Vitamin C and Cold Fusion
Thomas Falasca, physician and author of Physician’s Guide to Better Medical Decision Making: Critical Thinking in Medicine
Wide Interest in a Vitamin C Drug Cocktail for Sepis Despite Lagging Evidence" is an interesting article by Rita Rubin on jamanetwork.com.
The article describes how the Marik Protocol, an IV cocktail of vitamin C, thiamine, and hydrocortisone for the treatment of sepsis, has generated much interest, albeit with little high-quality clinical evidence. In some places, the protocol has almost reached the status of standard of care.
Nevertheless, science requires the suspension of judgment on effectiveness until sufficient high-quality evidence has accumulated. This needs to include an adequate number of randomly chosen subjects as well as independent replication. The lesson of “cold fusion” cannot be forgotten.