Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

by Paul A. Offit

In 1942, about 30 years before Pauling published his book on vitamin C, a group of researchers from the University of Minnesota published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association of 980 people with colds, finding that vitamin C did nothing to lessen symptoms. After Pauling published his book, and largely in response to its popularity, researchers at the University of Maryland and the University of Toronto and in the Netherlands performed several studies of volunteers who had been given 2,000, 3,000, or 3,500 milligrams of vitamin C a day for the prevention or treatment of colds. Again, large doses of vitamin C were found to be useless. Because of these and other studies, not a single professional medical, scientific, or public health organization recommends vitamin C for the prevention or treatment of colds. Unfortunately, it’s been hard to unring the bell. Once Pandora’s box is opened, you cannot put anything back inside; once Americans had become convinced that vitamin C was a wonder drug, there was no going back. Then Linus Pauling doubled down, claiming that vitamin C also cured cancer.