Of Mice and Men
By James Grant

Six years ago, the eminent chemist (Dr. Linus Pauling) and his former student (Dr. Arthur Robinson) helped to found what is today known as the Linus Pauling institute of Science and Medicine. 
Twice Pauling has won the Nobel Prize, first in Chemistry, in 1954, then in Peace in 1962... Robinson, who received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of California at La Jolla in 1967, and who was immediately invited to join the faculty there, began the experimnets at the institute in 76. The work was still underway in June 1978, when his trouble with Pauling began.
Robinson says that he designed and managed the tests, and in part conceived of them, although he drew heavily on the research of several other scientists, among them Homer Black, Ewan Cameron (Now at the Institute), Malcolm Dole and Pauling himself, as well as the suggestions of Eydie May Hunsberger and Arnold Hunsberger, nonscientists who have a special interest in diet and cancer. (Mrs. Hunsberger is the author of the book, "How I conquered cancer Naturally".) 
He found that a pure diet of raw fruits and vegetables significantly reduced the size and number of cancerous sores in the mice, and that a conventional diet supplemented by very high doses of vitamin C (the human equivalent of 50 grams a day) had roughly the same beneficial effect. When the two regimens were combined--heavy vitamin C together with raw fruit and vegetables-- the results were "just fantastic". 

To the Editor:
In James Grant's article of June 11, "Of Mice and Men," he refers to a three-year series of experiments on squamous cell carcinoma (skin cancer) and nutrition in mice that I designed and directed at the Pauling Institute. The controversial parts of these experiments showed severe lesions per 50 mice of 49.6, 100.1, 82.3, 61.4, 57.0, 25.0, 7.4 and 13.9 for percentages of vitamin C by dry weight in Wayne Lab Block mouse food of 0, 0.3, 0.6, 1.2, 2.4, 4.8, 9.6 and 19.2 respectively.
Cancer was induced by daily ultraviolet radiation of hairless mice that lived throughout the experiments on the designated diets. At dosages comparable to 10 grams of vitamin C per day for humans, the cancer incidence was increased about twofold, whereas at dosages comparable to 100 grams per day, it was decreased about fivefold. A diet restricted to apples, pears, carrots, tomatoes, wheat grass, sunflower seeds and bananas decreased teh cancer by about the same amount as the very high vitamin C dosage, whereas the addition of protein to this diet seems to eliminate its benefits. When used together, the raw fruits and vegetables and vitamin C caused a remarkable 35-fold decrease in cancer incidence.
The incidence of severe lesions in these experiments was caused to vary over a 70-fold range by nutritional measures alone. Regardless of the specific nutrition or the specific cancer assay system used,this result supports the view that optimum nutrition should be given a high priority in cancer research.
These particular experiments were based upon a system developed by Homer Black and suggested to us by Malcolm Dole, carried out for the most part by Dick Willoughby and Ruth Reynolds over a three year period, and aided in essential ways by Klaus Bensch, Arnold and Eydie Mae Hunsberger, who sho suggested the raw foods diet, and several other people. They were financed equally by the research funds of Linus Pauling and of me. Linus Pauling seized the mouse colony a year ago, prevented professional publication of this work, claimed the work as his own, labeled the work too "amateurish" for publication, and refused my proposals that we publish the work even, if necessary, through arbitration. He also complained that I had encroached on his research area by working on nutrition and cancer and that this research would harm his efforts to promote vitamin C alone as a cure for cancer.
In the July issue of prevention, Pauling is quoted as saying, "My present estimate is that the incidence and mortality from cancer could be decreased by 75% by the proper use of vitamin C alone, starting out with taking vitamin C prophylactically." Neither this exaggeration of current knowledge, nor the suppression of research results not fully supportive of it, are helpful to effective study of the relationship between cancer and diet.