john@ur-tut.UUCP (John Gurian) (12/13/85)
I took a few minutes to check "Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine" (circa 1983) the other day to see what it said about vitamin C. In summation, it said there was no evidence that taking megadoses of the stuff did any good for anything (which has all been said before), with the exception of a very rare genetic disease of the body's white blood cells known as Chediak-Higashi Syndrome (look, I'd never heard of it either), where there is some evidence that taking ~200 mg/day can help the defective WBC's. However, at present, only two side effects have been noticed from megadosing on vitamin C: it can destroy the vitamin B12 in foods & decrease its absorption, leading to B12 deficiency; and, in pregnant women, it can acclimate the fetus to high levels, so that when born, the infant develops scurvy soon afterwards, which I found pretty interesting. I saw nothing concerning liver or kidney, but I didn't take the time to do a thorough literature search. -- John Gurian -- University of Rochester School of Medicine