Let's stop the virus!
Let's end the hysteria!
To the people and governments of the world
An Open Letter by Dr. Matthias Rath
A pandemic is currently threatening the health and lives of people around the world and ruining the economies of entire nations. The shockwave from this pandemic is only surpassed by the audacity through which potentially life-saving information on the possible containment of the pandemic is being systematically withheld from the people, as well as from many political decision-takers worldwide.
Social life is being disturbed, basic civil rights are being taken away, and economic damage in unprecedented proportions is being accepted, all in the name of curtailing the pandemic. And yet neither the so-called ‘experts’ nor the politicians they advise are providing people with the most basic – and potentially life-saving – health advice: An optimum intake of vitamins and other essential micronutrients is a key measure for anyone to strengthen their immune system. This scientific fact – recognized by nine Nobel Prizes and documented in countless textbooks of biology and biochemistry around the world – is notoriously absent from essentially every public health recommendation.
While the search for an effective and safe vaccine to help control the current pandemic remains important, the deliberate silence over natural ways to strengthen the immune system, which are readily available now, is outright irresponsible. This silence is no coincidence. It happens in the interest of those corporate interests that try to take massive economic advantage from the ongoing crisis, namely the pharmaceutical investment business.
The publication of this Open Letter, however, will derail these plans and further accelerate the demise of these corporate interests.
As the scientist who – together with two-time Nobel laureate Linus Pauling – contributed to a thus far unprecedented advance in natural human health, I feel it is incumbent upon me to raise my voice at this critical moment in history.
Towards these goals, this Open Letter has three main sections:
It is an unconscionable act that neither national nor international health authorities are providing the people with basic scientific facts and answers to questions that are potentially lifesaving.
While the current pandemic causes disease and death among human beings around the world, animals are rarely affected. They can carry the virus but they do not develop a deadly disease. In fact, in seeking to test potential therapies, researchers worldwide struggle to find a suitable animal model in which the virus causes disease. Any scientific experts who do not take this striking fact into account when advising governments or addressing the public on possible solutions to the pandemic should therefore be listened to with caution. Similarly, any scientific effort to find a therapeutic solution to the pandemic is doomed without addressing this critical aspect.
The human metabolism is set apart from that of essentially all other animals by its inability to synthesize vitamin C from glucose. Most animals produce vitamin C in high amounts of up to 20,000 milligrams per day compared to human body weight. Humans and sub-human primates lack this ability due to a genetic mutation that occurred during their evolution. Thus, all humans today are dependent on an optimum intake of vitamin C, either from the diet or from supplements. Vitamin C deficiency, and most people in the world suffer from it, causes a weakening of the connective tissue, compromises natural barriers like skin and the inner cell lining of the lungs (epithelial cells of the lungs), and weakens our immune system. Thus, viruses and many other infectious organisms can easily enter the body and find too little immune resistance to fight them.
Vitamin C in the fight against the pandemic
Most animals produce vitamin C in high amounts of up to 20,000 milligrams per day compared to human body weight.
While the current pandemic causes disease and death among human beings around the world, animals are rarely affected. They can carry the virus but they do not develop a deadly disease. In fact, in seeking to test potential therapies, researchers worldwide struggle to find a suitable animal model in which the virus causes disease. Any scientific experts who do not take this striking fact into account when advising governments or addressing the public on possible solutions to the pandemic should therefore be listened to with caution. Similarly, any scientific effort to find a therapeutic solution to the pandemic is doomed without addressing this critical aspect.
The human metabolism is set apart from that of essentially all other animals by its inability to synthesize vitamin C from glucose. Most animals produce vitamin C in high amounts of up to 20,000 milligrams per day compared to human body weight. Humans and sub-human primates lack this ability due to a genetic mutation that occurred during their evolution. Thus, all humans today are dependent on an optimum intake of vitamin C, either from the diet or from supplements. Vitamin C deficiency, and most people in the world suffer from it, causes a weakening of the connective tissue, compromises natural barriers like skin and the inner cell lining of the lungs (epithelial cells of the lungs), and weakens our immune system. Thus, viruses and many other infectious organisms can easily enter the body and find too little immune resistance to fight them.
These anti-viral mechanisms of vitamin C have been scientifically demonstrated in a multitude of viruses affecting humans including:
When used against the human deficiency virus (HIV), one of the most recent epidemics to haunt mankind, vitamin C has been shown in research studies to inhibit the multiplication of this virus by over 99 percent. It is therefore no surprise that high doses of vitamin C are effective in blocking essentially all human viruses studied thus far, including also influenza (flu).
Vitamin C has also been shown to be effective against the virus that causes the current global pandemic. In February this year, the first clinical reports became available from Chinese clinics where patients severely infected by the current virus almost completely recovered after receiving high dose vitamin C treatment.
At the same time, the Chinese government transported vitamin C by the ton into the affected regions to fight the epidemic’s spread among the population. This fact would explain the massive decline in new infections during the beginning of March this year.
Viruses invade the cells of our body, for example the inner (epithelial) lining cells of the lung. In order to spread, they reprogram the genetic information of cells to produce the biological tools the virus needs to multiply its spread throughout human tissue and ultimately become a manifest infection.
As part of this process, virally infected cells activate enzymes (catalysts) that are able to cut through the surrounding connective tissue (e.g. collagen) like biological scissors. Essentially all viruses activate such enzymes as a precondition for spreading and developing into a full-blown disease.
The natural amino acid lysine is able to block these enzymes and, thus, inhibit the spread of the virus inside the body.
In 1992 I published a scientific paper together with Nobel laureate Linus Pauling, highlighting the importance of combining vitamin C with lysine to maximize the inhibition of disease processes particularly related to viral diseases and cancer. In short, cancer cells and virally infected cells both use the same mechanism of enzyme activation and tissue destruction. This groundbreaking article ends with the following statement:
“We predict that the use of lysine and lysine analogs, particularly in combination with ascorbate [vitamin C], will lead to a breakthrough in the control of many forms of cancer and infectious diseases.”
The combination of vitamin C and lysine is particularly advantageous because these micronutrients target different mechanisms of disease. While lysine helps to block disease-related degradation of connective tissue, vitamin C stimulates the new production of this ‘stability tissue’.
The fact that both of these micronutrients cannot be produced in the human body highlights the need to supplement them in optimum amounts – particularly during ongoing disease processes.
A specific highlight of this landmark publication was the recommendation to combine these two natural micronutrients with synthetic derivatives of the amino acid lysine. These lysine analogs, e.g. tranexamic acid, are many times more effective than lysine in blocking excessive tissue breakdown. They are listed in the publication and can now be tested as potential therapeutic agents in fighting the current pandemic.
The efficacy of lysine in blocking viral infections was later tested in a study with a particularly malicious HTLV-1 virus that causes leukemia in humans. In this virus-induced human disease – for which there is no cure – the supplementation of lysine was shown to block the proliferation of the virus. More significantly, lysine was also able to cause the virally infected cells to commit ‘biological suicide’ (apoptosis).
Thus, the control of this virus was not made possible by means of a pharmaceutical drug, but from a micronutrient identified by understanding the underlying cellular disease mechanisms.
In 1999, the Dr. Rath Research Institute was founded in California, with Dr. Aleksandra Niedzwiecki as its director. Over the years our research team expanded the testing of specific micronutrients against a variety of health conditions, including viral diseases. Besides vitamin C and lysine, several other natural compounds were proven to work in synergy to block viral proliferation and spread. These substances include green tea extracts, proline, N-acetyl cysteine, selenium and certain other micronutrients.
The combination of these micronutrients has been successfully tested against a variety of viruses. The results of the studies can be accessed via the website of our research institute.
To my knowledge, no pharmaceutical drug exists with comparable efficacy, safety and affordability to that of the scientifically tested micronutrient synergy approach.
The previous paragraphs highlighted the fact that natural health approaches to viral diseases are not a matter of hearsay but of scientific fact. You can take advantage of this health knowledge in two principal ways: in the form of vitamin-rich nutrition, or by taking dietary supplements.
These recommendations are helpful for people to reinforce their immune system in order to prevent viral infections.
If a person is already infected, vitamin C and (if available) lysine should be taken in the form of an intravenous preparation in order to attain maximum efficacy.
The efficacy of high dose intravenous vitamin C in the therapy of patients affected by the current epidemic has successfully been shown in a clinic located in Wuhan, China. Patients receiving this treatment recovered from their infection and could subsequently be dismissed from the clinic.
In stark contrast to effective and safe natural approaches, the tools of the pharmaceutical industry in the fight against viral diseases are rather limited.
In the absence of a specific vaccine, pharmaceutical companies are promoting so-called ‘antiviral’ drugs. The name ‘antiviral’ is already misleading because it implies that these drugs affect viruses specifically. Fact is, however, that these drugs affect both the multiplication of the virus and, at the same time, the growth of our body cells.
For example, the antiviral drug now widely discussed in the battle against the current pandemic replaces certain building blocks in the DNA of both viruses and body cells. The side effects of such drugs are predictable: they particularly damage the organs dependent on a high turnover of cells. Thus, the bone marrow – the production site of the main immune cells (leukocytes) – is damaged first. With the formation of white blood cells depressed, the effect of these drugs is, at best, short term, and in most cases outright devastating.
Another drug currently propagated as an alleged hope against the current pandemic was originally developed to fight arthritis. But no one tells an expectant public that this drug has been associated with hundreds of deaths. A mass promotion of such drugs in the current pandemic may likely kill more patients by its side-effects than would die from the viral infection.
Irrespective of the questionable efficacy, as well as the severe side effects, the manufacturers of these patented synthetic drugs are already considered by international financial circles as the most lucrative investment firms of our time!
In order to comprehend why this life-saving information is being strategically withheld from you, we need to address some critical aspects of the pharmaceutical business.
...