Support for this show comes from the Working Forests initiative. The working forest industry is committed to planting more trees than they harvest. More than 1 billion seedlings are planted in US working forests every year. From biologists to GIS analysts, hiring managers, accountants, working forest professionals have dedicated their focus towards sustainability, using their expertise to help ensure a healthy future for America's forests. They say they don't just plan for the future. They plant it. You can learn more at workingforestsinitiative.com. Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up, and audit dread? It's time for Vanta. Vanta automates security and compliance, brings evidence into one place, and cuts audit prep by 82%. Less manual work, clear visibility, faster deals, zero chaos. Call it compliance, or call it calm compliance. Get it? Join the 15,000 companies using Vanta to prove trust. Go to vant.com slash com. Why is immunity interesting to you? It's a really wonderful frontier of science because it's so deeply complicated. The average undergraduate textbook, so students that would come into a class from it in pure college London where I am to study immunology, they would have a textbook that is a thousand pages long. And that doesn't even get them to the frontier. That just gets you the kind of basics. After writing several books about it, and teaching scores of students, Daniel M. Davis is still fascinated by the immune system. I think that the more depth you go into studying the immune system, the more you learn about this cell, that cell, this molecule, that molecule, this gene, that gene, it goes on the lower, upper, lower, regulating this bit with that bit, feedback loops here and there. And then how that system interacts with the body, your brain, your nervous system, your gut, your intestine, the way muscles affect the immune responsiveness, all sorts of nuances and complexes. What emerges for me is that the depth that there is to go into, the contemplation itself becomes its own reward and it feels like you're doing something profound and soulful by digging into the detail of what is happening in your body. Davis often gives lectures to all kinds of people. Sometimes those lectures are in front of other researchers, sometimes to students. And he's fascinated by the questions that he gets after these talks when a shy hand shoots up in the back of a room. These questions that his students ask seem pretty simple, but the immune system is so complicated that even the simple questions are actually really difficult to get your head around. And I take more of this stuff and that stuff and how does exercise affect me. Davis often replies, so this is everything we know about that question you just asked me. And this is everything we don't know about that question you just asked me. It's how science works, how we learn to learn. There's one question that Davis gets a lot. It's the perfect example, a simple, common question that sounds easy, but is actually really hard. So hard that one of the greatest scientists of all time spent decades trying to get to the bottom of this question. He staked his entire career, his good name, and his reputation trying to figure it out. So I drink orange juice to get over a cold. I'm Amy Padula. This is unexplainable. Linas Pauling is often said to be one of the greatest scientists of the 20th century. Linas Pauling grew up in Oregon in the early 1900s. He had an early aptitude for chemistry. A close friend introduced him to it. One day when I was 13 years old, he said to me, would you like to see some chemical experiments? And I said, yes, I would. We went into his house up to the second floor where he had this little bedroom and he carried out about three experiments which really astounded me. They pleased me immensely. He was a student at Oregon State University. He studied chemical engineering and then went on to graduate school at Caltech, where he researched the structure of crystals. By the mid-1920s, he received a PhD in chemistry and mathematical physics. After that, he went to Europe to study with leading experts in quantum mechanics. He befriended Robert Oppenheimer and studied with other prominent scientists. Pauling was a real wonder kind. He was even awarded a prestigious prize for work in pure science by young chemists. And then, in 1931, Pauling got some real attention. He published a paper. It was called The Nature of the Chemical Bond. He did some very important work on understanding how atoms interact with each other and create chemical bonds. And it's fundamentally shaped how we understand chemical reactions in chemistry. Pauling's discoveries in that paper were so groundbreaking, they became an essential key to our later understanding of the shape of DNA. Pauling became the chairman of Caltech's chemistry department at age 36. And he later wrote a textbook that revolutionized the teaching of the discipline for decades. By the 1940s, Pauling joined the war effort. He worked on explosives and the patent for an armor-piercing shell. And he was one of a few scientists awarded a presidential medal of merit by Harry Truman. But as his public profile began to rise in the science community, his politics changed. He'd been apolitical before, actively helping the armed forces in the war effort. And then something changed. A short time ago, an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima. Pauling was shocked. He began giving speeches about it to general audiences, explaining the science of the bomb and the grave moral implications of such a weapon. He felt that scientists should make their voices known about the risk. And with this bomb, we have now added a new and revolutionary increase in destruction. It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. Pauling became a member of the emergency committee of atomic scientists, a small group that worked to encourage the peaceful use of atomic energy. Even for someone as respected as Linus Pauling, this was risky. It was a sense that science had a sort of purity to it. And most scientists were relatively apolitical in the public arena. Even the idea that scientists should have opinions was perhaps somewhat frowned upon. It was a dangerous message to the government. Pauling was suspected of being a communist and Senator McCarthy saw him as a major threat. One communist on the back of it. Of one universal day is one communist too many. The State Department even denied Pauling a passport. There seemed to be suspicion that he might join the Soviet Union. But when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry, they had to give it back so he could go to Stockholm for the ceremony. I was pretty pleased. Back at Caltech, the faculty threw a huge banquet, more than 300 guests, to celebrate this big award. Pauling's courses can't be beat, can't be beat. Pauling's courses are a treat, are a treat, and a treat. They performed an original musical in his name. If sci-functions give you panics, try his course in Wave Mechanics once you've tried it. Resonance theory can't be beat. The show was called The Road to Stockholm. Dr. Paulings ever wrong, never wrong. And his double bonds are strong. They are strong, they're the strongest. Longest double bonds are round. The strongest we have ever found. 1958, he published a really important book. Belatedly titled No More War. He had taken up an important political stance against nuclear arms and do wonderful speeches about how we need to be careful about nuclear weapons. Every activity that any one of us engages in has to affect. It brings to the participants the knowledge that he is taking a great action, that he is doing something that will affect the future of the world. And then it has to affect on other people. And so I say to you, do away with your effort. With his wife, Eva Helen, he presented in front of the UN to end nuclear bomb testing with thousands of signatures from scientists all over the world. He was subpoenaed by the Senate. How had he gathered these signatures? Did he have a communist organization behind him? My conscience does not allow me to protect myself by factoring being an ideal with those four people and I am not going to do it. Polling appeared before the committee in 1960, but refused to give the names of the people who circulated the petition. It was a matter of conscience. It was a matter of principle. It was a matter of moralality. I have decided that I shall not conform to the request of this subcommittee. After he published No More War, Polling was graced once again with a prestigious honor. This time for activism. In 1962, he won a second Nobel Prize this time for peace. On behalf of the Nobel Committee, to hand over to you, niche metal and diploma. Thank you, sir. Thank you. He is still to this day, the only person to win two unshared Nobel prizes. So he is someone that we certainly should be listening to. He was on the media, lots on TV, on the radio, in newspapers. When Polling came home with this second award, there was no big party, no song and dance, not even a personal congratulations from the president of Caltech. It wasn't a very happy time. There had been the period of McCarthyism when there were repressions of freedom of expression of opinion. It had been unpleasant for us, for when we didn't know what our friends were thinking, or when it was pretty clear that some of them were no longer very friendly. He soon resigned from his position, a job he had held for over 40 years. And he took a job at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions, a liberal California think tank. His priorities were shifting, away from science and towards political work. After a lifetime of making unprecedented discoveries that labeled him a genius and taking up causes that branded him a traitor, he was about to take on the biggest crusade of his life. That's after the break. This is advertiser content brought to you by Stonyfield Organic. Our cows, them going out to pasture, they love it. They're so excited to go out every day. They wait-rated the door. In fact, we milk them and we just open up the laneway and let them just go right out to pasture. I'm Rhonda Miller-Gudrich and I'm a dairy farmer in Cabot Vermont. Our farm is Molleybrook Farm. We're an organic dairy farm and we are a supplier to Stonyfield. Molleybrook Farm has been in my husband's family since 1835. We started our organic transition in 2015. We had 53 acres of corn ground and of course we had to use herbicides and pesticides. And the soil was dead, really for all intense purposes. We stopped growing corn and stopped using herbicides and pesticides and we seeded that down to perennial grasses. After that, we began to see biodiversity and that soil again. To be organic certified, our cows need to be in pasture at least 120 days. I think the organic practices really benefit our animals. You know, having good feed, good water, a nice light area, that's what's important to us and that's what's important to Stonyfield. Visit Stonyfield.com to find Stonyfield organic yogurt near you. The support for the show comes from Shopify. Every worthwhile journey starts with a handful of what-ifs. But one day you'll be able to look back and realize that all those what-ifs were small steps towards turning your dream into a thriving business. Shopify can help you get there. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the US. Join them and turn those what-ifs into... Would Shopify today? Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash Vox Business. Go to Shopify.com slash Vox Business. That's Shopify.com slash Vox Business. The world moves fast. You work day, even faster, pitching products, drafting reports, analyzing data. Microsoft 365 Co-Pilot is your AI assistant for work. Built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft 365 apps you use. Helping you quickly write, analyze, create, and summarize. So you can cut through clutter and clear a path to your best work. Learn more at Microsoft.com slash M365 Co-Pilot. Linus Polling was nothing if not industrious. Like he was the youngest member ever elected to the National Academy of Sciences. In 1949, he was made president of the American Chemical Society, two-time Nobel Prize winner. So what does a person do? Who's become an international hero twice over for the discoveries he's made and the stances he's taken? Only to be knocked off his pedestal, both by the government and a university afraid of his voice. What does someone like that do for redemption? Well, if your line is Polling, you get really, really into vitamin C. You include this quote of his, I like to take a very complicated subject where there is no order and think about it for a long enough period that I can find some way of introducing order to it. Exactly. How does that strike you? He had a knack for thinking deeply about problems of working out solutions. But was very much grounded in chemistry. And I think even in that, starts to lie one of the problems because when he turned his attention to humans and human biology and nutrition and the idea of vitamins being important for helping us fight off diseases, everything is much, much more complicated. In 1965, he came across something bold in his research. Large doses of the B vitamin niacin could have some beneficial effects for people suffering with schizophrenia. To be clear though, this is an idea not supported today. But Polling fixated on this B vitamin tidbit. Because with most drugs, there are limits on how much of them can be taken safely. But were vitamins different? They somehow thought that maybe there's something special about vitamins. That if you take them in a really high dose, they're still not harmful to the body. Polling got in touch with a scientist, a man named Erwin Stone. And Stone made an alarming claim. High doses of vitamin C helped Stone and his wife heal rapidly after a car crash. Polling glombed onto some of Stone's ideas. He was interested in vitamin C's benefits beyond the recommended amount needed to prevent scurvy. Like were there any benefits of the vitamin in much higher doses? And he correctly said, well, the amount you need to not get that particular disease is not the same as the amount that is optimal for your health. Polling wasn't wrong to question these things. And it is extremely hard to know how much of any supplement, of any vitamin, of any mineral, of anything is actually ideal for our health. Polling in his wife began taking very high doses of vitamin C to the tune of 3,000 milligrams a day per Stone's recommendation. They were taking something like 30 times the recommended amount in any country. And they came to feel that this huge intake stopped them from catching colds. Polling them compiled research across scientific journals, including findings from controlled trials that supported his own ideas. Getting these reinforcements of his idea as anecdotes. And then published a book in the spring of 1970. It was called vitamin C and the common cold. Did the book do well? I was an instant bestseller. Unlike any of my books, I'm sad to say. Polling's big theory was the more vitamin C you took, the lower your chances of getting sick and the less sick you got. And he recommended a mega dose of 2,300 milligrams or more a day for optimum health. The grabby clickbait headline, vitamin C can stop you from catching a cold, caught wildfire. The timing was perfect. Counterculture of the late 1960s fueled a ravenous interest in whole foods, natural remedies. A whole business popped up around vitamin C. Factories were built, manufacturers of the vitamin even dubbed the public consumption of it, the Linus Polling Effect. And public consumption of the vitamin continued for decades. Where's my vitamin C? Harry, we can do better! Where is my vitamin C? George, we can do better! What can do better than your vitamin C? Introducing one a day course, C500, anything you're seeking to do, we can do better. So, the public may have been buying a lot of it, but the medical establishment was not buying it at all. The American Journal of Public Health accused Polling's book as a little more than theoretical speculation, and the journal Science rejected Polling's paper on an evolutionary need for vitamin C. Polling had failed to convince the science community of his ideas. In part, because he sidesteps the scientific peer review process, in favor of publishing his ideas for a general audience. Buddy wrote more books. Many other diseases. The Linus Polling seized on this as a whole nother angle on the importance of vitamin C. Other scientists at the time, immediately considered Cameron's data to be too anecdotal, not done with any rigorous way as a clinical trial, but rather just his own opinion about what was happening to his patients. Polling encouraged Cameron to continue his studies of cancer and vitamin C. The two of them co-authored a paper and submitted it to the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It was rejected twice. But Polling didn't back down. He remained enthusiastic about vitamin C, even in his personal life. Ava Helen, Linus Polling's wife, had surgery for stomach cancer, but did not take radiotherapy or chemotherapy, instead took a high dose of vitamin C and she claimed that it helped her feel better. I just can't believe this. Just help me understand how a mind like this would be seduced by the anecdote. I've interviewed lots of brilliant scientists who have done amazing things. One other thing that often comes out is it sounds so simple and so obvious and yet perhaps we forget. They are still susceptible to getting things wrong. Even a person who's one, two Nobel Prizes, won't get everything right. All of us are also susceptible to somehow it feels like we're kind of hard-wired to enjoy very black and white thinking, whereas everything is much more grayscale. The bottom line answer, I think for that question, is just very simply Linus Polling was a human. With Cameron, Polling doubled down on the cancer benefits. He asserted that vitamin C and high doses was a value in almost every disease state. He was repeatedly rejected for funding for his research from the National Cancer Institute. By the early 1970s, Polling was nearly completely ostracized from the medical profession. He contacted the Head of the National Cancer Institute about his work. The Head of the Institute decided to set the record straight. There would be a clinical trial. To decide once and for all whether vitamin C will help cancer patients. They chose a heavy hitter to run the experiment. A man named Charles Mertel, professor of oncology at Mayo Medical School. The trial would test whether or not the vitamin shrink the size of a person's tumor. It would be double blind, include late-stage cancer patients, and it would include high doses of the vitamin. The results when they came back said absolutely not. Charles Mertel concluded vitamin C does not help patients with cancer. The final report slammed Polling's point of view. Vitamin C performed no better than a dummy medication. But that wasn't the end of the matter. Polling fought back. He argued that the Mertel experiment had flaws. The patients have been given aggressive chemotherapy treatments ahead of the vitamin C trial, weakening their immunity. This is important because it is true that clinical trials are vital to how we find out new medical information. But it is also equally true that clinical trials can be still debated. It depends a lot on what is being measured and the particular situation for the patients. But despite Polling's retort, the Mertel study was taken as proof that Polling's ideas were for lack of a better word, quackery. Polling wrote another book. It was called Cancer and Vitamin C. He put more pressure on the institute to do another study. So, Charles Mertel did another clinical trial. And this time he made sure to use patients who have not had any prior treatment. So, in 1985, the second Mertel study was published. Again, he concluded seemingly once and for all, vitamin C and no effect on helping people with their cancer. And then again, Lydus Polling found ways to think about it deeply, look at the data and could still argue the point. He said that you just looked at the outcomes, you know, how long they lived for. But Charles Mertel did not look at how were the patients feeling. And you and camera said that yes, these patients were feeling much better on high dose vitamin C. And that wasn't taken into account. Secondly, Lydus Polling said the trial ended too early. You needed to give patients high dose of C for a long time to allow the drug to have an effect. The bottom line is that there was then and there is now no evidence that vitamin C cures cancer. Even though the matter was closed, Polling still called for a retraction of the Mertel study. In December 1991, Polling had contracted prostate and rectal cancer. He got surgery for it, but also treated it with vitamin C, raw fruits, and vegetables. In a lecture at Stanford Medical School in 1992, he espoused the vitamin's benefits for people with heart disease. Even suggesting it could help people with AIDS. He died two years later. Two-time Nobel Prize winning chemist Lydus Polling is dead at age 93. I'll probably be remembered, Lydus, having discovered vitamin C. Of course, I didn't discover vitamin C. Will vitamin C cure the common cold? No. Back in 2013, a review of nearly 30 studies of people with colds taking a normal amount of vitamin C found little to no evidence that it reduced the symptoms. People who supplement themselves with vitamin C get over a cold about 8% quicker. That means on average, if you suffer for a few days, you might get a little better. A few hours earlier than if you hadn't taken the supplement. But that is still quite hard to interpret because people taking high dose of vitamin C have probably done lots of other things in their lives that help them be healthier. So overall, vitamin C has not really much of an impact in how quickly you get over cold, and it definitely has no impact on whether you catch a cold in the first place. Today, revenue for vitamin C has surpassed over $2 billion, and it's growing. Davis says it's not going to help, but it's also not going to hurt you. But what he is wary of is the idea that any one simple supplement, like vitamin C, be held up as a kind of cure all. We are wired to listen to other people. We naturally warm to the scientists telling us something as declarative as that when they've won two Nobel Prizes and are charismatic. Lila's probably something brilliant, and yet did something utterly not brilliant. From history of science, there's a moral to be learned. The faculty that performed the musical for Linus Pauing, a Caltech, right after he won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, issued a sort of cautionary tale. Galileo once almost burned at the stake for claiming the planet revolved around the sun. It was a statement so shocking that the Catholic Church moved to persecute him. He eventually recanted his defense of heliocentrism, and he lived under house arrest for the rest of his life. It wasn't until 1992 that the Vatican finally acknowledged the Galileo was right. Linus Pauing believed so deeply in the power of vitamin C, even when presented with evidence, countering his conviction for decades. And for that, he was knocked off the throne he wants that upon. We've continued to study vitamin C and its effect on everything from COVID-19 to further studies on cancer patients. Just a couple of years ago, researchers conducted a large clinical trial of intravenous vitamin C administered to people with sepsis. There was a lot of enthusiasm that it might help. It was not found to be an effective treatment. My Linus Pauing received an apology someday? Maybe. In the meantime though, old habits die hard. I mean, even though I know having a glass of orange juice is not going to cure my cold, I know that. That does not mean that if I have a cold, I won't still have a glass of orange juice. You can read Daniel M. Davis's new book, It's Called Self Defense, a Mythbusting Guide to a Moon Health. This episode was produced by me, Amy Padula. It was edited by Jorge Just, with help from Meredith Haudenot. Mixing in sound design from Christian Iella, music from Noam Hasim Bell, and fact checking from Melissa Hirsch. Special thanks to the Eva Helen and Linus Pauing papers at the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections and Archives Research Center. Joanna Salatraaf is running the show. Sally Helm is thinking all the time about black holes. Julia Lungoria is our editorial director and bird Pinkerton. Walked toward the hole in the tree roots, feeling every platypus eye trained on her. As she got closer to the hole, she took a closer look at the guitar. The neck was snapped and the guitar was destroyed. Thanks as always to Brian Resnick for co-creating the show along with Bird and Noam. And if you out there have thoughts about the show, please send us an email. We are at unexplainableatvox.com. You can also leave us a review or a rating or every listen that really helps us out. If you're into supporting the show and all of VOX in general, join our membership program. You can go to VOX.com slash members to sign up. Unexplainable is part of the VOX Media Podcast Network and we'll see you next time. We turn out all the burners when we leave the lab at night. We close up all the windows and we turn out every life.
