To The Editor

'Vitamin C: A

Cure For Cancer?'

Dr. Mark Levine, a harvardeducated physician at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, believes that intravenous feeding of Vitamin C can cure many cancers.

Tests, which were run in the 1970's by Dr. Linus Pauling and his associates, where people took Vitamin C. pills showed no significant effect over a placebo in curing cancer. The excess Vitamin C which the body could not use passed through the digestive system and was discharged in the urine.

How could so many smart people, including Pauling, ignore a variable as basic as the body's ability to absorb and clear a drug?

Bill Nath, 69, a Wichita, Kansas businessman, was diagnosed with cancer in 1996. The blood in his urine determined that he had bladder cancer. Tumors were invading the organ and surrounding muscle. He had part of his bladder removed. He decided to forego chemotherapy. Instead, he got 30 grams of Vitamin C. intravenous drips, twice a week for three months, then every month or two for four years at the Center for the Improvement of human Functioning in Wichita, Kansas. (It was founded by Hugh Riordan, a physician and friend of Pauling, now deceased.)

Each treatment takes about 40 minutes. Today, a decade after his diagnosis, Nath is cancer free.

Another person, Loretta Hill, of Pittsgrove, Salem County, was diagnosed in 2001, at age 38, after a sudden bout of rectal bleeding. She had surgery, radiation, two courses of chemo. Six months later, the cancer was back and had spread to both lungs.

Loretta Hill heard about Dr. Vivienne Matalon's ascorbate infusions, so she decided to try them. After almost for years, Hill is cancer free. She is a part time student in college and plays soccer. She continues to take 30 grams of ascorbate infusions each week and has no plans to quit because her only side effects are "fabulous hair and skin".

Vitamin C is not miraculous. Just as some people die despite standard treatment, some will die despite ascorbate drips. The cost for each treatment of 30 grams of ascorbate is about $110. The treatment destroys only the cancer cells, not the good ones. So, it is far superior to chemo treatments that destroy both cancer and good cells and makes the user very sick for days.

I have a question: If this intravenous method has been around for at least ten years, why hasn't the medical profession suggested this method of treatment for cancer/ every physician in the country should have the wherewithal to treat patients in his office.

Mark L. McLean

Emporium

'Take Spill As A

Warning'

Dear Editor:

The disaster on Portage and Driftwood streams will impact fishermen like myself for a number of years.

As bad as this chemical spill was, no residents died or were injured. There have been other train derailments in the Gardeau/Keating Summit area over the years that should have warned us that a disaster like this was probably going to happen. If you look at the trains that routinely pass through Cameron County and read the contents on the cars, you'll see quite a variety of chemicals including some that will be airborne instead of flowing into the streams.

There was a tanker of chlorine that fortunately didn't rupture on June 30th. If three chlorine tankers had ruptured instead of sodium hydroxide tankers, there would have been a cloud of deadly gas flowing down the Portage towards Prospect Park and we would be counting body bags instead of dead fish.

Could the emergency responders, unaware of the spill, drive into a deadly green cloud on their way to a wreck site? Would a cloud reach Emporium before evacuations were completed?

This train wreck should be viewed as a final warning of what could happen. Instead of waiting for the other shoe to drop the residents must demand rail traffic in the county be safe. Whether this means technological improvements to prevent wrecks or the routing of hazardous materials to safer roadways.

Craig Hudson President Jim Zwald Chapter of Trout Unlimited

'A Damn Shame'

Please keep tracking the activities surrounding the train wreck. If this tragedy (not toostrong a description here) falls out of the news-cycle, I'm afraid Norfolk-Southern will essentially just walk away from it.

Your estimate as to lost revenue to the area for the the train wreck/fish kill is very real.

I was going to be fishing there next week, but since that would be pointless, Emporium is now off of my list of destinations. I'm not going to fly all the way from Denver to fish a dead stream.

The money I would have spent on gas/food/hotels and tackle will now mostly go to Wellsboro and Slate Run. It's a damn shame and it will be that way for a long time now.

I sure hope you folks can fix the Driftwood some day.

Lloyd McKissick,

Denver