San Francisco Chronicle (SF); Monday, September 23, 1991
David Perlman, Chronicle Science Editor

Federal grants have dried up, foundation funds have been cut in half, major support from a Japanese industrial group has ended, and several private donors who oppose the institute's new focus on AIDS research have stopped their large-scale contributions, according to G. Richard Hicks, the institute's executive vice president.

Many of the 35 scientists in the old warehouse that houses the Pauling laboratories at 440 Page Mill Road have cashed in their retirement benefits and turned the money over to the institute while working without salary, Hicks said in an interview last week.

The rent is due, and "the unpaid bills are piling up," he said.

As a result, the organization must raise an operating budget of more than $3 million over the next eight months or shut down, Hicks said.

Pauling, now 90, is the molecular chemist and longtime anti-war campaigner who won two Nobel prizes -- one for chemistry and one peace prize -- and whose theories on the protective role of vitamin C in a wide variety of diseases have long been highly controversial.

PUBLISHED RESEARCH

More than 25 years ago, Pauling published research showing that vitamin C appeared to prevent or even cure the common cold, and since then, he and his institute's researchers have claimed that the vitamin is effective against cancer, too. The scientists are now investigating its possible benefits in retarding heart disease and are hoping to show that it can also block the deadly effects of the AIDS virus.

According to Hicks, research grants to the institute from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health have long since ended, and the only federal support left is a $5,000-a- month grant from the Department of Energy for a small investigation as part of the $3 billion Human Genome Project.

The recession has had a major impact on many wealthy donors, and others "are reluctant to support research on AIDS," Hicks said. Federal agencies now involved in AIDS research have rejected all the institute's request for funds in that area, he said.

"It would be a real tragedy if the institute did not survive," said Gladys Block, professor of public health nutrition at the University of California at Berkeley and an award-winning epidemiologist formerly at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.

'FUNDING DRIVES RESEARCH'

"Funding is what drives research today, and there is danger of losing sound scientific research in areas that are not popular with the research establishment," she said.

Although Pauling is immensely respected as one of the world's great scientists and an intellectually profound public citizen, his focus on vitamin C over the past 25 years has not endeared him to the scientific mainstream. He insists that his own self-prescribed regimen of 18 grams of the vitamin daily -- about 200 times more than government guidelines recommend -- has kept him free of colds ever since he began it.

Pauling himself did not discuss his institute's budget problems in a telephone interview last week. He said he and his colleagues are "quite excited" about new research showing how vitamin C can help correct protein imbalances that clog arteries and lead to heart disease, and about their progress in exploring the vitamin's role against HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

"But," he allowed, "times are hard."

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