Did Hillary get the best care?
THE DOCTOR GAME
Do famous people always receive superior medical care? If this were a Trivial Pursuit question, the answer would be a big yes. After all, they’re famous and have the money to demand the best medical treatment.
But has fame and fortune guaranteed that Hillary Clinton has been given the best advice to treat pneumonia? This past week I encountered several surprises.
The first surprise was that Clinton, at age 68, hadn’t collapsed earlier from this disease. Or that Donald Trump, age 70 and overweight, hasn’t as yet collapsed from coronary attack. The gruelling U.S. election campaign is not designed for seniors, so something medical is bound to happen eventually. It occurred on Sept. 11.
What else amazed me? Everything I read in the media indicated that Clinton was being treated with antibiotics. I’m sure readers would say, “What’s wrong with antibiotics?” But pneumonia can be caused by either a bacterial or viral infection, and antibiotics have no effect on viral infections.
So what if she was suffering from viral pneumonia? I’d suggest that this presidential candidate needs a second medical opinion if she is only prescribed antibiotics.
Another surprise struck this week while I was talking to the International College of Integrative Medicine meeting in Toronto. The audience was a combination of medical and naturopathic doctors.
I asked the assembled doctors if they had heard of Allan Smith, a New Zealand farmer, or Dr. Frederick R. Klenner, a North Carolina doctor. Only three raised their hands.
A few years ago Allan Smith became critically ill following a visit to Fiji. He was admitted to hospital where tests revealed he was suffering from swine flu virus. Doctors gave him every antibiotic in the book, but he became unconscious and required life-support. Doctors informed his family there was no hope of recovery and that life-support should be ended.
But a family member had heard the use of intravenous vitamin C was curing viral infections and asked that it be given before ending life-support. The doctors refused, stating vitamin C was useless, and not part of the protocol for treating swine flu virus. Eventually, the doctors agreed, reluctantly, to try vitamin C when Smith’s lawyer threatened to sue them if they refused to do so.
So what happened? During the first 24 hours 50,000 milligrams of intravenous vitamin C were administered. This resulted in Smith’s lungs starting to function. But still, it was only after a frustrating battle with doctors that vitamin C was continued. Allan Smith returned to consciousness and survived. See New Zealand’s 60 minutes on YouTube for the full story.
The most appalling result is that this information, the success of large doses of intravenous vitamin C to fight viral infection, has been known for 70 years due to the work of Dr. Frederick Klenner.
In 1950 Klenner, a family doctor with no training in virology, was placed in charge of 60 patients suffering from early poliomyelitis, a viral disease. He decided to give them large doses of vitamin C daily for 14 days. Not one of the patients developed paralysis and all survived! Yet when he reported this finding to the medical society, it was totally ignored.
Dr. Klenner later wrote, “Some physicians would stand by and see their patients die rather than use vitamin C. Vitamin C should be given to the patient while doctors ponder the diagnosis.”
Now studies have shown that high doses of vitamin C can cure meningitis, encephalitis, measles, influenza, West Nile virus and a host of other viral diseases.
But suppose Clinton has a bacterial pneumonia? Large doses of C should still be prescribed, as infection and stress vastly decrease the body’s supply of vitamin C.
I hope both presidential candidates survive this ugly electoral campaign. But whoever faces the stress of being president should take large doses of vitamin C to maintain a healthy immune system.
I take 10,000 milligrams of powdered C daily (available in health food stores) and can’t remember when I last had a cold.