by Suzanne Humphries, MD
"Just as ignorance of the law is no sound defense to legal charges brought against you, ignorance of medical fact is ultimately no sound defense for a doctor withholding valid treatment, especially when that information can be easily accessed." ~Thomas Levy, MD, JD, author.
Vitamin C
Currently, the conventional approach to whooping cough(pertussis) is to vaccinate infants, and to give older children booster injections. Adults have recently been encouraged to get vaccinated to curb the spread as well. It is my opinion, based on conventional information that this approach is unlikely to make much difference in the presence of pertussis. Because both vaccinated and unvaccinated people get pertussis, we need a safe and effective treatment when the cough occurs.
The Pertussis vaccine has failed us miserably. Here is a very good BLOG regarding the failure of whooping cough vaccine that I wholeheartedly agree with. To me, it makes no sense that more vaccines are tossed to the world as a solution to the problem, simply because doctors and health officials have nothing else to offer. As noted in the BLOG,
"The medical system believes its own self-fulfilling prophecy that whooping cough is a disease that has limited treatments. That is after all, why they have vastly expanded the age range of people recommended to receive the very vaccine which doesn't work, and which has had a hand in creating today's problem. "
The medical establishment's own literature, as I outlined in my original document, admits that the vaccine is a failure. For this reason, research has been under way for years to develop an improved vaccine. Thus far it appears that the new vaccine will simply be added to the current vaccine schedule rather than used as a replacement.
The other approach to active pertussis infection is to give antibiotics to those infected and to close contacts. This is an intervention that carries its own risks, including alteration of bowel flora, drug reactions and possibly even worsen the cough. The reason most cited for using antibiotics in pertussis is not actually to treat the disease so much as to limit the spread, and data on that remains sketchy.
The consensus is that antibiotics may limit the period of infectivity but do not alter the clinical course and are not indicated in close contacts. Most cases that come to treatment have already been coughing and spreading the disease, and antibiotics are of limited if any use.
Yet we still see antibiotics being used rampantly in all contacts, and in infected children who have had the infection long enough that they have already passed the stage where antibiotics would render them non-infectious. If a child is admitted to a hospital with pertussis, the first intervention will be an antibiotic, even though there is no proof that the clinical course will change. But there is an intervention that will limit the duration and the severity. Vitamin C.
Critics of vitamin C bring up the fact that there are only a handful of studies suggesting that vitamin C decreases cough severity and duration, and they are not modern studies.
OTANI in 1936, should be considered a pilot study as he did document improvement more rapidly than expected in the majority of his cases, though his dosing is far lower than what I would recommend. He used 50-200 mg per injection. Had he used fifty times that, his results would have been unquestionable.
VERMILLION in 1938 published a study "In this small series of twenty-six cases of whooping cough, cevitamic acid seemed to be strikingly effective in relieving and checking the symptoms in all but two of the cases which apparently received little if any relief. It is our opinion that it should be given further trial in all cases of whooping cough regardless of the age of the patient, or the length of time already elapsed since the original symptoms." He also used very low doses of cevitamic acid.
ORMEROD in 1937 reported in a small study group: "Ascorbic acid has a
definite effect in shortening the period of paroxysms from a matter of weeks to a matter of days." His doses were also very low 150 mg to 500 mg. Given that pertussis is a toxin-mediated disease, these low doses would not have reached anywhere near saturation.
Sessa (1940) and Meier (1945) also reported positively on low dose vitamin C in pertussis.
I agree with the critics that there are no randomized controlled trials(RCT) to demonstrate the effect of high-dose vitamin C on the duration and severity of pertussis. However, I have a friend who has been taking care of very young infants and children for thirty years using high dose vitamin C and they have not lost or damaged one of these children. There are thousands of happy mothers out there who know that vitamin C saved their children from suffering the feared ravages of pertussis- even in very young infants.
Now I have my own series of documented cases and testimonials where parents witnessed the rapid reduction in cough and improvement in symptoms. They now know that whooping cough does not have to be the dreaded "100 day cough. "
At this point, while I recognize that RCT's are thought to be the gold standard of proof in medical treatments, I would be reluctant to sign any child up for such a study since the half that is untreated would be knowingly deprived of a potentially life-saving intervention. If such a study was ever performed, it would have to be unblinded and open-label in order to minimize the risk to the untreated. I believe that after just a few days the placebo half would quickly reveal the detriment of withholding vitamin C.
As a nephrologist and internist, I am well aware that many decisions made by doctors every day not only have no RCT to support them, but that doctors are also using drugs off-label and attempting salvage with some hair-raising interventions, after their suppressive treatments have ended poorly.
As an example, consider the effect of antibiotics, which can and do lead to a superinfection named CLOSTRIDIUM DIFFICILE (c-diff) colitis. C-diff colitis is caused by antibiotics, the same ones that can be used in pertussis, and it carries a 50 percent mortality rate. This is a terrible and dreaded outcome of antibiotic use, though by far not the only dreaded outcome of antibiotics.
C-diff occurs commonly in hospitalized patients. More antibiotics are used in attempt to kill the c-diff. This often fails. Probiotics are not embraced by the conventional medical community, but in the case of c-diff, some doctors will bend and use them. However when all else fails there is a treatment that entails taking stool from a healthy person's colon and transplanting it into the colon of the sick patient.It is called FECAL TRANSPLANTATION
The procedure entails placing fresh fecal matter into an infected, inflamed and edematous colon (via the stomach, through the mouth) in attempt to reverse the problem caused by the doctor's original intervention, the antibiotic. No long-term follow up has been done to reveal any other complications of such a treatment. The goal of this treatment is simply to snuff out the fire that the original treatment set. Allopathic medicine is mainly concerned with getting rid of the problem at hand, rather than looking deeper and broader into the health of a person over the long term.
What seems most repulsive about this treatment is that it involves taking a fresh bowel movement from a donor, filtering out the large particles using a coffee filter, putting it in a household blender, adding saline and then dosing the raw fecal matter into the recipient through their mouth using a tube inserted into the stomach. Most patients think nothing of this treatment, because by the time the need it, they are very desperate.
Professor Thomas Borody, a pioneer in the field of fecal transplantation says "By the time I see them, they've often been sick for anywhere from six months to two years, so they're quite desperate. Nothing really scares them." LINK TO ARTICLE HERE I dare to say that vitamin C is a therapy that will never lead a patient to be so sick for two years that they will "submit to just about anything." Quite the opposite. Vitamin C convalescents enjoy higher states of health and gain a new understanding of using nutrients to combat disease, rather than drugs that start with "anti."
Can you imagine if a naturopath or any alternative practitioner ever attempted such a feat as fecal transplantation? They would be legally indefensible in the event of a negative outcome. However, if that same patient should die or develop worsening infection in the hands of an allopath, the judgment would be that every available treatment was offered. Or as you can see in the slide above, the death would be considered due to an "unrelated illness."
By the time a patient develops c-diff there are always "unrelated illnesses" that could be blamed. There is no RCT to support fecal transplantation. It should be mentioned that c-diff is a toxin-mediated disease. Allopathic medicine makes no attempt at neutralizing the toxins. Vitamin C and edible clay are two very effective remedies that neutralize and absorb toxins. Most medical doctors would consider vit C and clay voodoo- but for some reason, fecal transplantation is considered an acceptable option.
Another noteworthy medical intervention that allopaths commonly employ includes the placement of maggots into infected and gangrenous wounds when antibiotics are no longer useful or the bacteria have become resistant. They call it LARVAL THERAPY.
If you haven't heard, Viagra (silendafil) is not just for men anymore. Women were taking it off-label for "idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis" years before any RCT was done. HERE you will see that the majority of pulmonary fibrosis is idiopathic, but what is known is that doctors are causing most of what is not idiopathic. Radiation therapy and drugs are common causes. There is no overwhelming evidence that silendafil helps with IPF, as can be seen HERE. No matter, Pfizer's income swelled nicely after this non-evidence based practice came about. Silendafil has many adverse effects, side effects and drug interactions.
Conventional medicine is rife with bizarre interventions that are well accepted, and usually involve an expensive drug, biological agent, and hefty fee for the doctor. It seems very odd to me how viciously vitamin C has been attacked given that it is both safe and easily available. Could it be because vitamin C is not patented and because it leads to an improvement in overall health that FDA HAS COME DOWN SO HARD AGAINST ITS INTRAVENOUS USE?
Vitamin C has been labeled dangerous, yet nobody seems to be able to produce the victims of its treatment.
Currently there is a form of vitamin C called LIPOSPHERIC VITAMIN C or liposomal vitamin C that is taken orally and achieves tissue levels as high or higher than intravenous vitamin C. It works beautifully in infants and children for whooping cough with no side effect except the occasional greasy stool when the body becomes saturated. You can even MAKE IT YOURSELF AT HOME.
Kidney stones are a theoretical possibility yet have never been shown to be a true risk in the use of vitamin C. This potential risk is minimized by hydrating with lemon water to alkalize the urine so that oxalate cannot drop out of solution and crystallize. Other means of alkalization and hydration are just as good.
Hemolysis can occur in the rare disorder called glucose 6 phosphatase dehydrogenase deficiency (G6PD deficiency) if mega doses of vitamin C are given- yet there are cases of even those people tolerating vitamin C when they are deficient. Mind you, there are no drugs in the Physicians Desk Reference (PDR) without far more common risks and definitely more side effects than vitamin C. The risk of hemolysis while taking vitamin C, could be blown out of proportion.
"The texts and websites that mention this possible effect often assert that vitamin C can cause problems for G6PD deficient persons when consumed "in high doses." Search of the medical and scientific literature finds that vitamin C may cause red blood cell rupture (erythrocyte hemolysis) in G6PD deficient adults after massive intravenous infusions (40 to 100 grams within a few hours, or in extremely large oral doses.) There are no reports of this hemolysis problem when oral intake by G6PD deficient persons is less than 6 grams per day in G6PD deficient adults or in healthy adults at any dose." LINK HERE
It should be noted that when a person is in the midst of a toxin-mediated disease, the vitamin C is rapidly used up and has a low likelihood of existing in high enough concentration to cause problems.
While I do not mean to brush off the potential complication of G6PD in this small segment of the world's population it is irrational to withhold vitamin C on this basis. Screening as always is a good idea. But there is a clear double standard regarding concern over G6PD when using vitamin C compared to many commonly used drugs, where use is never considered a risk, even though it is.
As you can see 
from THIS ARTICLE many commonly used drugs today can pose a risk to the rare person with this disorder. I have yet to see a patient screened for G6PD disease prior to being given these commonly used drugs that include phenytoin(dilantin),antimalarials, sulfonamides including sulfamethoxazole used in Bactrim, nitrofurantoin a commonly used urine infection drug, quinine, salicylic acid, vitamin K and many more. You will also see on that table that ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is not among the most risky precipitants. Criticism of my use of vitamin C has included the potential risk of G6PD. As you can see, this criticism needs to be viewed within the bigger picture, and in context.
The follies among the allopaths would be entertaining were it not for the collateral damage they leave in their wake. By relying on the comfort of fecal transplantation, it is no small wonder that they need to hammer away at one of nature's cleanest and most effective medicines known. If grandma develops protracted c-diff from the antibiotic she was given for being a contact of a pertussis case, even though the Cochrane database suggests it is not evidence based, her prescribing doctor need not worry. The science bloggers and quackbusters will turn the blind eye as she is rescued by a homemade poop cocktail.