Current therapy for HCV disease focuses on anti-viral treatment. The combination of pegylated interferon and ribavirin is approved by the FDA for treating HCV disease. Subjects in this study will be given ribavirin and pegylated interferon. One innovative aspect of this proposal is that the state-of-the-art antiviral treatment will be supplemented by an anti-fibrotic agent, namely polyenylphosphatidylcholine (PPC), or placebo, administered in a double blind randomized fashion. Current therapy focuses on anti-viral treatment, neglecting the fact that what causes the medical symptoms and eventually the demise of the HCV patient is the liver fibrosis, the resulting cirrhosis and the associated complications, including hepatocellular carcinoma. If the fibrotic process could be stopped or even prevented, the hepatitis C virus would lose much of its impact on health. Available anti-fibrotic agents are too toxic to be used in patients, except for one, namely PPC, which has been shown in various experimental models to have striking anti-fibrotic actions, and was found recently, in a European study, to be beneficial in patients with hepatitis C in terms of their circulating levels of transaminases. Various studies have indicated that HCV is associated with an oxidative stress and thus it is noteworthy that PPC was discovered to have also significant anti-oxidant effects.