The Lifeboat News
[ Message Archive | The Lifeboat News ]

    Wikipedia and orthodoxy - a little Animal Farm moment? Archived Message

    Posted by walter on March 31, 2020, 10:15 pm

    Frederick R Klenner is apparently well known as a founding father of megavitamin theory. I looked him up and clicked on what seemed to be a wikipedia page on him, as I expected. It redirected to a page on megavitamins, which had a quick dismissal at the top. So that's all you can get on him there by normal means.

    I found that the very useful wayback machine (http://www.wayback.com/) had an archived page from 2013:
    https://web.archive.org/web/20130927025447/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_R._Klenner

    "From the 1940s on he experimented with the use of vitamin C megadosage as a therapy for a wide range of illnesses, most notably polio. He authored 28 research papers during his career. He was one of the originators of orthomolecular medicine, but his work remains largely unaddressed by established medicine.[1] Klenner is the subject[2] or mentioned or referenced in a number of orthomolecular medicine related papers and articles. A recent book[3] broadly updating Klenner's cumulative vitamin C work is dedicated to him and he is profiled in Medical Mavericks.[4] Some of his work is presented in free book[5] about intervenuous vitamin C."

    The page to which Klenner's name now directs was updated a week ago but I don't know when the above page was deleted.

    From the new page (all that's left of Klenner there) this about sums up their message:

    "Vitamins are useful in preventing and treating illnesses specifically associated with dietary vitamin shortfalls, but the conclusions of medical research are that the broad claims of disease treatment by advocates of megavitamin therapy are unsubstantiated by the available evidence.[2][3]"

    A changed picture. What about those references [2] and [3] - has Klenner's extensive work been refuted since? Well they are from 2003 and 1990!

    There is also this - "The proposed efficacy of various megavitamin therapies to reduce cancer risk has been contradicted by results of one clinical trial.[24]"

    This trial was from 2009. And that just concerns just one illness. The old page acknowledged that:

    "Klenner's main subspecialty was diseases of the chest, but he became interested in the use of very large doses of Vitamin C in the treatment of a wide range of illness."

    Cancer wasn't mentioned on the original page... as if they sought out some negative study among many positive ones.

    Message Thread: