Chapter Four
THE ULTIMATE TEST

A look at the many cultures around the world that are, or have been, free from cancer; and an analysis of their native foods.

The best way to prove or disprove the vitamin theory of cancer would be to take a large group of people numbering in the thousands and, over a period of many years, expose them to a consistent diet of rich nitriloside foods, and then check the results. This, surely, would be the ultimate test.

Fortunately, it already has been done.

In the remote recesses of the Himalaya Mountains, between West Pakistan, India, and China, there is a tiny kingdom called Hunza. These people are known world over for their amazing longevity and good health. It is not uncommon for Hunzakuts to live beyond a hundred years, and some even to a hundred and twenty or more. Visiting medical teams from the outside world have reported that they found no cancer in Hunza.

Although presently accepted science is unable to explain why these people should have been free of cancer, it is interesting to note that the traditional Hunza diet contains over two-hundred times more nitriloside than the average American diet. In fact, in that land where there was no such thing as money, a man's wealth was measured by the number of apricot trees he owned. And the most prized of all foods was considered to be the apricot seed.

One of the first medical teams to gain access to the remote kingdom of Hunza was headed by the world-renowned British surgeon and physician Dr. Robert McCarrison.

Writing in the January 7, 1922, issue of the journal of The American Medical Association, Dr. McCarrison reported:

The Hunza has no known incidence of cancer. They have... an abundant crop of apricots. These they dry in the sun and use very largely in their food.

Visitors to Hunza, when offered a fresh apricot or peach to eat, usually drop the hard pit to the ground when they are through. This brings looks of dismay and disbelief to the faces of their guides. To them, the seed inside is the delicacy of the fruit.

Dr. Allen E. Banik, an optometrist from Kearney, Nebraska, was one such visitor.

In his book, Hunza Land, he describes what happened:

My first experience with Hunza apricots, fresh from the tree, came when my guide picked several, washed them in a mountain stream, and handed them to me. I ate the luscious fruit and casually tossed the seeds to the ground. After an incredulous glance at me, one of the older men stooped and picked up the seeds. He cracked them between two stones, and handed them to me. The guide said with a smile: "Eat them. It is the best part of the fruit."

My curiosity aroused, I asked,

"What do you do with the seeds you do not eat?"

The guide informed me that many are stored, but most of them are ground very fine and then squeezed under pressure to produce a very rich oil.

"This oil," my guide claimed, "looks much like olive oil. Sometimes we swallow a spoonful of it when we need it. On special days, we deep-fry our chappatis [bread] in it. On festival nights, our women use the oil to shine their hair. It makes a good rubbing compound for body bruises."(1)

In 1973, Prince Mohammed Ameen Khan, son of the Mir of Hunza, told Charles Hillinger of the Los Angeles Times that the average life expectancy of his people is about eighty-five years.

He added:

"Many members of the Council of Elders who help my father govern the state have been over one hundred."(2)

With a scientific distrust for both hearsay and the printed word, Dr. Ernst T. Krebs, Jr., met with Prince Khan for dinner where he queried him on the accuracy of the LA. Times report.

The prince happily confirmed it and then described how it was not uncommon to eat thirty to fifty apricot seeds as an after-lunch snack.(3)

1. Allen E. Banik and Renee Taylor, Hunza Land (Long Beach, Calif.: Whitehorn, 1960), pp. 123-24.
2. Los Angeles Times, May 7,1973, Part I-A.
3. Seeds in Hunza contain only about 6% of the amygdalin in typical California apricots. Eating that many U.S.-grown seeds would not be wise because of the possibility of a toxic effect. See Chapter Seven for information on toxicity.

These often account for as much as 75,000 International Units of vitamin A per day in addition to as much as 50 mg of vitamin B17. Despite all of this, or possibly because of it, the life expectancy in Hunza, the Prince affirmed, is about eighty-five years. This is in puzzling contrast to the United States where, at that time, life expectancy was about seventy-one years. Even now, more than two decades later, life expectancy at birth in the U.S. is only about seventy-six.

That number may sound pretty good, but remember that it includes millions of old people who are alive but not really living. The length of their lives may have been extended by surgery or medication, but the quality of their lives has been devastated in the process. They are the ones who stare blankly into space with impaired mental capacity, or who are dependent on life-support mechanisms, or who are confined to bed requiring round-the-clock care.

There are no such cases buried in the statistics from Hunza. Most of those people are healthy, vigorous, and vital right up to within a few days of the end. The quality of life is more important than the quantity. The Hunzakuts have both.

It will be noted that the Hunzakut intake of vitamin A may run seven-and-a-half times the maximum amount the FDA allows to be used in a tablet or capsule, while that agency has tried to outlaw entirely the eating of apricot seeds.

The women of Hunza are renowned for their strikingly smooth skin even into advanced age. Generally, their faces appear fifteen to twenty years younger than their counterparts in other areas of the world. They claim that their secret is merely the apricot oil which they apply to their skins almost daily.

In 1974 Senator Charles Percy, a member of the Senate Special Committee on Aging, visited Hunza. When he returned to the United States he wrote:

We began curiously to observe the life style of the Hunzakuts.

Could their eating habits be a source of longevity?... Some Hunzakuts believe their long lives are due in part to the apricot. Eaten fresh in the summer, dried in the sun for the long winter, the apricot is a staple in Hunza, much as rice is in other parts of the world. Apricot seeds are ground fine and squeezed for their rich oil, used for both frying and lighting.(1)

1. "You Live To Be 100 in Hunza," Parade, Feb. 17,1974, p. 11.

And so, the Hunzakuts use the apricot, its seed, and the oil from its seed for practically everything. They share with most western scientists an ignorance of the chemistry and physiology of the nitriloside content of this fruit, but they have learned empirically that their life is enhanced by its generous use.

Five or six excellent volumes similar to Dr. Banik's have been written by those who have risked their lives over the treacherous Himalaya Mountain passes to gain entrance to Hunza. Also, there have been scores of magazine and newspaper articles published over the years. They all present the identical picture of the average Hunza diet. In addition to the ever-present apricot, the Hunzakuts eat mainly grain and fresh vegetables.

These include buckwheat, millet, alfalfa, peas, broad beans, turnips, lettuce, sprouting pulse or gram, and berries of various sorts. All of these, with the exception of lettuce and turnips, contain nitriloside or vitamin B17.

It is sad to note that, in recent years, a narrow road was finally carved through the mountains, and food supplies from the "modern world" have at last arrived in Hunza. So have the first few cases of cancer.

In 1927 Dr. McCarrison was appointed Director of Nutrition Research in India. Part of his work consisted of experiments on albino rats to see what effect the Hunza diet had on them compared to the diets of other countries. Over a thousand rats were involved in the experiment and carefully observed from birth to twenty-seven months, which corresponds to about fifty years of age in man. At this point the Hunza-fed rats were killed and autopsied.

Here is what McCarrison reported:

During the past two and a quarter years there has been no case of illness in the "universe" of albino rats, no death from natural causes in the adult stock, and, but for a few accidental deaths, no infantile mortality. Both clinically and at post-mortem, examination of this stock has been shown to be remarkably free from disease. It may be that some of them have cryptic disease of one kind or another, but if so, I have failed to find either clinical or microscopic evidence of it.(1)

1. Quoted by Renee Taylor, Hunza Health Secrets (New York: Award Books, 1964), pp. 96-7.

By comparison, over two thousand rats fed on typical Indian and Pakistani diets soon developed eye ailments, ulcers, boils, bad teeth, crooked spines, loss of hair, anemia, skin disorders, heart, kidney and glandular weaknesses, and a wide variety of gastrointestinal disorders.

In follow-up experiments, McCarrison gave a group of rats the diet of the lower classes of England. It consisted of white bread, margarine, sweetened tea, boiled vegetables, canned meat, and inexpensive jams and jellies - a diet not too far removed from that of many Americans. Not only did the rats develop all kinds of chronic metabolic diseases, but they also became nervous wrecks.

McCarrison wrote:

They were nervous and apt to bite their attendants; they lived unhappily together, and by the sixteenth day of the experiment they began to kill and eat the weaker ones amongst them.(1)

It is not surprising, therefore, to learn that westernized man is victimized by the chronic metabolic disease of cancer while his counterpart in Hunza is not. And lest anyone suspect that this difference is due to hereditary factors, it is important to know that when the Hunzakuts leave their secluded land and adopt the menus of other countries, they soon succumb to the same diseases and infirmities - including cancer - as the rest of mankind.

The Eskimos are another people that have been observed by medical teams for many decades and found to be totally free of cancer.

In Vilhjalmur Stefanson's book, Cancer - Disease of Civilization? An Anthropological and Historical Study,(2) it is revealed that the traditional Eskimo diet is amazingly rich in nitrilosides that come from the residue of the meat of caribou and other grazing animals, and also from the salmon berry which grows abundantly in the Arctic areas.

1. Ibid. p. 97.
2. New York: Hill and Wang, 1960.

Another Eskimo delicacy is a green salad made out of the stomach contents of caribou and reindeer which are full of fresh tundra grasses. Among these grasses, Arrow grass (Triglochin Maritima) is very common. Studies made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture have shown that Arrow grass is probably richer in nitriloside content than any other grass.

What happens when the Eskimo abandons his traditional way of life and begins to rely on westernized foods? He becomes even more cancer-prone than the average American.

Dr. Otto Schaefer, M.D., who has studied the diets and health patterns of the Eskimos, reports that these people have under gone a drastic change in their eating habits, caused indirectly by the construction of military and civilian airports across the Canadian Arctic in the mid-50's.

These attracted the Eskimos to new jobs, new homes, new schools - and new menus. Just a little over one generation previously, their diet consisted almost entirely of game and fish, along with seasonal berries, roots, leafy greens and seaweed. Carbohydrates were almost completely lacking.

Suddenly all of that changed. Dr. Schaefer reports:

When the Eskimo gives up his nomadic life and moves into the settlement, he and his family undergo remarkable changes. His children grow faster and taller, and reach puberty sooner. Their teeth rot, his wife comes down with gallbladder disease and, likely as not, a member of his family will suffer one of the degenerative diseases for which the white man is well known.(1)

There are many other peoples in the world that could be cited with the same characteristics.

The Abkhazians deep in the Caucasus Mountains on the Northeast side of the Black Sea are a people with almost exactly the same record of health and longevity as the Hunzakuts. The parallels between the two are striking. First, Abkhazia is a hard, land which does not yield up a harvest easily. The inhabitants are accustomed to daily hard work throughout their lives. Consequently, their bodies and minds are strong right up until death, which comes swiftly with little or no preliminary illness.

Like the Hunzakuts, the Abkhazians expect to live well beyond eighty years of age. Many are over a hundred. One of the oldest persons in the world was Mrs. Shirali Mislimov of Abkhazia who, in 1972, was estimated to be 165 years old.(2)

1. Nutrition Today, Nov./Dec, 1971, as quoted in "Modern Refined Foods Finally Reach The Eskimos," Kaysers Health Research, May, 1972, pp. 11, 46,48.
2. "The Secret of Long Life" by Sula Benet, (N.Y. Times News Service), L.A. Herald Examiner, Jan. 2, 1972, p. A-12. Also "Soviet Study Finds Recipe for Long Life," National Enquirer, Aug. 27,1972, p. 13.

The other common factor, of course, is the food, which, typically, is low in carbohydrates, high in vegetable proteins, and rich in minerals and vitamins, especially vitamin B17.

The Indians of North America, while they remained true to their native customs and foods, also were remarkably free from cancer. At one time, the American Medical Association urged the federal government to conduct a study in an effort to discover why there was so little cancer among the Hopi and Navajo Indians.

The February 5, 1949, issue of the Journal of the AMA declared:

The Indian's diet seems to be low in quality and quantity and wanting in variety, and the doctors wondered if this had anything to do with the fact that only 36 cases of malignant cancer were found out of 30,000 admissions to the Ganado Arizona Mission Hospital.

In the same population of white persons, the doctors said there would have been about 1,800.

Thirty-six cases compared to eighteen hundred represents only two percent of the expected number. Obviously, something is responsible.

Dr. Krebs, who has done exhaustive research on this subject, has written: I have analyzed from historical and anthropological records the nitrilosidic content of the diets of these various North American tribes. The evidence should put to rest forever the notion of toxicity in nitrilosidic foods. Some of these tribes would ingest over 8,000 milligrams of vitamin B17 (nitriloside) a day. My data on the Modoc Indians are particularly complete.(1)

A quick glance at the cancer-free native populations in tropical areas, such as South America and Africa, reveals a great abundance and variety of nitriloside-rich foods. In fact, over one-third of all plants native to these areas contain vitamin B17. One of the most common is cassava (yuca), sometimes described as "the bread of the tropic."

But this is not the same as the sweet cassava preferred in the cities of western civilization. The native fruit is more bitter, but it is rich in nitriloside. The sweet cassava has much less of this vital substance, and even that is so processed as to eliminate practically all nitrile ions.(2)

1. Letter from Dr. E.T. Krebs, Jr. to Dr. Dean Burk of the National Cancer institute, dated March 14,1972, Griffin; Private Papers, op. cit.
2. The Laetriles/Nitrilosides, op. cit., pp. 9,10.

As far back as 1913, Dr. Albert Schweitzer, the world-famous medical missionary to Africa, had put his finger on the basic cause of cancer.

He had not isolated the specific substance, but he was convinced from his observations that a difference in food was the key. In his preface to Alexander Berglas' Cancer - Cause and Cure (Paris: Pasteur Institute, 1957), he wrote:

On my arrival in Gabon in 1913, 1 was astonished to encounter no cases of cancer. I saw none among the natives two hundred miles from the coast... I can not, of course, say positively that there was no cancer at all, but, like other frontier doctors, I can only say that, if any cases existed, they must have been quite rare. This absence of cancer seemed to be due to the difference in nutrition of the natives compared to the Europeans...

The missionary and medical journals have recorded many such cancer-free populations all over the world. Some are in tropic regions, some in the Arctic. Some are hunters who eat great quantities of meat, some are vegetarians who eat almost no meat at all. From all continents and all races, the one thing they have in common is that the degree to which they are free from cancer is in direct proportion to the amount of nitriloside or vitamin B17 found in their natural diet.

In answer to this, the skeptic may argue that these primitive groups are not exposed to the same cancer-producing elements that modern man is, and perhaps that is the reason they are immune. Let them breathe the same smog-filled air, smoke the same cigarettes, swallow the same chemicals added to their food or water, use the same soaps or deodorants, and then see how they fare.

This is a valid argument. But, fortunately, even that question now has been resolved by experience. In the highly populated and often air-polluted State of California there are over 100,000 people comprising a population that shows a cancer incidence of less than fifty per cent of that for the remaining population. This unique group has the same sex, age, socioeconomic, educational, occupational, ethnic and cultural profile as the remainder of the State's population that suffers twice as high an incidence of cancer.

This is the Seventh Day Adventist population of the State.

There is only one material difference that sets this population apart from that of the rest of the State. This population is predominantly vegetarian. By increasing greatly the quantity of vegetables in their diet to compensate for the absence of meat they increase proportionately their dietary intake of vitamin B17 (nitriloside).(1)

Probably the reason that this population is not totally free from cancer - as are the Hunzakuts, the aboriginal Eskimos, and other such populations - is that,

1. many members of this sect have joined it after almost a lifetime on a general or standard dietary pattern

2. the fruits and vegetables ingested are not consciously chosen for vitamin B17 content nor are fruit seeds generally eaten by them

3. not all Seventh Day Adventists adhere to the vegetarian diet

There are other substances found in vegetables that also have shown an anti-cancer effect - such as beta-carotine and a group of chemicals known as saponins which are found in a wide variety of vegetables and legumes. Nitrilosides, however, appear to be the most potent.

See "Vegemania, Scientists Tout the Health Benefits of Saponins," by Richard Lipkin, Science News, December 9,1995, pp. 392-3.

Another group that, because of religious doctrine, eats very little meat and, thus, a greater quantity of grains, vegetables, and fruits which contain B17, is the Mormon population. In Utah, which is seventy-three percent Mormon, the cancer rate is twenty-five percent below the national average. In Utah county, which includes the city of Provo and is ninety percent Mormon, the cancer rate is below the national average by twenty-eight percent for women and thirty-five percent for men.(1)

In the summer of 1940, the Netherlands became occupied by the military forces of Nazi Germany. Under a dictatorial regime the entire nation of about nine-million people was compelled to change its eating habits drastically.

Dr. C. Moerman, a physician in Vlaardingen, the Netherlands, described what happened during that period:

White bread was replaced by whole-meal bread and rye bread. The supply of sugar was drastically cut down and soon entirely stopped. Honey was used, if available. The oil supply from abroad was stopped and, as a result, no margarine was produced any more, causing the people to try and get butter.

 

Add to this that the consumer received as much fruit and as many vegetables as possible, hoarding and buying from the farmers what they could. In short: people satisfied their hunger with large quantities of natural elements rich in vitamins.

Now think of what happened later: in 1945 this forced nutrition suddenly came to an end. What was the result? People started eating again white bread, margarine, skimmed milk, much sugar, much meat, and only few vegetables and little fruit... In short: people ate too much unnatural and too little natural food, and therefore got too few vitamins.(2)

1. Cancer Rate for Mormons Among Lowest," Los Angeles Times, Aug. 22, 1974, Part II, p. 1.
2. "The Solution of the Cancer Problem" (m.s., 1962) p. 31.

Dr. Moerman showed that the cancer rate in the Netherlands dropped straight down from a peak in 1942 to its lowest point in 1945. But after 1945, with the return of processed foods, the cancer rate began to climb again and has shown a steady rise ever since.

Of course the experience in the Netherlands or among the seventh Day Adventists or Mormons is not conclusive for it still leaves open the question of the specific food factor or factors that were responsible. So let us narrow the field.

Since the 1960s, there has been a steadily-growing group of people who have accepted the vitamin theory of cancer and who have altered their diets accordingly. They represent all walks of life, all ages, both sexes, and reside in almost every advanced nation in the world. There are many thousands in the United States alone.(1) It is significant, therefore, that, after maintaining a diet rich in vitamin B17, none of these people has ever been known to contract cancer.(2)

In the summer of 1973, it was learned that Adelle Davis, one of the nation's best-known nutritionists - a woman who was considered to be an expert on the relationship between diet and cancer - herself was stricken with one of its most virulent forms. In May of the following year she passed away. It seemed that this was to be the end of the nutritional theory of cancer.

But, upon closer investigation, in none of her many books or lectures did she ever treat nitrilosides as a vitamin or even as an essential food substance. She did mention that Laetrile was, in her opinion, an effective treatment for cancer after it was contracted, but she apparently failed to consider it, in its less concentrated and more natural form, as vital to one's daily nutrition.

Even after her cancer had been diagnosed, she apparently still did not see the full connection. The author had corresponded with her on this very question, and her reply was, in part, as follows:

Since carcinogens surround us by the hundreds in food preservatives, additives, poison sprays, chemical fertilizers, pollutants and contaminants of air and water, the statement that cancer is a deficiency disease is certainly inaccurate and over-simplified.(3)

1. Dr. Dean Burk, in a letter to Congressman Lou Frey, Jr., on May 30, 1972, stated that he had been contacted by at least 750 persons, "including many M.D. physicians," most of whom were "using it merely with prevention of development of cancer in view." See Cancer Control Journal, May/June, 1973, p. 1. Likewise, the author has been in contact with literally thousands of Laetrile users over the past two decades.
2. Since writing those words in the 1974 edition of this book, the author has met two people who claimed they contracted cancer after routinely ingesting apricot kernels. Two! It is unknown how many kernels they ate or what else was in their diet (in one case the diet was known to be atrocious), or how faithful they were to the program, or what their prior health was, or to what kind of carcinogens they may have been exposed, including medical X-rays and smoking. Nevertheless, these cases prove that the vitamin concept of cancer control is not 100% perfect. Would you accept 99%?
3. Note from Adelle Davis to G. Edward Griffin dated August 1, 1973; Griffin, Private Papers, op. cit.

It should be stated for the record that this lady was an excellent nutritionist.

She had helped thousands of people regain their health through better diet and more healthful cooking. But it is plain that she did not agree with those mentioned previously who have altered their menus to include rich nitriloside foods; and so the unfortunate fact that she contracted cancer is not a disproof of the effectiveness of Laetrile.

So let us repeat the reality. While their fellow citizens are suffering from cancer at the rate of one out of every three, not one in a thousand who regularly ingests nitrilosides has been known to contract this dread disease.

For many persons, the logic of all these facts put together is so great that it would be easy to close the case right here. But, in view of the powerful opposition against this concept, let us not ontent ourselves with the logic of the theory.

Let us reinforce our convictions with the science of the theory also, that we may understand why it works the way our logic tells us that it must.
 

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