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.
