Chapter Nine
"UNPROVEN" CANCER CURES

 

Clinical evidence in support of the trophoblast thesis; laboratory experiments showing that Laetrile kills cancer cells; and case histories of terminal cancer patients who attribute their recovery to the effect of Laetrile.


Clinical evidence in support of the trophoblast thesis; laboratory experiments showing that Laetrile kills cancer cells; and case histories of terminal cancer patients who attribute their recovery to the effect of Laetrile.

The cyanide scare mentioned previously was but one small salvo in the continuing barrage of officialdom's attacks against Laetrile. The total weaponry runs the gamut from scare tactics to outright falsehoods. But mostly they take the form of scholarly pronouncements, cloaked in the cloth of apparent concern for the public welfare, that vitamin therapy may sound good in theory, but in practice, it simply does not work.

Dr. Ralph Weilerstein, Public Health Medical Officer of the California Food and Drug Administration has said flatly:

"Nobody's come up with any reliable data that it is of any value."(1)

The Federal FDA has proclaimed:

"The Food and Drug Administration has seen no competent, scientific evidence that Laetrile is effective for the treatment of cancer."(2)

And the American Cancer Society, in an impressive volume entitled Unproven Methods of Cancer Management, has stated:

After careful study of the literature and other information available to it, the American Cancer Society does not have evidence that treatment with Laetrile results in objective benefit in the treatment of cancer in human beings.(3)

1. "Food additive ban likely," San Jose Mercury (Calif.), Sept. 9,1972.
2. A Cancer Journal for Clinicians (published by ACS) July/Aug., 1972.
3. Unproven Methods of Cancer Management, 1971, p. 139.


Commenting on this statement, Dr. Dean Burk of the National Cancer Institute described it as:

... a statement with close to zero scientific worth, however much sheer propaganda value. The fact is ... there are few "Proven" methods operating on a large scale anywhere, so that the word "Unproved," as used by the ACS, is a highly and unjustifiedly weighted word."(1)

As far as the general public is concerned, however, if the American Cancer Society classifies vitamin B17 or Laetrile as an "unproven cancer cure," that's all they need to know. Consequently, official pronouncements from prestigious organizations such as these are hard to ignore. But so are the favorable findings of those clinicians who have used Laetrile on their own patients. Somebody is wrong!

In previous pages we examined the scientific integrity of the research projects upon which official opposition to Laetrile is based, and we saw that they are shockingly lacking on all counts. We discovered, also, that almost all of the cancer "experts" who have spoken out against Laetrile have done so, not out of personal experience or experimentation, but simply out of their complete faith in the scientific integrity of these discredited reports.

Showing that the case against Laetrile is fraudulent, however, does not constitute a case for Laetrile. It is necessary, therefore, to examine the evidence that vitamin B17 actually does work in practice just as well as it does in theory.

The effectiveness of the trophoblast thesis as a basis of cancer therapy has been demonstrated both in the laboratory and in the clinic. In 1935, for example, long before the development of Laetrile, Dr. Isabella Perry of the Department of Pathology at the University of California Medical School conducted a series of experiments in which she subjected tumor-bearing rats to prolonged inhalation of cyanide fumes.

 

Here is what she wrote:

A considerable percentage of the animals so treated showed complete regression of the tumor. Both regressing and growing tumors in treated animals had little capacity for transplantation.(2)

1. Letter from Dr. Dean Burk to Dr. Frank Rauscher, Director of the National Cancer Institute, dated April 20, 1973, reprinted in the Cancer Control Journal, Sept./Oct. 1993, p. 5.
2. "The Effects of Prolonged Cyanide Treatment on The Body and Tumor Growth in Rats," American Journal of Cancer, 1935, 25:592.


Perry observed that these experiments were probably of little value to humans because, in order to be effective, the level of cyanide fumes had to be dangerously close to lethal - a problem that is not present when the cyanide is released only at the cancer 11 as it is in the action of vitamin B17. Nevertheless, these rats showed, not only complete tumor regression, but, compared to the control group without cyanide, an average life extension in excess of three-hundred percent.

When we turn to the laboratory reports on Laetrile, the results are even more encouraging, especially since there is none of the danger connected with the inhalation of cyanide fumes.

 

Dr. Dean Burk, Director of the Cytochemistry Section of the federal government's National Cancer Institute, reported that, in a series of tests on animal tissue, the B17 had no harmful effect on normal cells, but released so much cyanide and benzaldehyde when it came in contact with cancer cells that not one of them could survive.

 

He said,

"When we add Laetrile to a cancer culture under the microscope, providing the enzyme glucosidase also is present, we can see the cancer cells dying off like flies."(1)

While participating in the Seventh International Congress of Chemotherapy held in Prague in 1971, Dr. Burk declared:

Laetrile appears to work against many forms of cancer including lung cancer. And it is absolutely non-toxic... In vitro tests with Ehrlich ascites carcinoma [a particular type of cancer culture] revealed that, where cyanide alone killed one percent of the cells and benzaldehyde alone killed twenty percent, a combination of the two was effective against all the cells. Amygdalin [Laetrile] with glucosidase [the "unlocking enzyme"] added also succeeded in killing 100 percent of the ascites tumor cells, due to the freeing of the same two chemicals.(2) In another series of tests, Dr. Burk reported that Laetrile was responsible for prolonging the life of cancerous rats eighty-percent longer than those in the control group not innoculated.(3)

1. "Laetrile Ban May Be Lifted," Twin Circle, June 16,1972, p. 11.
2. "Amygdalin Claimed Nontoxic Anti-Cancer Therapeutic Agent," Infectious diseases, Oct. 15,1971, pp. 1, 23.
3. Testimony in Hearings before the Subcommittee on Public Health and environment, Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, House of Representatives, Ninety-Second Congress, quoted in Cancer News Journal, July-October, 1972, p. 48.


The man who made these findings was one of the foremost cancer specialists in the world.

 

He was the recipient of the Gerhard Domagk Award for Cancer Research, the Hillebrand Award of the American Chemical Society, and the Commander Knighthood Of The Medical Order of Bethlehem (Rome) founded in 1459 by Pope Pius the Eleventh. He held a Ph.D. in biochemistry earned at the University of California.

 

He was a Fellow of the National Research Council at the University of London, of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, and also Harvard. He was senior chemist at the National Cancer Institute, which he helped establish, and in 1946 became Director of the Cytochemistry Section. He belonged to eleven scientific organizations, wrote three books relating to chemotherapy research in cancer, and was author or co-author of more than two-hundred scientific papers in the field of cell chemistry.

If Dr. Burk says Laetrile works, it works...

Dr. Burk is not a physician. He is a biochemist. His experiments have been with cancer cultures and with laboratory animals, not people. As we have seen, however, the health records of the Hunzakuts, and Eskimos, and other groups around the world are statistically conclusive that vitamin B17 - together with other substances associated with it in nature - does control cancer in human beings with an effectiveness approaching 100%.

 

But what about cancer that already has started? Can B17 restore a person to health after he has contracted the disease?

The answer is yes, if it is caught in time, and if the patient is not too badly damaged by prior X-ray treatment or toxic drugs. Unfortunately, most cancer victims start taking Laetrile only after their disease is so far advanced that they have been given up as hopeless by routine medical channels.

 

Usually they have been told that they have only a few more months or weeks to live. And it is in this tragic state of near death that they turn to vitamin therapy as a last resort. If they die - and, indeed, many of them do - then they are counted as statistical failures for Laetrile. In reality, it is a victory for Laetrile that any of them should be saved at this stage. Once a deficiency disease has progressed so far, the damage it has done simply cannot be reversed.

It is known, for example, that a severe vitamin-A deficiency in a pregnant animal will result in an offspring that is completely blind. In fact, it will be born without orbits, retina, or even optical nerves. No amount of vitamin A administered at that late stage can cause the eyes to grow back.

Likewise, a child whose legs become bowed by rickets, a vitamin-D deficiency disease, can never achieve a normal bone structure again, no matter how much vitamin D he receives.

In cancer, the process is different. Instead of normal tissue failing to form or becoming ma/formed, it literally becomes destroyed. The cancerous growth invades and corrupts, leaving behind organs that cannot function because they are almost gone.

A man who has been shot with a gun can have the bullet removed but still die from the wound. Likewise, a patient can have his cancer deactivated by vitamin B17 and still die from the irreversible damage already done to his vital organs.

And so, in view of this tremendous handicap, the number of terminal patients who have been restored to health is most impressive. In fact there literally are thousands of such case histories in the medical record. The American Cancer Society has tried to create the impression that the only ones who claim to have been saved by Laetrile are those who merely are hypochondriacs and who never really had cancer in the first place. But the record reveals quite a different story.

 

Let's take a look at just a few examples.
 

 

DAVID EDMUNDS
Mr. David Edmunds of Pinole, California, was operated on in June of 1971 for cancer of the colon, which also had metastasized or spread to the bladder. When the surgeon opened him up, he found that the malignant tissue was so widespread it was almost impossible to remove it all. The blockage of the intestines was relieved by severing the colon and bringing the open end to the outside of his abdomen - a procedure known as a colostomy. Five months later, the cancer had worsened, and Mr. Edmunds was told that he had only a few more months to live.

Mrs. Edmunds, who is a Registered Nurse, had heard about Laetrile and decided to give it a try. Six months later, instead of lying on his deathbed, Mr. Edmunds surprised his doctors by reeling well enough to resume an almost normal routine.

An exploratory cystoscopy of the bladder revealed that the cancer had disappeared. At his own insistence, he was admitted to the hospital to see if his colon could be put back together again. In surgery, they found nothing even resembling cancer tissue.

 

So they re-connected the colon and sent him home to recuperate. It was the first time in the history of the hospital that a reverse colostomy for this condition had been performed.(1)

1. See " Cancer 'Miracle-Cure'," by Mark Trantwein, Berkeley Daily Gazette

At the time of the author's last contact three years later, Mr. Edmunds was living a normal life of health and vigor.
 


JOANNE WILKINSON
In 1967 in Walnut Creek, California, Mrs. Joanne Wilkinson, mother of six, had a tumor removed from her left leg just below the thigh. Four months later there was a recurrence requiring additional surgery and the removal of muscle and bone.

A year later, a painful lump in the groin appeared and began to drain. A biopsy revealed that her cancer had returned and was spreading.

Her doctor told her that surgery would be necessary again, but this time they would have to amputate the leg, the hip, and probably the bladder and one of the kidneys as well. The plan was to open up her lungs first to see if cancer had located there. If it had, then they would not amputate, because there would be no chance of saving her anyway.

At the urging of her sister and of a mutual friend, Mrs. Wilkinson decided not to undergo surgery but to try Laetrile instead. Her doctor was greatly upset by this and told her that, if she did not have the surgery, she couldn't possibly live longer than twelve weeks.

 

Mrs. Wilkinson describes in her own words what happened next:

That was Saturday, November 16, 1968. I'll never forget that day! The stitches from the biopsy were still in the leg.

Dr. Krebs(1) gave me an injection of Laetrile - and the tumor reacted. It got very large - from walnut size to the size of a small lemon - and there was bleeding four or five days. I went back on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday each week for five weeks to get injections, and the tumor then started getting smaller. Five weeks later I could no longer feel it.

An X-ray was taken the first Monday, and regularly after that to watch the progress. Injections were continued for six months - ten cc's three times a week and of course the diet: No dairy products, nothing made with white flour - no eggs - but white fish, chicken, turkey.

And I felt wonderful! In fact, in August, 1969, the doctor told me I needed no more injections. My X-rays were clear, showing that the tumor had shrunk, was apparently encased in scar tissue, and was not active.(2)

1. She is referring here to Byron Krebs, M.D., the brother of Dr. E.T. Krebs, fr.
2. See "Laetrile - An Answer to Cancer?" Prevention, Dec. 1971, pp. 172-175.


Our last contact with Mrs. Williams was nine years after her doctor told her she couldn't possibly live longer than twelve weeks without surgery. She was living a healthy and productive life and all that was left as a grim reminder of her narrow escape was a small scar from the biopsy.
 

 

JOE BOTELHO
Mr. Joe Botelho of San Pablo, California, underwent surgery (trans-urethral resection) and was told by his doctor that he had a prostate tumor that simply had to come out.

 

His reaction?

I didn't let them take it out because I figured that would only spread it. The doctor told me I wouldn't last too long. He wanted to give me cobalt, and I wouldn't agree to that either.

At a health food store I heard about a doctor in San Francisco who used Laetrile. I went to see him, was told that the prostate was the size of a bar of soap. I got one injection every four days for several months.(1)

1. Ibid., PP- 175, 176.

Mr. Botelho, who was sixty-five at the time, also maintained a strict diet designed specifically not to use up the body's pancreatic enzyme, trypsin. When the author interviewed him three years later, his tumor was gone, and he even reported that his hair was turning dark again.

 

He was not sure what was causing that, but attributed it to his better eating habits.

 


ALICIA BUTTONS
Alicia Buttons, the wife of the famous actor-comedian Red Buttons, is among the thousands of Americans who attribute their lives to the action of Laetrile.

 

Speaking before a cancer convention in Los Angeles, Red Buttons declared:

Laetrile saved Alicia from cancer. Doctors here in the U.S. gave her only a few months to live last November. But now she is alive and well, a beautiful and vital wife and mother, thanks to God and to those wonderful men who have the courage to stand up for their science.(2)

2. Comedian Red Buttons Says 'Laetrile Saved My Wife From Death By cancer/" The National Tattler, Aug. 19,1973, p. 5.

Mrs. Buttons had been suffering from advanced cancer of the throat and was given up as terminal by practitioners of orthodox medicine. As a last resort, however, she went to West Germany to seek Laetrile therapy from Dr. Hans Nieper of the Silbersee hospital in Hanover. Within a few months her cancer had completely regressed, the pain had gone, her appetite had returned, and she was as healthy and strong as ever.

 

Doctors in the United States verified the amazing recovery, but could not believe that a mere vitamin substance had been responsible Alicia is still going strong twenty-three years later.
 


CAROL VENCIUS
The reluctance of many physicians to accept the reality of the vitamin concept of cancer was well described by Miss Carol Vencius, a former cancer victim from Marin County, California. After successful Laetrile treatment in Tijuana, Mexico, under the care of Dr. Ernesto Contreras, Miss Vencius returned home.

 

Here is what she reported:

I went to another doctor who had treated me. He greeted me with "Well, what do they do down there? Do you crush the apricot pit, bathe in it? Do they light incense over you?"

 

I said to him, "Okay, enough with the jokes, " and asked him to read the College of Marin Times article [which contained information about Laetrile]. He said his mind was closed on the matter. When I pressed, he finally said, "Carol, I guess you might be able to help me after all. You see, I have insomnia and I'm sure that if I read that article it would put me to sleep."(1)

1. "Laetrile Works Through C.O.M. Times," College of Marin Times, April 12, 1972.

 

Miss Vencius' story, unfortunately, is not unique. She had begun to complain of feeling generally ill: night sweats, itching, fever, and headaches.

 

After extensive tests in the hospital she was told that she had Hodgkins Disease (a form of cancer initially affecting the lymph nodes), Miss Vencius continued:

Only a couple of days after that, a friend came to visit and told me about vitamin therapy in Mexico called Laetrile. I never followed up on his advice, I was too frightened. And besides, at the time I had complete faith in my doctors...

The first thing they tried was cobalt radiation treatments. Soon after they began, my doctor told me, "Carol, of course you know this treatment will make you sterile." Hell no, I didn't know. Naturally I became pretty upset... I went through menopause at the age of 28.

Other "side effects" were indescribable pain, loss of appetite, and temporary loss of hair. Six months after the treatments, her lungs and heart cavity began to fill with fluid. They tried draining it with a hypodermic, but it continued to fill up. She was having minor heart attacks.

After six weeks and three heart-cavity taps, her physicians were still debating whether or not to remove the pericardium (the membrane enclosing the heart cavity). On November 28, 1970, it was removed.

By July, general fatigue, sleeplessness, and loss of appetite had returned and for several months grew worse until it was decided to try drugs.

The first injection left me with mild nausea. Two weeks later, I received two more injections which produced acute nausea and diarrhea followed by a week of intense pain in my jaw. It was so bad I couldn't eat. This was followed by a one-week migraine headache, followed by stomach cramps, followed by leg cramps. In all, the symptoms lasted four weeks.

For ten days following this, however, I felt great, better than I had in years. This positive response, I was told, was a sign that the disease was still active and that the drugs had done some good. Then it was downhill again, a return of pain, sleeplessness, fatigue, and all the rest. I decided then, whatever happened, I would not undergo chemotherapy again.

At this point, Miss Vencius concluded that it was hopeless anyway so there was no reason why she should not go to Mexico and try Laetrile after all.

 

Dr. Contreras told her that Hodgkins Disease was slower to respond to vitamin therapy than many other cancers such as those of the lung, pancreas, liver, or colon, but that it certainly was worth a try. After just the third day on Laetrile, however, she reported that her pain had gone completely and that within only a week she was feeling almost normal again.

 

Within a few months she had recovered her health and was continuing a routine maintenance dose of vitamin B17.

The issue of maintenance doses is important. Once a person has contracted cancer and recovered, apparently the need for vitamin B17 is considerably greater than for those who have not. Most physicians who have used Laetrile in cancer therapy have learned through experience that their patients, once recovered, can reduce their dosage levels of Laetrile, but if they eliminate it altogether, it is almost a certain invitation to a return of the cancer. it's for this reason that physicians using Laetrile never say that it cures cancer.

 

They prefer the more accurate word control, implying a continuing process.
 


MARGARET DeGRIO
This fact was illustrated most dramatically and tragically in the case of Mrs. Margaret DeGrio, wife of a County Supervisor in Sierra County, California. After undergoing surgery twice, and with her cancer continuing to spread, she was told by three physicians that her case was hopeless and that there was nothing further that modern medical science could do.

 

But Mike DeGrio had read about Laetrile and decided to take his wife to Mexico for treatment. It was the same old story: She began to improve immediately and, after four months of intensive treatment, she returned to her Northern California home with only minor symptoms of her original cancer. The rapid disappearance of her tumors was confirmed by her American doctor, although he could not explain why it happened.

Shortly afterward, however, Mrs. DeGrio contracted a serious respiratory infection and was hospitalized in San Francisco for pneumonia. While she was there for over three weeks, her physician and the hospital staff refused to allow her the maintenance dose of Laetrile because they feared it might be against the California anti-quackery law.

 

The denial of this dose came at a critical time in the recovery and healing stage.

 

Mrs. DeGrio succumbed to cancer on the night of October 17,1963.(1)

 

1. "The Laetrile Story," by Jim Dean and Frank Martinez, The Santa Ana Register, Sept., 1964. For an excellent portrayal of the futility and tragedy orthodox cancer therapy read Wynn Westover, See the Patients Die, (Sausalito, CA: Science Press International, 1974)
 


DALE DANNER
In 1972, Dr. Dale Danner, a podiatrist from Santa Paula, California, developed a pain in the right leg and a severe cough. X-rays revealed carcinoma of both lungs and what appeared to be massive secondary tumors in the leg. The cancer was inoperable and resistant to radio therapy. The prognosis was: incurable and fatal.

At the insistence of his mother, Dr. Danner agreed to try Laetrile, although he had no faith in its effectiveness. Primarily just to please her, he obtained a large supply in Mexico.

 

But he was convinced from what he had read in medical journals that it was nothing but quackery and a fraud.

"Perhaps it was even dangerous," he thought, for he noticed from the literature that it contained cyanide.

Within a few weeks the pain and the coughing had progressed to the point where no amount of medication could hold it back. Forced to crawl on his hands and knees, and unable to sleep for three days and nights, he became despondent and desperate. Groggy from the lack of sleep, from the drugs, and from the pain, finally he turned to his supply of Laetrile.

Giving himself one more massive dose of medication, hoping to bring on sleep, he proceeded to administer the Laetrile directly into an artery. Before losing consciousness, Dr. Danner had succeeded in taking at least an entire ten-day supply - and possibly as high as a twenty-day supply - all at once.

When he awoke thirty-six hours later, much to his amazement, not only was he still alive, but also the cough and pain were greatly reduced. His appetite had returned, and he was feeling better than he had in months. Reluctantly he had to admit that Laetrile was working. So he obtained an additional supply and began routine treatment with smaller doses.

 

Three months later he was back at work.(1)

 

1. Story confirmed in tape-recorded interview by author.

 


WILLIAM SYKES
In the fall of 1975, William Sykes of Tampa, Florida, developed lymphocytic leukemia plus cancer of the spleen and liver. After removal of the spleen, he was told by his doctors that he had, at best, a few more months to live.

Although chemotherapy was recommended - not as a cure but merely to try to delay death a few more weeks - Mr. Sykes chose Laetrile instead. In his own words, this is what happened:

When we saw the doctor a few weeks later, he explained how and why Laetrile was helping many cancer patients, and suggested that I have intravenous shots of 30 cc's of Laetrile daily for the next three weeks. He also gave me enzymes and a diet to follow along with food supplements.

In a few days I was feeling better, but on our third visit the doctor said that he could no longer treat me. He had been told that his license would be revoked if he continued to use Laetrile. He showed my wife how to administer the Laetrile, sold us what he had, and gave us an address where more could be obtained.

The next week I continued on the program and was feeling better each day. One afternoon the doctor from Ann Arbor called to ask why I had not returned for the chemotherapy. He said I was playing "Russian Roulette" with my life. He finally persuaded me to return for chemotherapy, so I went to Ann Arbor and started the treatments.

 

Each day I felt worse. My eyes burned, my stomach felt like it was on fire. In just a few days I was so weak I could hardly get out of bed... The "cure" was killing me faster than the disease! I couldn't take it any longer, so I stopped the chemotherapy, returned to my supply of Laetrile and food supplements, and quickly started feeling better. It took longer this time as I was fighting the effects of the chemotherapy as well as the cancer...

In a short time I could again do all my push-ups and exercises without tiring. Now, at 75 years of age [20 years after they said I had only a few more months to live], I still play racquet ball twice a week.(1)

1. Open letter to "Dear Friends"; Griffin Private Papers, op. cit.

 

In a letter to the author, dated June 19,1996, Mrs. Hazel Sykes provides this additional insight:

After Bill had conquered cancer, a doctor came to him one day. (This was an M.D. who gave chemotherapy in a well-known hospital.) He wanted to know how Bill had conquered his cancer, because his wife was quite ill with cancer.

Bill said:

"Why don't you give her chemotherapy?"

His answer was:

"I would never give chemotherapy to any of my friends or family"!

He was not the only doctor who came to Bill with the same question.(2)
 

2. Letter to the author, June 19,1996; Griffin, Private Papers, op. cit.

 


BUD ROBINSON
The following letter from Bud Robinson in Phoenix, Arizona, needs no further comment.

 

It was sent to Dr. Ernst Krebs, Jr.

Dear Dr. Krebs,

Thank you for giving me another birthday (May 17).

 

Please, again, remember November 15th, 1979, when my doctor

and four other urologists gave me a maximum of four months to live with my prostate cancer, and they set up appointments for radiation and chemotherapy, which I knew would kill me if the cancer didn't, and refused their treatment.

Then on a Sunday afternoon I contacted you by telephone and went with your simple program.

I am 71 years old and am in my 13th year [of survival]. Three of the four urologists have died with prostate cancer, and forty or fifty people are alive today, and doing very well, because they followed my "Krebs" simple program.

Thanks again for giving me back my life.

 

Your friend,

H.M. "Bud" Robinson(3)

3. Letter from Bud Robinson to Ernst T. Krebs, Jr., May 18, 1992; Griffin, Prt Papers, op. cit.

This letter was written in 1992. When the author contacted him in June of 1996, Mr. Robinson was still going strong. His age at that time was 75, not 71, and the number of cancer patients he had helped to recover was up to 90.

The use of amygdalin in the treatment of cancer is not new. The earliest recorded case was published in 1845 in the Paris Medical Gazette.(1) A young cancer patient was given 46,000 milligrams of amygdalin over a period of several months in 1842 and, reportedly, was still living at the time of the article three years later.

 

A woman with extensive cancer throughout her body received varying amounts of amygdalin starting in 1834(!) and was still surviving at the time of the report eleven years later.

Since the publication of this first report, there have been literally thousands of similar case histories reported and documented. It is important to know that because, as demonstrated previously, spokesmen for orthodox medicine have stated authoritatively that there simply is no evidence that Laetrile works. The truth is that the evidence is everywhere.

When confronted with this evidence, some doctors, because of their professional bias against nutritional medicine, seek alternate explanations. Their favorite is that the cancer had a delayed response to previous treatment such as radiation or drugs. And when it occasionally happens that there has been no previous treatment except Laetrile, they then say that the patient probably didn't have cancer in the first place.

 

And when it is demonstrated that the presence of cancer was proven by surgery or biopsy, they ultimately fall back on the claim that it was a spontaneous remission, meaning that it just went away on its own with no outside help.

It is true, of course, that, occasionally, there are cases in which cancers either stop spreading or disappear without medical treatment.(2)

 

1. Gazette Medical de Paris, Vol. 13, pp. 577-582.
2. It would be interesting to examine such cases for a possible change in eating habits to see if there were any connection. My guess is that such a study would show a change in foods, either by selection or by a change in locale, that placed less of a demand upon the pancreas and / or provided a higher source of natural

 

But such cases are rare. With certain cancer locations such as testicular chorionepithelioma, for example - they re so rare as to defy statistical analysis. And when one comes up with a series of such cases, all of which involve proven cancers, and all of which have responded to B17, it is beyond reason to speak of spontaneous regressions. In a banquet speech in San Francisco on November 19, 1967 Dr. Krebs reviewed six such cases.

 

Then he added:

Now there is an advantage in not having had prior radiation, because if you have not received prior radiation that has failed, then you cannot enjoy the imagined benefits of the delayed effects of prior radiation. So this boy falls into the category of the "spontaneous regression..."

 

And when we look at this scientifically, we know that spontaneous regression occurs in fewer than one in 150,000 cases of cancer. The statistical possibility of spontaneous regression accounting for the complete resolution of six successive cases of testicular chorionepithelioma is far greater than the improbability of the sun not rising tomorrow morning.(1)

1. Speech delivered before a meeting of the International Association of Cancer Victims and Friends at the Jack Tar Hotel, Nov. 19,1967.

 

With the passage of each year and the presence of a growing stream of patients who are living proof of their claim, it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore or dismiss these recoveries.

 

If they are spontaneous remissions, then, indeed, it must be said in all fairness that Laetrile produces far more spontaneous remissions than all other forms of therapy put together!

Photo from San Francisco Medical Society
 

Dr. Ian MacDonald (above left) and Dr. Henry Garland (above right) wrote the famous 1953 report of the California Medical Association that since has become the basis of almost all scientific opposition to Laetrile. It was learned later, however, that the findings in this report had been falsified. Both doctors defended cigarette smoking as a harmless Pastime unrelated to lung cancer.

 

Dr. MacDonald had Publicly stated:

"A pack a day keeps lung cancer away."

Dr. Kanematsu Sugiura (above left) was the senior laboratory researcher at the Sloan-Kettering Cancer Institute.

 

He reported that, in his experiments with mice, Laetrile was more effective in the control of cancer than any substance he had ever tested. This was not acceptable to his superiors. Instead of being pleased at the possibility of a breakthrough, they brought in other researchers to duplicate Sugiura's experiments and to prove that they were faulty.

 

Instead, the follow-up studies confirmed Sugiura. Undaunted, his superiors called for new experiments over and over again, following procedures designed to make the tests fail. Eventually they did fail, and it was that failure that was announced to the world.

Ralph Moss (above right) was the Assistant Director of Public Affairs at Sloan-Kettering at the time of the Laetrile tests. When he was ordered by his superiors to release false information about the results of those tests, he resigned in protest.

The Hunzakuts are world renowned for their amazing longevity and good health. There is no cancer in Hunza.

 

The native diet contains over two-hundred times more vitamin B17 than found in the average diet of industrialized societies. (Photos courtesy of Dr. J. Milton Hoffman.)

 

John A. Richardson, M.D., (above right) shares his scrapbook of newspaper clippings with the author. Dr. Richardson was in the forefront of the legal battle for the right of a physician to administer Laetrile.

Dr. Ernst T. Krebs, Jr. (above, left), the biochemist who pioneered Laetrile and the vitamin concept of cancer, likely will be acknowledged in history as the Louis Pasteur of our day.

 

Dr. Ernesto Contreras (above, right), one of Mexico's most distinguished medical figures, established the world's first hospital specializing in Laetrile as the treatment of choice for cancer.

Shown at left are (above, from left to right) Dr. Dean Burk, head of the Cytochemistry section of the National Cancer Institute, Dr. Krebs, and Dr. Hans Nieper, famous cancer specialist from Hanover, Germany.

 

Drs. Burk and Nieper are among the many prominent supporters of Dr. Krebs and his work with Laetrile.

Dr. Dale Danner (above), a terminal cancer victim himself, at first had no faith in Laetrile. On the brink of death he self-administered a massive dose as a last resort and was amazed to experience a release from pain and a return of appetite.

 

Three months later he was able to return to work.

In 1967, cancer victim Joanne Wilkinson (above) was told that it would be necessary to remove her leg, hip, bladder, and one of her kidneys.

 

When she chose Laetrile instead, her irate physicians warned her that she could not possibly live longer than twelve weeks. This photo was taken many years afterward.

 

Mrs. Wilkinson has enjoyed a healthy and productive life.

Alicia Buttons, wife of the famous actor-comedian Red Buttons (above), had been given up as hopeless by practitioners of orthodox medicine.

 

After a few months of Laetrile therapy, however, her cancer had completely disappeared. The couple is shown here at the 1973 Cancer Control Convention in Los Angeles.

 

Alicia was still going strong twenty-three years later.

Bill Sykes (above) was given up as hopeless when he developed Stage-4 Lymphocytic Leukemia and cancerous tumors in his spleen and liver. He was told that chemotherapy might prolong his life a few months but no more. Instead, he turned to Laetrile and enzyme therapy.

 

That was over 20 years ago.

 

Bill is now 74 and plays racquet ball twice a week.

X-rays (above) are known to cause cancer, not to cure it.

 

The patient often dies from X-ray damage rather than cancer. Those who receive no treatment at all live just as long- or longer - than those who undergo radiology or chemotherapy.

 

Orthodox cancer therapies treat the symptom (the tumor) rather than the cause.
 

Back to Contents