David L. Watts, D.C., Ph.D., F.A.C.E.P.1
The best approach to the medical problems of cigarette smoking can be summarized in two words, "DON'T SMOKE." However, there will always be some who disregard the best of advice and pursue this noxious habit, in spite of the high risk of disease and early death. This paper is directed to this stubborn group in the hope that it will reduce these risks and overcome some of the great losses to our economy resulting from the chronic inhalation of tobacco smoke.
Up to now, the main trends for reducing the health hazards of smoking have been along the lines of obtaining tobaccos which yield less tars and nicotine in the smoke and of improving the efficiency of filters in removing the suspect smoke constituents. Both of these approaches have serious practical limitations; tobaccos will always yield some tar and nicotine and an acceptable filter cannot be made 100 percent efficient to remove a|l undesirable smoke constituents. The best that can be hoped for is only a partial reduction in the potential hazards.
The various effects of tobacco smoke on the human body and the reduction of their morbidity are essentially medical problems —preventive medical problems. Yet very little medical research has been done for finding a simple means of increasing the resistance of the human organism to the irritating, toxic, and carcinogenic constituents of cigarette smoke and detoxicating these constituents in vivo. This physiological approach to the smoking problem has been virtually completely neglected.
The medical techniques of epidemiological research, which have paid off so handsomely in eliminating diseases such as diphtheria, poliomyelitis, and others, have not been applied to the smoking problem. These techniques involve increasing the resistance of susceptible individuals to attack by the causative agent. The probable reason that similar studies have not been undertaken in connection with smoking has been the lack, until recently, of a satisfactory rationale for the use of any single antitoxic substance which would detoxify the absorbed smoke constituents and increase the body's resistance to the noxious effects of smoking. Needless to say, such a substance must also be completely harmless, without undesirable side effects, inexpensive, commonly available, and easily administered. Ascorbic acid or sodium ascorbate fills all these requirements, and the rationale for their use has been developed during the last decade through work on the evolutionary history and genetics of scurvy...
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"Smoker's Scurvy: Orthomolecular Preventive Medicine in Cigarette Smoking"