I disagree that Hickey's point makes any sense at all.
So you don't believe the pharmaceutical companies would have tested Pauling and Rath's protocol, hoping that they could easily shoot it down? You believe that they simply ignored it, a potential cure? That is your opinion. I happen to agree with Hickey. If Pauling has made a serious error, we would have know about it big time - over and over.
Look, if for whatever reason these products don't perform as well as we'd hope (in a trial), wouldn't you want to know this? You receive positive testimonials but what of the people that don't reorder or don't send such testimonials? Are they moving on to other things? Dying? Getting so much better that they leave the entire therapy behind? Who knows?
They don't work for everyone. They seem to work less often lately, possibly because of the new medicated stents. Since these substances are completely nontoxic, people can find out whether it provides relief in their individual case with minimal risk. Of course your doctor won't agree with this statement, but look at what he is offering.
The point that you seem to be dancing around is that what you want doesn't exist - even in the prescription world. Contrary to the daily propagana and the white lab coats, the science behind pharmaceuticals is very poor. Nothing in the pharmaceutical world works on everyone, and these drugs are toxic. Most of the studies have to do with assessing the risk of the toxic effects. This point escapes many people.
Tell me something. If Dr. Willis proved that 1,500 mg of vitamin C (all by itself) could reverse heart disease ... then why did a study, conducted some forty years later by a colleague of Dr. Pauling (Dr. Rath) find that nearly double that amount of Vitamin C could only HALT the process?
???? Are you saying Rath used 3000 mg of vitamin C? I thought he was using his VitaCore formula? Where did this number come from?
Again, Willis was the first to run these type of studies, and he invented a new X-ray method for looking into the walls of arteries. This was 1950 for heavens sake! And for only 1500 mg daily (500 mg 3 times daily) he showed that 1/3 of the plaques got smaller. From memory, 4 people. 4 people's plaques stayed the same, and 4 people's plaques got slightly worse.
The proof of reversal was in guinea pigs, not humans. There was only one variable, vitamin C, and if you read The Reversibility of Atherosclerosis, you'll see that it is the culmination of his work. In an earlier study, his team proved that 100% of the guinea pigs deprived of one factor - vitamin C - developed atherosclerosis. And 0% of the controls getting the recommended vitamin C for guinea pigs developed this "heart" condition. Other than fraud, which was unheard of in 1950, there is no other explanation.
And that is the point. When experimental results may have been induced by some other factor, we don't really have a good study. I can think of multiple reasons for the Ornish results. There is only one possible reason for the Willis outcomes (again, other than fraud. It is a simple experiment to repeat. And Pauling and Rath did repeat it, but they were looking for Lp(a) in the pigs blood in the 1980s.)
So given that 100% of the pigs develop atherosclerosis on low vitamin C, they induced (and tested in part of the population) that the pigs had plaques. Then they slowly introduced vitamin C, and documented the arterial reversal - thus the reversibility of atherosclerosis by vitamin C. Simple. Clean. Elegant. Convincing. Professional. Good science.
Now, if I wanted to demonstrate reversal in a large population (larger than Willis's 12 subjects) I would want the subjects to have at least 10,000 mg daily. We know some people experience reversals of symptoms on 2500 mg of vitamin C and 2500 mg of lysine, while others apparently require more.
Anyway, back to study design. I am still hoping that this exercise will result in a good, inexpensive protocol. A repeatible experiment that will have no other possible explanation.