"... a free supply of ascorbic acid to every
person would lower the cost of health care in a major way..."
Theodore Joregensen
Theodore P. Jorgensen
4932 High Street
Lincoln, Nebraska, 68506
26-Nov-03
Dear Sir or Madam as the case may be,
The easiest thing for me to do is not to write
this letter. But if you continue to read it I think you will
understand why I have written it. This letter concerns vitally
important ideas, probably far more than you can imagine. The
calendar tells me that I am in my 99th year ( this is not a misprint
) and I must tell you a few things about myself.
I am a retired physics professor, with a Ph.D.
from Harvard. I spent the war years working on the Atomic Bomb at
Los Alamos. On my return to teaching, I originated and directed an
atomic accelerator project at the University of Nebraska, which
continues to be financed to the present time by the Federal
Government. I was retired from the University in my 70th year. Since
that time my mental activities have been mainly involved with
studying the swing of a golf club which allowed me to write a best
seller on the Physics of Golf.
I grew up on a subsistence homestead in
northwestern South Dakota. The many grasshoppers on the prairie gave
my mother the idea that these were prime turkey food. She could get
fertile turkey eggs only when her turkeys were fed cod-liver oil.
She fed it to her turkeys and also to her five children. Thus at the
age of about thirteen years I became interested in nutrition.
Vitamin C was discovered to be ascorbic acid in
1931. Soon chemistry had developed to the stage where this substance
could be synthesized. When a supply of pure ascorbic acid could be
obtained, this substance was used in medical research. Unfortunately
the substance was thought to be a vitamin and since it was known
that vitamins were effective in very small amounts, for many years
research using ascorbic acid was done using very small amounts of
the substance. It took many years before it was discovered that
ascorbic acid could be used to produce fabulous results when used
correctly in medical and clinical research.
It was discovered that vitamin C was not a
poisonous substance when used in the human body. It was also
discovered that solutions of ascorbic acid in proper concentrations
would kill bacteria and viruses. Happily a patient's blood could,
through the proper use of ascorbic acid, be made able to kill them
too. The concentration needed in a specific case had of course
somehow to be decided.
It was also discovered that most animals
produced there own ascorbic acid and that human beings, apes,
monkeys, and guinea pigs, could not make any at all. The conclusion
of the thinking on this problem was that the animals which could not
make ascorbic acid had a genetic defect involving one enzyme which
was lost millions of years ago because ascorbic acid was so easy to
be obtained in the food then available.
It was early decided that the Recommended Daily
Allowance, the RDA, for a healthy human male would be arbitrarily
set at the 60 mg per day. The rate chosen for monkeys was
substantially larger than that for humans.
The amount of ascorbic acid needed for a man to
allow him to have optimum health is of course unknown. Some idea of
the amount he should have would be what his body would make if he
had this ability. This leads to the consideration of the rate of
ascorbic acid made by healthy animals. Such studies have been made
and the values range far above those of the current RDA for humans.
Another effect of ascorbic acid must be
mentioned. The level of cholesterol in a persons blood varies
inversely with the level of the ascorbic acid in the blood. When I
learned of this I decided to perform an experiment on myself. My
cholesterol level had been running at 240 units for several years.
My doctor told me he could give me a drug to lower the cholesterol
level but he was afraid of the damage that might be done by the
drug. An experiment had been reported that a person's cholesterol
level depended on the amount of white sugar ingested. With this
information in mind, I decided to eliminate sucrose in my diet as
much as I could in our culture while I arbitrarily set my intake of
ascorbic acid at five gram per day. Much to my doctor's surprise, my
cholesterol level fell from 240 units down to 180 units. I know of
similar experiments with similar results. Also I have not had a cold
since I have been taking the larger amount of ascorbic acid.
When I learned that a solution of ascorbic acid
in a proper concentration would have properties for killing both
bacteria and viruses and that the concentration of ascorbic acid in
a person's blood could be adjusted to such a concentration by the
amount of ascorbic acid ingested, I was led to try to find examples
of this use of ascorbic acid in medical literature.
Dr. Robert F. Cathcart of Los Altos, California
has found a method of determining the amount of ascorbic acid to be
used in any given case. He found that the amount of ascorbic acid to
use was just less than the amount which would produce a laxative
effect in the patient. Dr. Cathcart reports that he has treated 9000
patients with many kinds of infections and not a single patient
treated with ascorbic acid has had to go to a hospital. There are
other reports by doctors who have had phenomenal similar effects in
which they determined the amount of ascorbic acid by trial.
It was also discovered that most animals
produce their own ascorbic acid and that human beings, apes,
monkeys, and guinea pigs could not make any at all. The conclusion
of the thinking on this problem was that those animals which could
not make ascorbic acid had a genetic defect involving one enzyme
which was lost millions of years ago because ascorbic acid was so
easy to obtain in the foods then available.
In order to obtain the amount of ascorbic acid
a human being should have, work was done to find what other animals
made for their own use. The result of this study put the value of
ascorbic acid at 2.3 to 10 grams per 154 pound man in good health.
It is virtually impossible for any person to
obtain this much ascorbic acid per day from ordinary or casual ways.
This also indicates that human beings are living with dangerously
low levels of ascorbic acid. The above information gives some idea
of the reason our cost of health care is so high and our average age
of death is so low. This problem is a national disgrace and should
be attacked on a national basis. There are two reasons why this
should be done.
One reason is that a free supply of ascorbic
acid to every person would lower the cost of health care in a major
way. The other is that in this age of possible terrorist attacks
with chemical and biological agents (bacterial and viral) we are
vulnerable because we have not applied and extended the knowledge we
do have to the practice of medicine. Any practical approach to the
ascorbic acid problem would require the whole prestige and authority
of the federal government.
I can only leave the solutions of these
problems of the public health and the implementation of corrections
to the younger generations. As you can see, I think we can and
should work toward a solution. Have I convinced you of this
possibility too?
Theodore P. Jorgensen
