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VITAMIN THERAPY AND AIDS: A Brief but Controversial Opinion

What's the difference between AIDS research and five-hundred dollar hammers bought by the Pentagon? The public has received more honest value from the hammers.

Research and conferences open and close with still no AIDS cure in sight. So we go on, spending vastly more money per patient looking for a cure for AIDS than we do even for cancer, even though cancer kills over ten times as many Americans. And cancer research itself has been largely inconclusive. After all, have you heard of a really reliable cure for cancer? But money isn't the problem. The $1,967 million the Public Health Service says was spent in the U.S. on AIDS in 1992 was only wasted because it produced virtually nothing to stop people from dying.

Depressing indeed is the sentence of death implicit with the diagnosis of either cancer or "HIV positive". Go get medical treatment, yet expect to actually get little more than hope. Hope might be in the form of knowing that not everyone that is HIV positive ends up with full-blown AIDS. AIDS related complex (ARC) and carrier patients exist. Half of all HIV-positive individuals are still free of disease after ten years (Haney, D. in Rochester, NY Democrat and Chronicle, February 13, 1994). Why have they not yet developed AIDS?

Maybe it is because some people have stronger immune systems. In that case, it is logical to go out of our way to build up the immune system of any AIDS patient. The body's natural defense system, which is so weakened by the AIDS virus, is highly dependent on that individual's nutrition. The Standard American Diet obviously won't cure AIDS. Concentrated nutrition research might. Just how much research has been funded to see how well large doses of vitamins do fighting aids? Very little. Drug research, yes. But not megavitamin research. Can a weak immune system really be due to a deficiency of AZT? No, but it might indeed be due to nutritional deficiency.

Robert Cathcart, M.D. in California treats AIDS patients with up to 200,000 milligrams (mg) of vitamin C a DAY. His findings are that even advanced AIDS patients live significantly longer and have far fewer symptoms. Imagine what prompt, large doses of vitamin C might accomplish in a recently diagnosed HIV positive individual.

Jean Carper's nationally syndicated column (February 24, 1993) reported that "heavy doses of beta carotene pills, 180 mg a day taken for a month, boosted the immune functioning of HIV-infected patients." If you are therefore thinking that carrot juice alone may have more power against AIDS than all the drugs put together, you may be right.

It gets even better. A seven year long Johns Hopkins medical school study of 281 HIV positive men showed that those taking vitamins had only about ONE HALF as many new AIDS outbreaks as those not taking supplements. Imagine: a 50 percent reduction in AIDS cases just from vitamins! The real wonder is that the dosages used were so small: only 715 milligrams of vitamin C a day, and about 5 times the US RDA of the B-vitamins and beta carotene. Larger amounts would almost certainly save still more lives (Neil Graham, M.D. in AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EPIDEMIOLOGY, December, 1993).

The last thing the medical profession needs is to prove Voltaire correct when he bitterly commented that "Doctors give drugs of which they know little, into bodies of which they know less, for diseases of which they know nothing." Nutrition poses a tremendous threat to medicine and pharmacology. If large doses of vitamins can do a better job than drugs, then it is an embarrassment to health professionals who have maintained "you don't need vitamin pills; just eat a balanced diet."

It goes beyond this, though. When vitamins outperform drugs, then big money is at risk. Vitamin C costs less than $20 a POUND for pure crystals. Multiple vitamin pills cost just pennies each. Carrots grow in your garden. If these common nutrients work, they certainly cannot be patented by a drug company. No potential for profit? Then no interest OR FUNDING for research. And AIDS patients continue to die.

Only one thing matters, and that is results. Even the small amount of nutritional research done has shown more promise than heavily funded medical research. The public has been told to wait for and try out new drugs as they come along. That same public has been told to NOT try vitamins. There is a bolt loose here somewhere. For the HIV positive individual, and certainly for the AIDS patient, it must be "any port in a storm." Vitamin therapy may indeed prove to be a safe harbor for many who are adrift with HIV.

For further reading:

http://www.doctoryourself.com/aids_cathcart.html

http://www.doctoryourself.com/aids.html

Andrew Saul is the author of the books FIRE YOUR DOCTOR! How to be Independently Healthy (reader reviews at http://www.doctoryourself.com/review.html ) and DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works. (reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html )

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Andrew W. Saul

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Last Updated:
January 2008