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An article called “Words of Wisdom About Gas, Germs, and Nukes” written by Army veteran Red Thomas in October, 2001, has been circulating around the Internet in emails often under the title “The Real Deal”. After it reached me, I called Red and offered to bring him up to speed on Vitamin C, which he had not mentioned in his write-up. This letter is the result. —Dave Yost

From:		Dave Yost
To:		Red Thomas
Date:		Sat, Mar 1, 2003

Hi, Red.

Thanks for writing your helpful information piece, “Words of Wisdom About Gas, Germs, and Nukes”, which I just received in email from a friend. As your advice didn’t mention Vitamin C, I thought you might find this letter informative.

The best thing we can do to be prepared for the terrorist threats you write about is to ensure that our tissues are brimming with all the Vitamin C (ascorbate) they’re supposed to have. The next best thing is, as you say, to get away from the exposure, and quick. The next best thing is to have a lot more Vitamin C powder on hand, and in a form that’s easy to take, and we should demand that our health care and emergency services educate themselves on I.V. Vitamin C administration, stock I.V. Vitamin C and offer to administer it as required in acute cases.

I’m writing to you because the fame of your Real Deal piece puts you in a position to help disseminate the important information about the true nature and importance of our need for Vitamin C, which hardly anyone knows.

Here it is in a nutshell: We need around 5 grams and up per day of Vitamin C for full health. This is far more than we can easily get from even fresh, whole foods. Different people at different times need differing amounts above that. Infections, toxins, and ionizing radiation are far less damaging to us when our bodies are fully-supplied -- many infections don’t even get started. When we are exposed to these challenges, we need a lot more Vitamin C, dosage depending on severity. Death and permanent damage can be avoided in acute situations only with immediate intravenous (I.V.) Vitamin C in the neighborhood of 50 grams per day. Topical application, for example, on burns, can relieve pain and promote healing.

Everyone has heard of Vitamin C, but few have heard the information in the previous paragraph. If they have heard it, many do not believe it. Why should you believe it? Because decades of experimental and research science proves it. Unfortunately, these facts have not yet been absorbed by our mainstream; you’ll have to read up on it to convince yourself.

How could we possibly need this much Vitamin C? After all it’s just a vitamin, and a tenth of a gram or so a day is plenty to prevent scurvy, right?

Here is the scientific background in a nutshell:

1. All mammals need Vitamin C to combat infections, toxins, and injury, and to make collagen, a fundamental building block of the body. All of these things use up Vitamin C. The more acute the infection, toxin, or injury, the more Vitamin C gets used up, and a sufficiently-acute problem can drive the body into death from terminal scurvy in under an hour.
   
   Scurvy is not the only problem that can occur from not enough Vitamin C. It is merely the end-stage fatal disease (often by “sudden death”) that follows when the amount of Vitamin C in your body gets extremely low.
   
   It is important to note that the U.S. Recommended Daily Allowance (RDA) for Vitamin C (60mg) is only the amount required to prevent death from scurvy; it is 10x to 100x lower than the amount required for full health; and it is approximately 1,000x lower than the amount needed to avoid death or permanent damage in acute infections, poisonings, burns, or certain other assaults.
   
   
   1. Humans, higher-order primates, guinea pigs and a few other species are unique in that we are born with a genetic defect that robs us of the enzyme (L-gulonolactone oxidase) necessary to manufacture our own Vitamin C on demand in our liver (from glucose). Genetic defect? But God made us perfect! Nope. Our physiology has the same uses for vitamin C as other animals’, but we can’t make our own, and they can. We have to take it in from the outside.

   Here’s where our superior brains should take up the slack. We have to take care to be sure we get enough. Even if you do what should now be obvious to anyone, you eat a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, cooked as little as possible, you won’t get as much as you need. (By the way, the reason ascorbate is available in plants is because plants make it for their own use, not just for us.)
   
   Studies have shown that other animals, when not challenged by the above-mentioned stressors, make ascorbate at a rate equivalent to 5-15 grams per day for a 150-lb human. But that’s only the beginning. When challenged, animals make the equivalent of hundreds of grams per day in human-scale terms. When we humans have an acute problem, we have to get into high gear, and insist our doctors give us I.V. Vitamin C (sodium ascorbate) because oral input turns out to be less effective.

   By the way, did you ever wonder why guinea pigs are used in “animal model” medical experiments? It’s precisely because they are like us in that they have the genetic defect that makes them unable to manufacture Vitamin C. Lots of assaults that can be tolerated by an animal with adequate Vitamin C cannot be tolerated nearly the same in guinea pigs and ordinary humans (i.e. 99% of us because we don’t take in enough Vitamin C).

2. Acute infections and toxicity exposure can require I.V. Vitamin C to prevent death or permanent damage. There are serious situations in which you can’t get enough via your digestive system.
   
   
3. Vitamin C is not harmful except in some forms and amounts in specific rare circumstances with a really sick person. It is not a drug. It is a chemical essential to life. It is extremely safe.

I’m not making this up. It all comes from scientific experiments and research.

Here is a great new book:

Vitamin C, Infectious Diseases, and Toxins - Curing the Incurable
by Thomas E. Levy, M.D., J.D.

which covers infections, toxins, and radiation very well. This book simply reviews hundreds of papers from scientific and medical journals and helps you understand what it all means. The medical profession in typical fashion hasn’t gotten behind this in an organized way because it’s early yet. They have historically often taken decades to adopt truly revolutionary new information.

This 1971 article,

Observations On the Dose and Administration of Ascorbic Acid When Employed Beyond the Range Of A Vitamin In Human Pathology

by Dr. Fred Klenner, M.D. is eye-opening, and you should be able to figure out from it the importance of vitamin C for threats from war and terrorism, not to mention other illness situations, many of them extreme. (I first learned about Klenner’s article on Dr. Cathcart’s web site)

Australians Archie Kalokerinos, M.D. and Ian Dettman, Ph.D. make a plea for using Vitamin C to avoid terrorist disaster:

Suggestions for combating terrorism, as requested by the Pentagon

Dr. Robert Cathcart, M.D., a physician who has treated thousands of people with massive doses of vitamin C has a lot of experience with advanced Vitamin C treatment of acute illness. Here is a long, long page with what he has to say about bioterrorism:

Bioterrorism and Vitamin C

The best way to know how much C you need is to test for it. There is a simple little paper test strip product called “C-Strips” you can use to test how much C is spilling out in your urine. This is a good way to know if your body is getting enough. Testing can help you convince yourself as to how much you really should be taking, since your body may need more than other people’s, and it’s particularly important when you need to know how much is enough in an acute situation.

C-Strips

My favorite kind of Vitamin C, which is easy to take in large amounts, is

C-Salts

No discussion of Vitamin C would be complete without mentioning one of the most brilliant and innovative scientists of the 20th century, Linus Pauling, Ph.D., chemist who won the Nobel prize twice. For the last 30 years of his prodigious 93-year life he turned his attention to Vitamin C and published or co-published many scholarly papers on the subject and promoted Vitamin C. He discovered and explained the mechanism by which atherosclerosis (heart disease) is the result of chronic Vitamin C deficiency and showed that it can be corrected by supplementation. It is fashionable to dismiss Pauling’s Vitamin C work as the work of an old man outside his area of expertise, but this is nonsense.

There is plenty more to read about Vitamin C out there in our modern era of the Web. Given Vitamin C’s essential role in the metabolism of living things, it should not be surprising that Vitamin C deficiency plays a role in many diseases, including heart disease and cancer and that optimal dosing has been used successfully to reverse or cure these diseases and others. Lots of information is gathered here:

AscorbateWeb

Vitamin C Foundation

I hope you find this information interesting and motivating!

Dave

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If you know of a physician, nurse, paramedic, clinic, emergency room, urgent care center, hospital, trauma center, poison center, or burn center that will administer I.V. Vitamin C, or a supply house that will supply Vitamin C for I.V. use, please make sure that they are mentioned on a web page (any web page) along with this exact string nearby on the page:

intravenous ascorbate available

so people can find them by searching the web for that string. For example, a Google search would look like this:

"intravenous ascorbate available"

Today as I publish this page, there are zero results on Google.

It’s time we started demanding that our local emergency rooms get up to speed and make I.V. ascorbate treatment available!

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http://Yost.com/health/thomas-letter.html - this page
2003-03-01 Created
2003-07-18 Modified