The suppression Continues...

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The Vitamin C Foundation submitted a serious research proposal to the United States National Institute of Health (NIH), for the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM,) on February 1, 1998 to study the late scientist Linus Pauling's claim of a cure for occlusive heart disease. The proposal, was returned March 11, 1998 without scientific review on a technicality.




For the record, Dr. Fisher's assertions are factually incorrect. We contacted the NIH on a number of occassions and spoke with Dr. John C. Chah, Office of Alternative Medicine, at some length last December. We also spoke with Ms. Diane Aikens, NIH, OPRR, in January. She informed us that we were not required to initiate Institutional Review Board processes before submitting the application. And because we were inexperienced submitting such proposals, we made vain attempts to contact Dr. Chah at the NIH just prior to submission at the end of January. Many phone messages were left with Dr. Chah -- none of which were returned.

We do not question the right of the NIH to make sure that all its ground rules are abided by, however, due to the obvious importance of this matter, we think that dropping the Linus Pauling Heart Disease study without scientific review, is the kind of bureacratic mistake that the American people would not tolerate if they were made aware.

Scientific Review Scheduled by NIH

Our second proposal submission was accepted for the so-called scientific review as per following notice:
Last July, Dr. Levin received the following, apparent rejection.

So far (10-24-98), with out the promised review comments. [Here is Brian Adamson's Translation of the NIH Rejection]

"The scientific merit review of your application (?/?) is complete. As part of the initial scientific merit review process, reviewers were asked to identify those applications with the highest scientific merit, generally the top half, applications that they customarily review. At the meeting, those applications were discussed and assigned a priority score. All other applications, including your application, did not receive a score. Within 6-8 weeks, you will receive a compilation of reviewers comments prepared prior to the meeting without significant modification or editing by the NIH staff. Until then no further information is available. After receiving your summary statement you may call the program official for advice regarding possible resubmission. If you submit a revised application you must follow instructions in the application kit and respond specifically to comments in the summary statement 07/0?/98"

UPDATE

The multi-page review comments did not specificy much wrong with our approach or the science. The reviewers seemed to be concerned that the medical doctors who agreed to run the study were "inexperienced." In other words, in order to overcome the objections, we'd have to find other principal investigators. (We first approached mainstream research scientists at a major university - and were laughed out of their office. We felt lucky that medical dooctors Levin and Cathcart had agreed to be investigators.)

What follows is the latest response from the NIH to a congressional inquiry:

If you are as appalled as we are by this apparent lack of concern the health and well-being of the American people, please contact your Congressional delegation and demand an explanation. Others to contact include

To obtain a free copy of the Vitamin C Foundation's proposed Heart Disease study, or the NIH Summary, write:


Vitamin C Foundation
Research Office
P. O. Box 3097
Lisle, IL 60532

Linus Pauling vitamin C/lysine therapy for heart disease
The Vitamin C Foundation