Victories for Laetrile's Lobby

These are bad times for reason, all around. Suddenly, all of the major ills are being coped with by acupuncture. If not acupuncture, it is apricot pits.

So said Lewis Thomas, the distinguished physician and writer (The Lives of a Cell), soon after he became president of Manhattan's famed Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center four years ago. Last week his sardonic words rang truer still. After five years of exhaustive studies with mice, researchers at his world-renowned institute concluded that in spite of early indications it might control the spread of tumors, the controversial drug Laetrile showed no anticancer properties. Yet even while they were strengthening the scientific case against the apricot-pit extract, also known as vitamin B17, Laetrile's supporters were predicting that the drug -- now used illicitly by tens of thousands of cancer patients -- would soon be sold legally everywhere.

They had reason for optimism. Although the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) refuses to sanction Laetrile as a cancer drug in the absence of anything but "anecdotal" evidence about its value, Indiana, Florida and Texas lawmakers have just joined Alaska in voting to allow use of the drug. Similar bills are pending in some ten other states.

Laetrile has also been winning victories in the courts. A Kansas man who had rectal cancer testified that the compound, which releases cyanide in the body, is keeping him alive. A federal judge not only let him import the drug -- available in Mexico, West Germany and other countries -- but forced the reluctant FDA to hold its first public hearings on Laetrile. The two-day session in Kansas City, Mo., attracted 300 supporters, who continually booed and jeered the drug's critics.

These legal and legislative triumphs are only partly attributable to intensive propaganda by such Laetrile advocates as the Committee for Freedom of Choice in Cancer Therapy and other right-wing organizations that employ films, pamphlets and evangelizing visits to cancer victims to promote Laetrile. More important is the fact that although doctors can often cure the disease -- if it is caught early enough -- the battle against cancer has been agonizingly slow. All too often, treatments are extremely expensive (the median cost of a cancer case was calculated in a 1973 study at $19,000), physically painful and, when surgery is required, sometimes permanently damaging. By contrast, Laetrile is portrayed as a simple, inexpensive panacea (about $10 a shot).

Vigorous Counterattack. FDA officials are vigorously counterattacking by appearing before legislative committees, enlisting the support of the nation's doctors, and encouraging the Justice Department to crack down on Laetrile pushers. Among those already convicted: Medical School Dropout Ernst T. Krebs Jr. of San Francisco, who with his late father first advocated Laetrile as an anticancer drug in the U.S. Four of Krebs' associates, some of whom amassed millions of dollars, were found guilty last month of conspiring to smuggle and distribute contraband Laetrile in the U.S. They are scheduled to be sentenced in San Diego federal court this week.

It remains to be seen whether these countermeasures can stop the Laetrile juggernaut. Even some skeptics seem to be accepting Laetrile's profitable party line. The New York Times, for example, asked: "Shouldn't people be allowed to choose their own placebo, for better or worse?"

Unfortunately, the issue is not so simple. As doctors pointed out at the Kansas City hearings, many cancer victims opt for Laetrile even when there is still a good chance that conventional therapy will help them, thus seriously jeopardizing their hopes for recovery. Philadelphia Surgeon Jonathan Rhoads Sr. was not alone when he testified that such cases "have happened in my own practice." The FDA has another fear. If Laetrile is legalized -- without a scintilla of proof that it works -- the door could be opened to a host of phony cures and bring a return to what one American Cancer Society official calls "the days of snake-oil remedies."

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