The Vitamin C Paradox: A Lesson in Therapeutic Nuance Linus Pauling's crusade for vitamin C as a cancer fighter was met with widespread ridicule and dismissal, but recent research suggests that he wasn't entirely wrong – just misunderstood.
His advocacy was based on the use of intravenous infusions, which produced results that oral supplements couldn't match. The conventional wisdom has long been that vitamin C pills have no benefit against cancer.
This conclusion was drawn from large trials run by the Mayo Clinic in the 1970s and '80s, but a closer look at these studies reveals a critical distinction: they used oral supplements, not intravenous infusions.