The Vitamin E Story

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http://www.doctoryourself.com/estory.htm

 

The Vitamin E Story

 

 

 

The first course I ever taught was entitled " Forgotten Research in Medicine. "

That was in 1976. Even by that time, there had been a strikingly large number of

impeccably qualified researchers and physicians who had left drug-and-cut

medicine behind in favor of a naturopathic approach. I had seen so much

well-documented evidence for the safety and effectiveness of therapeutic

nutrition against major chronic diseases that I figured it must presently be

self evident to everybody. Surely, I thought, it could only be a matter of time

(say twenty years at most) until all doctors shifted to natural healing, because

word would spread like wildfire and all their patients would demand it of them.

 

I’d read a variety of articles documenting an incredibly bitter controversy

which raged throughout the 1950’s over the use of vitamin E (d-alpha tocopherol)

for cardiovascular disease. Drs. Wilfrid and Evan Shute were at the center of

this storm, which encircled their work in Ontario, Canada. They were among the

very first medical doctors to clinically employ large doses of the vitamin in

place of conventional drug therapy. Like many pioneers, they caught all the

arrows. Almost all of the positive articles I saw were based on case histories

and came from the popular press. Almost all of the criticism seemed to come from

the medical press, which seemed singularly resistant to even try the Shute’s

approach, let alone endorse it. Yet, somehow, their unwillingness to test the

Shute’s high-dose, natural vitamin E protocol did not seem to prevent them from

dismissing it.

 

In the early 50’s, Canada was a hotbed of leading-edge nutritional research.

Maybe there is something in the water up there. In Saskatchewan at about the

same time, Dr. Abram Hoffer and Dr. Humphrey Osmond found that niacin was the

best way to treat psychosis. The Shutes found that vitamin E was the best way to

treat heart disease. One might think that the only possible professional

response to such important discoveries would be grateful acceptance and

widespread journal publication.

 

Just the opposite occurred.

 

For decades it has been said that pharmaceutical medicine has little to gain

from a cheap vitamin cure that cannot be patented and exploited for high profit.

Observers have also witnessed what happens to medical doctors that have defected

to drugless healing: they gain many grateful patients, and lose a lot of

research funding. Few pharmaceutical companies willingly contribute to the

competition.

 

The Shutes saw early that such would be the case, and paid their own way. They

created their own research foundation and treatment facility (The Shute

Institute), created their own journal (The Summary), and in so doing, some would

say, created their own trouble.

 

The Vitamin E Story is Dr. Evan Shute’s first-hand, ring-side account of the

discovery that high-dose d-alpha tocopherol cures serious disease. It is also an

unusually interesting autobiography of an unusually interesting man. Evan Shute,

an obstetrician by training, was a poet by inclination. He once delivered 25

babies in 17 days, yet he also wrote children’s stories and published ten

volumes of verse. Dr. Shute’s professional character is perhaps best illustrated

by his repeated efforts to credit medical student Floyd Skelton with major

contributions to the development of vitamin E cardiovascular therapy. The

Shute’s personal integrity is demonstrated by their maintaining a non-commercial

stance and never profiting from the sale of the vitamin. Oddly enough, in 1948

they actually advocated making vitamin E a prescription item.

 

Perhaps this is understandable, given the spectacular, wonder-drug-style patient

recoveries that the Shutes had already seen by mid-century.

 

TWENTY YEARS OF IGNORED SHUTE VITAMIN E RESEARCH: A Timeline

 

1936: Vitamin E-rich wheat germ oil cures angina.

 

1940: Vitamin E suspected as preventive of fibroids and endometriosis, and

curative of atherosclerosis.

 

1945: Vitamin E shown to cure hemorrhages in skin and mucous membranes, and to

decrease the diabetic’s need for insulin.

 

1946: Vitamin E greatly improves wound healing, including skin ulcers. Also

demonstrated effective in cases of claudication, acute nephritis, thrombosis,

cirrhosis and phlebitis. Vitamin E strengthens and regulates heartbeat.

 

1947: Vitamin E successfully used as therapy for gangrene, inflammation of blood

vessels (Buerger’s disease), retinitis and choroiditis.

 

1948: Vitamin E helps lupus erythematosus and shortness of breath.

 

1950: Vitamin E shown to be effective treatment for varicose veins, and in cases

of severe body burns.

 

1954: The Shutes’ medical textbook, Alpha Tocopherol in Cardiovascular Disease,

is published.

 

1956: The Heart and Vitamin E is published.

 

It is not overly easy to see how such promise could be ignored for long. But it

was. Dr. Shute’s frustration with an unnaturally stubborn medical profession

comes starkly through his text.

 

" It was nearly impossible now for anyone who valued his future in Academe to

espouse Vitamin E, prescribe it or advise its use. That would make a man a

" quack " at once. This situation lasted for many years. In the United States, of

course, the closure of the J.A.M.A. pages against us and tocopherol meant that

it did not exist. It was either in the U.S. medical bible or it was nought. No

amount of documentation could budge medical men from this stance. Literature in

the positive was ignored and left unread. Individual doctors often said: " If it

is as good as you say, we would all be using it. " But nothing could induce them

as persons of scientific background to make the simplest trial on a burn or

coronary. " (p 146)

 

 

 

The American Medical Association even refused to let the Shute’s present their

findings at national medical conventions. (p 148-9) In the early 1960’s, the

United States Post Office successfully prevented even the mailing of vitamin E.

(p 166)

 

Linus Pauling wrote, in the book’s 1985 forward:

 

" The failure of the medical establishment during the last forty years to

recognize the value of Vitamin E in controlling heart disease is responsible for

a tremendous amount of unnecessary suffering and for many early deaths. The

interesting story of the efforts to suppress the Shute discoveries about Vitamin

E illustrates the shocking bias of organized medicine against nutritional

measures for achieving improved health. " (vii)

 

O that things were truly better today, but they are not. Yes, the American

public can and does buy vitamin E (even by mail) without a prescription. Still,

I am unaware of any burn clinic using topical vitamin E as their primary

treatment. I am yet to see " megadose vitamin E cures cardiovascular disease "

commercials on TV. I have never seen a bottle of vitamin E in an intensive care

unit. It has now been nearly 60 years since vitamin E was seen to greatly help

diabetics and cardiovascular patients and only very recently has medical

research " discovered " a glimmer of the value of this vitamin. For half a

century, vitamin E has been an available specific for intermittent claudication,

angina, prevention of and recovery from heart attack, thrombophlebitis, and a

wide variety of other serious conditions.

 

Aye, there’s the rub.

 

Vitamin E is entirely too good for too many purposes. Consumer Reports trashed

it in back in 1972, and often since. It didn’t help matters that Evan Shute was

" only " an obstetrician. (This obstetrician was, however, made a Fellow of the

American Society of Angiology in 1969.) And today, vitamin E’s very

availability, and exceptional safety, seemingly render it unattractive for

hospital use as the spectacular therapy that it is.

 

The Vitamin E Story surprised me with Chapter 12, a collection of rather funny

real-life obstetrical experiences that Dr. Shute evidently just had to put down

on paper. I’m glad he did, as the stories are both delightful and bizarre. There

is the account of proof of ovulation in a 102 year old woman. There is the case

of " cranial nerve neuralgia cured for two years by a hemorrhoidectomy. This

shows the suggestive power of the knife. " Then there is the surgeon who smoked

during operations, the cigarette ash getting into the wound. And let’s not

overlook the marriage ceremony performed during labor. " Uterine contractions

imposed an odd punctuation to the responses, but the minister did most of the

talking, fortunately. "

 

But this book is mostly the story of the Evan Shute who published over 120

medical papers; the doctor who was opposed to circumcision; the doctor who

treated tens of thousands of patients with large amounts of vitamin E.

 

Tocopherol has been known and studied since the 1920’s, generally in small

quantities as a means to ensure a full-term pregnancy. Without the Shute

brothers’ high-dosage clinical work, especially in cardiology, no one at all

would be megadosing with vitamin E today. We owe them our thanks, and our lives.

 

The Vitamin E Story, by Evan Shute, M.D. James C. M. Shute, editor. Forward by

Linus Pauling. (Burlington, Ontario: Welch Publishing, 1985. 219 pages,

softcover.) ISBN 0-920413-04-8 This book is available for US $14.00 (postpaid to

US addresses) from the Shute Institute, 367 Princess Ave., London, Ontario,

Canada N6B 2A7. Canadian and international ordering information may be obtained

from

 

shutemedical .

 

(My review, above, also appeared in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine, Vol.

17, No. 3, Third Quarter, 2002, pages 179-181. It is reprinted with permission.)

 

A bibliography of the Shutes’ principal written work is posted at

 

http://www.doctoryourself.com/biblio_shute.html

 

For specific vitamin dosage information on CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE, Angina,

Hypertension (High Blood Pressure), Congestive Heart Failure, and other heart-y

topics, try a site search for " Shute " or for " heart " from the top of the main

page at

 

http://www.doctoryourself.com Do so, and there’s going to be a whole lot for you

to look at . . . for which I make no apology whatsoever. Cardiovascular disease

remains our number one enemy, the biggest killer of men AND women.

 

 

 

This review is copyright C 2002 by Andrew W. Saul, Number 8 Van Buren Street,

Holley, New York 14470 USA.

 

 

 

 

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