MEMORANDUM
FILE COPY
June 1991
To: Matthias Rath
From: Linus Pauling
Subj.: Sickle-cell anemia
After our early work on sickle-cell anemia, I tried for some time to develop
a treatment for it, but without success.
There s a paper in Medical Hypotheses, 35, 88 (1991) by R.B. Francis, U.S.C. School of Medicine, with the following sentence
beginning the abstract:
"Much of the morbidity and mortality in sickle-cell disease (SCD) is caused
by tissue ischemia and infarction resulting from vascular occlusion." The author suggests
that thrombotic occlusion of marger arteries and veins is an important factor in many
of the vasocclusive complications of SCD.
Perhaps our suggested treatment of cardiovascular disease would have value in
controlling sickle-cell disease.
L.P.
LP:dm
P.S. The first sentence in the text begins "It is a remarkable fact that although
sickle-cell anemia was the first disease to be characterized on a molecular level...",
without giving a reference.
P.S.S. I have now talked with Dr. Francis by telephone. He is interested in the
possibility of prophylaxis for sickle-cell anemia patients. I told him I would send
him copies of the three papers and mentioned that the third paper should not be talked
about publicly until it is published. He mentioned that several papers have been published
recently on controlling immunocytopenia with high doses of vitamin C.
