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From: sdyer@bbncc5.UUCP (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.med
Subject: Re: How much Vitamin C is necessary.
Message-ID: <304@bbncc5.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 7-Dec-85 18:01:22 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncc5.304
Posted: Sat Dec  7 18:01:22 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Dec-85 03:43:57 EST
References: <2046@aecom.UUCP> <18400015@convexs> <997@utai.UUCP>
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 19

>  I spoke to Pauling several years ago and he claimed that vitamin C played an
>important and useful role is cell-wall construction and that this
>was *one* of the reasons it helped fight so many ailments.

Um, this would be correct except that animals don't have cell walls, plants
and bacteria do.

Pauling is probably referring to the role of ascorbate in the hydroxylation
of proline residues to hydroxyproline in collagen synthesis.  Collagen is
the stuff of all connective tissue, and a defect in collagen synthesis is the
underlying biochemical pathology in the clinical disease, scurvy.  It would be
silly to claim that most of us have some subclinical degree of scurvy, since
collagen biosynthesis is unimpared in normal individuals with ordinary
intakes of vitamin C.

-- 
/Steve Dyer
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