Innovation vs. quality control: an 'unpublishable' clinical trial of supplemental ascorbate in incurable cancer

A computerized data bank was created recording the details of all cancer patients attending three district general hospitals in West Central Scotland over a 4.5 year period 1978-1982. At the conclusion of the trial, the records of 2804 individual patients were available for study, of whom 1826 had reached an incurable stage. 294 of these incurable cancer patients had received supplemental ascorbate at some stage in their illness, whereas 1532 had not, and served as controls. Analysis showed that the ascorbate-supplemented patients had a median overall survival time (343 days) almost double that of the controls (180 days). Our difficulties in having this simple, but important, observation published are briefly recounted in the introduction.