Black-and-white photograph of an older balding man with white hair, wearing a dark suit and tie, smiling slightly while holding an open book, standing in front of a bulletin board covered with newspaper clippings and cartoons.

PUBLIC DOMAIN source

Linus Pauling

individual · Menlo Park / Palo Alto, California, USA (Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine)

lived:1901–1994

active:1970–1994

type:individual

role:promoter

location:Menlo Park / Palo Alto, California, USA (Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine)

eventual status:publicly_disconfirmed

FINANCIAL CONFLICTS

Pauling is not documented in the sources reviewed as a paid spokesman, shareholder, or royalty recipient of a named vitamin-supplement brand; his book royalties from Vitamin C and the Common Cold (W.H. Freeman, 1970) and Cancer and Vitamin C (with Ewan Cameron, 1979/1993) are not separately quantified in any source found. He did seek and obtain a patent on a vitamin C-based therapeutic: US Patent 5,278,189A (filed 24 July 1990, granted 11 January 1994), co-invented with Matthias Rath, claiming ascorbate plus lipoprotein(a)-binding inhibitors (such as lysine) for treating and preventing occlusive cardiovascular disease; the patent was originally assigned to Therapy 2000, a California corporation, and later held by Matthias Rath Holding BV. The Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine, which Pauling founded in 1973, is archivally documented as having financial partnerships with corporate donors including the Elizabeth Arden cosmetics company, alongside individual benefactors.

INTERVENTIONS PROMOTED

Megadose vitamin C ('orthomolecular' ascorbate therapy)

EXTERNAL REFERENCES

NOTES

Linus Carl Pauling (1901-1994) was a chemist and the only person to date to win two unshared Nobel Prizes: Chemistry (1954), for his work on the nature of the chemical bond, and Peace (1962), for his campaign against atmospheric nuclear testing. That double credential gave a scientific claim he made in retirement a level of public trust few other advocates of the same claim could have commanded. Starting with his 1970 book Vitamin C and the Common Cold, Pauling argued that gram-scale doses of ascorbic acid — far above the amount needed to prevent scurvy, vitamin C’s one established deficiency disease — could prevent and shorten colds, and later, working with Scottish surgeon Ewan Cameron at Vale of Leven Hospital, that intravenous and oral megadoses could prolong survival in terminal cancer. He founded the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine in 1973 to pursue this and related “orthomolecular medicine” research. Two Mayo Clinic randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials (1979 and 1985) found no cancer benefit from high-dose vitamin C, and a large Cochrane systematic review (2013) found no reduction in cold incidence in the general population from routine megadose supplementation. Pauling continued to promote megadose vitamin C, including a later cardiovascular claim (with Matthias Rath, patented in 1994) that vitamin C plus lysine could dissolve arterial plaque, until his death from prostate cancer in 1994.