas.


Although I am an advocate for NIH funding, I believe grant award decisions are best left to the experienced scientists of NIH. NIH awards grants based on peer-review of the methodology and scientific objectives of the proposed study. I encourage you to continue applying to NIH at http://grants.nih.gov/grants/oer.htm to secure a grant opportunity.


Thank you again for contacting me. Please feel free to keep in touch.



Sincerely,
Richard J. Durbin

United States Senator



RJD/kg

[ofonorow]

I am going to take this as a hint, and the Foundation will rewrite and resubmit our Grant proposal to study the Pauling Therapy for heart disease. Maybe the third time will be a charm?

We could use some help. (The brainstorm topic on this forum on a Pauling Therapy study will be a big help).

A) There have been individuals offering to help us write grant proposals. If you are in this category, please send me email at my private address or a private message with your email/phone.

B) We will need Principal Investigators. For example, Dr. Warren Levin, MD, agreed to be named PI in our first grant proposal. We are looking for volunteers, should be at least an MD.

C) If you have an idea for a vitamin C study that you would like to see, either post it here, or if large, let me know and I'll tell you where to send it. We may write proposals for a number of studies. Any idea of something you would like to know or understand about vitamin C is fair game.

D) Any ideas on how to overcome the "placebo" problem would be appreciated. (The problem is that large doses of vitamin C have an obvious effect on some people, and if the placebo doesn't match - the participants will know they are not getting vitamin C.)

E) Any study requires subjects. In our second proposal, a Church volunteered their congregation. Any ideas in this regard appreciated. (If the Government pays, free Pauling Therapy during the study! Hopefully for all participants, but at least half.)

[Johnwen]

[ofonorow]

True, and think about what you are saying. You are saying that private corporations control what money is granted by the Federal government!?! Such a cynic.. (You betcha - to quote a soon to be even more famous political figure.) It is sad, but true. And the pharmaceutical interests are smart enough to want to quash any vitamin C study they can, unless they are convinced it would make vitamin C look bad. So, I don't think we can worry that much about it. Just do our best, and see what happens. (With this much money to dole out, maybe they will make a mistake!) I am looking for help with ideas for experiments we can submit as grant proposals.

[Johnwen]

[ofonorow]

Very interesting. Thx

[godsilove]

Perhaps you can try applying through the NCCAM (Link)

Perhaps the best thing to do would be to work towards establishing that the Pauling protocol of megadose vitamin C and lysine actually promotes heart health. It won't be possible to document any differences in the incidence of MIs or strokes without running a large, long-term study which would probably cost millions, so the next best option is to have one that looks at a well-established surrogate endpoint. Maybe using imaging endpoints as in the Niaspan study would be feasible, although I'm not sure if $400,000 would cover such a study.

But there are potential issues:
- Denying patients the usual standard-of-care: would the Pauling therapy be administered in addition to conventional treatments, or instead of it? Ethically, I think the former would be more appropriate. Have any patients reported benefiting from megadose vitamin C while continuing on statins, beta-blockers, etc?
- Accrual: I presume that it would be best to enrol patients who are naive to Pauling therapy. In general, how receptive are people to Pauling therapy?
- Blinding: does the Pauling protocol require patients to take vitamin C at "bowel tolerance"? Running a trial that is blinded might be difficult if this is the case. Although even if the patients are not blinded, perhaps the actual imaging evaluation can be done by persons who are blinded to the treatment arm. Or maybe the issue can be circumvented by using Lipo-C instead of regular vitamin C, and having everybody on the same dose?


According to the NCCAM, 12% (roughly one in eight) of grant applications were approved in 2008. So I think a one in eight chance is definitely worth a shot for the Foundation.

I think it would be a good start to get an estimate of how many people in the United States are currently using megadose vitamin C for heart disease, as well as perhaps compiling some case reports. Would it be possible to contact any patients who have reported benefits with megadose vitamin C to get before and after scans?

[Johnwen]

[ofonorow]

Perhaps you can try applying through the NCCAM (Link)

We have already applied twice, in 1998 and 2003 (actually 3 times, because our first application was returned for a technicality. We fixed it and resubmitted.)

Our first attempt is documented here: http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/NIH1998refusal/

Our second attempt, including the actual grant request is documented here: http://www.vitamincfoundation.org/NCCAMgrant/

NCCAM in my opinion is serving a diabolical purpose. It provides a $%!$ shield for any interesting work that is deflected from the NIH itself, but NCCAM is so underfunded as to be a joke and ignores any research of consequence.

Perhaps the best thing to do would be to work towards establishing that the Pauling protocol of megadose vitamin C and lysine actually promotes heart health. It won't be possible to document any differences in the incidence of MIs or strokes without running a large, long-term study which would probably cost millions, so the next best option is to have one that looks at a well-established surrogate endpoint. Maybe using imaging endpoints as in the Niaspan study would be feasible, although I'm not sure if $400,000 would cover such a study.

Huh? Any doctor in the business of heart disease has patients who have run out of surgical options, and whose pain cannot be stopped, etc. So any doctor can find out that within 10 days, pain in these patients can be easily eliminated, and that in about a month, their ability to do work and live normal lives is returned.

Of course there are governmental forces preventing doctors from doing this.

This miracle is what these types of patients are finding out about every day - thanks to the unregulated Internet. (Have you even made an attempt to read the testimonials at:
http://www.practicingmedicinewithoutalicense.com/#TESTIMONY )

But there are potential issues:
- Denying patients the usual standard-of-care: would the Pauling therapy be administered in addition to conventional treatments, or instead of it? Ethically, I think the former would be more appropriate. Have any patients reported benefiting from megadose vitamin C while continuing on statins, beta-blockers, etc?
- Accrual: I presume that it would be best to enroll patients who are naive to Pauling therapy. In general, how receptive are people to Pauling therapy?
- Blinding: does the Pauling protocol require patients to take vitamin C at "bowel tolerance"? Running a trial that is blinded might be difficult if this is the case. Although even if the patients are not blinded, perhaps the actual imaging evaluation can be done by persons who are blinded to the treatment arm. Or maybe the issue can be circumvented by using Lipo-C instead of regular vitamin C, and having everybody on the same dose?

Most of the patients who adopt the Pauling therapy are getting a large number of drugs and this has generally not interfered with rapid recovery, although weaning off cardiac drugs can be tricky (because most drugs were tested on heart patients, i.e., those suffering chronic scurvy! The drugs are generally not required after the scurvy situation is resolved.) Exceptions that might cause a problem with a study as specified in my book, e.g., statin drugs (which deplete CoQ10 and damage heart muscle) and medicated stents - which emit poisons.

So adding Pauling's therapy to existing severley ill patients is the obvious first study.

People will generally listen to the their doctors. It doesn't matter from a study standpoint whether people are aware of the therapy or not.

As far as blinding, to me it is unethical to have a placebo group when testing something of such obvious clinical benefit. How can you ethically keep the Pauling therapy from half the study population? So we got the idea of establishing a baseline. Then adding vitamin C and lysine to all subjects, and drawing conclusions from objective measurements that are compared with the baseline.

According to the NCCAM, 12% (roughly one in eight) of grant applications were approved in 2008. So I think a one in eight chance is definitely worth a shot for the Foundation.

I think it would be a good start to get an estimate of how many people in the United States are currently using megadose vitamin C for heart disease, as well as perhaps compiling some case reports. Would it be possible to contact any patients who have reported benefits with megadose vitamin C to get before and after scans?

Pls note the testimonials and many others are recorded here - over the years in the heart disease forum. Some of your ideas are good ideas, but I have no expectation that this year would somehow be different than any other, or that NCCAM would suddenly want to fund a study of the largest threat known to organized medicine. Real medicine is not in the business of health. Health doesn't make anyone any money.

[godsilove]

I disagree that having a control arm would be unethical. This of course depends on which condition you are looking to target. If it is anything for which standard therapies exist, then it is not unethical to allow control patients to receive this treatment. After all, from a scientific perspective, the intervention is still unproven and theoretically, the control arm may even fare better than the experimental arm.

Perhaps as a preliminary study, having just an experimental arm would be okay; but eventually you would want some head-to-head data to see if this is equally or more effective compared to standard treatments. Cross-over can always be permitted after set timepoint.

I have read the testimonies on your site before. But I think it would be great to have some of those people contribute doctors reports or scans to help provide more "meaty" case reports that could support your grant applications.

The NCCAM just funded a large study on chelation therapy, which in my opinion has little scientific merit. I don't see why they should study that but not megadose vitamin C.



Maybe you can convince somebody to fund a study of megadose vitamin c for the common cold, but use a trial design similar to what they use in some vaccination trials. That is, directly squirt the rhinovirus into the nostrils of patients taking high-dose vitamin C, and those taking RDI supplements of vitamin C.

[ofonorow]

godsilive, I know you mean well, but you act as if you really think that after all this time, all the denigration of Linus Pauling over the years, etc. that any one with money or in government really wants to find out whether vitamin C can change the world .

The game is rigged, just like they rigged the climate change "science" to promote a specific agenda (in this case the sale of pharmaceuticals.) Real science was self-regulating and is close to dead. (Of course it has to appear alive to influence doctors and the public.)

Here is a 5 minute mp3 file - Please take a few minutes to download and listen. Any cardiologist with any INTEREST and FIVE (or 6) SENSES can find out the truth in 10 days.

http://vitamincfoundation.org/voice/bushCR.mp3

p.s. If anyone has experience turning audio downloads into streaming audio, please open a new topic as we are amassing a lot of audio (and video) that I would like to turn into streaming presentations so you don't have to wait so long before it starts playing. Thx

[SEADOG]

E) Any study requires subjects. In our second proposal, a Church volunteered their congregation. Any ideas in this regard appreciated. (If the Government pays, free Pauling Therapy during the study! Hopefully for all participants, but at least half.)


Dear Owen
Although I am based in India, I am prepared to be a subject.
I will pay for all my medical tests etc., that may be required for this study (provided they are carried out in New Delhi, India)
Regards

[pamojja]

Hi Seadog,

I will pay for all my medical tests etc., that may be required for this study (provided they are carried out in New Delhi, India)

though not really related to the topic of this thread.. I'm planning to visit India for a few months, therefore my question:
Are crystalline ascorbic acid and Lysine powder available in India? (as well as all other ingredients)

Thanks..

[SEADOG]

I'm planning to visit India for a few months, therefore my question:
Are crystalline ascorbic acid and Lysine powder available in India? (as well as all other ingredients)

Hi pamojja
Unfortunately no!
I get all my stuff shipped from the USA

[Johnwen]

None of these GNC shops have Vitamin C and Lysine?
Goto the GNC Web site theres about a hundred shops listed there for India and none of them sell Vitamin C. If thats the case what are they selling?
Heres a couple I copied from the GNC site.

ALAKHNANADA MARKET COMPLE SHOP NO:
H2/G1 GROUND FLOSUNEJA CHAMBER
NEW DELHI, 91.11.981.0612244

DEFENSE COLONY SHOP
NO. 13 GROUND FLOOR
MAIN MARKET
NEW DELHI, 90.981.1061.336

SHOP NO. 1
LOCAL SHOPPING J BLOCK, SAKET
NEW DELHI, 91.981.106.1336
COMMERCIAL MARKET
SHOP NO. C 9/2
MAIN MASOODPUR
NEW DELHI, [91] 124-506-4061