Supplemental ascorbate in the supportive treatment of cancer: Reevaluation of prolongation of survival times in terminal human cancer

Abstract

The survival times of 100 terminal cancer patients who were given supplemental ascorbate, usually 10 g/day, as part of their routine management and 1000 matched controls, similar patients who had received the same treatment except for the ascorbate was studied. Tests confirm that the ascorbate-treated patients and the matched controls were representative subpopulations of the same population of untreatable patients. Survival times were measured not only from the date of untreatability but also from the precisely known data of 1st hospital attendance for the cancer that eventually reached the terminal stage. The ascorbate-treated patients were found to have a mean survival time about 300 days greater than that of the controls. Survival times greater than 1 yr after the date of untreatability were observed for 22% of the ascorbate-treated patients and for 0.4% of the controls. The mean survival time of these 22 ascorbate-treated patients is 2.4 yr after reaching the apparently terminal stage; 8 of the ascorbate-treated patients were still alive, with a mean survival time after untreatability of 3.5 yr.