Laetrile by Any Other Name Is Still Bogus
One of the first papers I ever published was called “After Laetrile, What?” It appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1982. The title reflected the demise of a long-popular but worthless cancer remedy made from apricot pits. The cyanide found in the pits was said to kill cancer cells, but cyanide is a poison--a neurotoxin that can cause nausea, vomiting, headache, liver damage, coma and death. It had no benefit against cancer.
The end of laetrile’s unwarranted popularity seemed assured by two events: the 1982 publication of a definitive study--conducted according to proponents’ recommendations--showing laetrile’s lack of effect, and the public’s readiness to move on to the next magical cancer “cure.” This nostrum, enormously popular during the late 1970s, faded into obscurity.
It turns out that laetrile was just waiting in the wings. Last year, it returned with a vengeance, proponents perhaps assuming that a new generation might not know or remember this disproved therapy. Today, some Internet search engines display more than 2,000 Web sites featuring laetrile. The vast majority of sites promote or sell the product. It is marketed as amygdalin or “vitamin B17,” although it is not a vitamin.
One group’s pitch includes biblical advice about consuming seeds, combining the failed cancer cure with spirituality. This approach captures contemporary interest in the spiritual component of healing and the current passion for ancient roots. But although back in new guise, laetrile is no more effective than it was in the 1970s.
Bogus cancer cures have been with us for centuries. Cancer is a frightening disease, and patients not fortunate enough to find themselves among the 55% of Americans expected to survive it may be swayed toward the unproven methods whose advocates claim better success and a more “natural” approach than is available elsewhere.
Laetrile’s history goes back to 1830 when French chemists isolated a chemical they called amygdalin, a name later used interchangeably with laetrile. By 1892, it had been tested as an anti-cancer agent in Germany and rejected as useless.
In the late 1940s, an American father-son team, Ernst T. Krebs Sr., a doctor, and his son Ernst Jr. (who flunked out of medical school), began using a so-called purified version of amygdalin to treat cancer patients. The older Krebs a few years earlier had isolated an enzyme from whiskey barrel molds that he thought would have anti-tumor properties. When that didn’t work, he switched his attention to apricot pits, using extracts he called sarcarcinase for tests on animals and humans. None were successful. His son subsequently modified his father’s extraction process to create what he then called laetrile.
Although no reliable study over many years ever found laetrile to be worthwhile against cancer, the Krebs together insisted that laetrile, or amygdalin, would cure cancer. They continued to promote it aggressively, and their public relations effort paid off. In 1956, Krebs Jr. convinced the McNaughton Foundation, a Canadian organization dedicated to the exploration of projects on “the outer limits of scientific knowledge,” that laetrile was a worthwhile anti-cancer agent, and eventually factories in seven countries were producing it. A New Jersey surgeon, a Mexican physician/pathologist practicing just over the California border, and an organization then called the International Assn. of Cancer Victims and Friends fell into line supporting laetrile as a cure for cancer.
Many of the promoters ran into legal troubles. As state and federal government agencies sought to control the use of laetrile, Krebs Sr. was charged with disobeying a regulatory order forbidding its interstate shipment, and later pleaded guilty to a contempt charge. Krebs Jr. pleaded guilty to violating California health and safety laws. Krebs Jr.’s brother, Byron, had his osteopathic license revoked for “mental incompetence.”
When the term laetrile lost some of its magic, promoters called it vitamin B17 or reverted to its original name, amygdalin. Whatever you call it and despite the anecdotal reports, it doesn’t work. The record of laetrile is not that of a properly researched and useful cancer therapy. The product cannot legally be marketed as a cancer cure. It is not approved by the FDA.
Our system of approving drugs and medications to treat disease generally works well. Beware of those who use magazines, pamphlets, ads and Internet persuasion to sell you something without acceptable proof, including clinical testing and objective, published results. Solid data, not anecdotes, make the case. Readers are advised not to waste their money on laetrile as a cancer treatment. Laetrile costs its users a great deal of money but produces no benefit. It is the product of people who try to profit from the tribulations of others.
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Barrie R. Cassileth is chief of integrative medicine at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and the author of “The Alternative Medicine Handbook” (Norton, 1998). Her column appears the first Monday of the month. She can be reached atbarriec@juno.com.
