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 ABOUT
THE AUTHOR
With billions of dollars
spent each year on research, with other billions taken in on the
sale of cancer-related drugs, and with fund-raising at an all-time
high, there are now more people making a living from cancer than
dying from it. If the solution should be found in a simple vitamin,
this gigantic industry could be wiped out overnight.
The result is that the
politics of cancer therapy is more complicated than the science.
WORLD WITHOUT CANCER blazes the trail into unexplored
territory and reveals how science has been subverted to protect
entrenched commercial interests. It delivers the kind of impact that
could topple an empire; and perhaps it will.
G. Edward Griffin is a writer and documentary film producer
with many titles to his credit. Listed in Who's Who in America,
he is well known for his unique talent for researching difficult
topics and
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WARNING!
The purpose of this book is to marshal the evidence that cancer is a
nutritional-deficiency disease.
It is not caused by a
bacterium, virus or mysterious toxin but by the absence of a
substance that modern man has removed from his diet. If that
analysis is correct, then the cure and prevention of cancer is
simple. All that needs to be done is to restore that easily obtained
and inexpensive food factor to our daily meals.
This is an exciting theory. It holds the promise for a world without
cancer now, not at some distant point in the future, and it would
mean that the billions of dollars spent each year on research and
medical treatment could be redirected to more happy pursuits.
Of course, it also would
mean that the million-or-so professionals now gainfully employed in
the cancer-research, cancer-therapy, and fund-raising industries
would rapidly be out of work. This is where the plot becomes
interesting, because these are the same people to whom we have
turned for expert opinion regarding the validity of Laetrile,
nutritional therapy.
It should not be surprising that these experts have rejected the
vitamin-deficiency concept of cancer. There is nothing in it for
them. Not only would a world without cancer lead to pay-check shock,
it also would represent a blow to professional prestige.
Imagine: a cure for
cancer found in the seeds of fruits, not in research laboratories,
and discovered by people without government grants or prestigious
diplomas hanging on their walls!
Organized medicine has spoken. Laetrile is quackery, it says, and is
derided as an "unproven" cancer treatment. However, let us take a
closer look at that word. For most people, unproven means simply
that there is no proof.
But what is proof? It is
not an absolute concept. In the strict sense, there is no such thing
as proof; there is only evidence. If evidence is convincing to the
observer, then it is said to be proof, and the thesis which it
supports is viewed as "proven." If a second observer finds the same
evidence to be unconvincing, then it is not proof, and the thesis is
"unproven" to that observer.
As we shall see in the pages that follow, there is a great deal of
evidence supporting the nutritional-deficiency concept of cancer
—more than enough to convince most people that the thesis is proven.
But the word proven, when used by the FDA, has an entirely different
meaning. It is a technical definition. When the FDA says a therapy
is proven, it means only that its promoters have complied with the
testing protocols set by the agency to demonstrate safety and
effectiveness.
It is important to know,
however, that the successful completion of those tests does not
mean, as the terminology implies, that the therapy is safe and
effective. It merely means that tests have been conducted, the
results have been evaluated, and the FDA has given its approval for
marketing, often in spite of the dismal results.
If cancer patients undergoing these FDA-proven therapies were to
read the actual laboratory reports, they would recoil in horror.
They show neither safety nor effectiveness and, in fact, they are
not intended to do so. Their purpose is to establish the lethal
dose—the point at which the therapy will kill 50% of the
patients—and also to establish the ratio between those who are
benefited and those who are not. That ratio often is in the range of
only eight or nine people out of a hundred.
Furthermore, "benefited"
can mean any slight improvement such as a temporary reduction in
tumor size. It almost never means a complete cure. If anything is
"proven" by these studies, it is that most FDA-approved cancer
therapies are both unsafe and ineffective.
Then there is the question of money. The testing protocols
established by the FDA are costly. The promoters of a new therapy
must assign a large staff of technicians and compile many thousands
of statistical pages. The complete reports often weigh hundreds of
pounds and stack over six feet in height. The process can take years
and consume over two-hundred-million dollars per study.
Only the large pharmaceutical companies can play that game.
(Although they publicly complain about this expense, they privately
approve, because it prevents competition from smaller companies.)
The potential reward of getting a new product into the world market
is well worth the investment.
But who would be willing
to spend that kind of money on developing a product that cannot be
patented? Substances found in nature cannot be patented; only those
which are invented by man. If a company were to spend
two-hundred-million dollars to obtain FDA approval for a natural
substance, its competitors then would be able to market the product,
and the developer could never recover the investment.
Therefore—and mark this well—as long as the present laws remain, the
only substances that ever will be "approved" for cancer therapy will
be proprietary. No substance from nature will ever be legally
available for cancer or any other disease unless its source can be
monopolized or its processing can be patented. No matter how safe
and effective it may be, and no matter how many people are
benefited, it will forever be relegated to the category of
"unproven" therapies. As such, freely available cures from nature
will always be illegal to prescribe, to promote, and in many cases
even to use.
It is partly for these reasons that the following warning and
disclaimer is offered. But even without that background, it is only
common sense that cancer victims should be encouraged to exercise
great caution when selecting their therapy.
Be advised, therefore,
that Laetrile is, officially, an unproven cancer treatment.
The author of this book is a researcher and writer, not a physician.
The facts presented in the following pages are offered as
information only, not medical advice. Their purpose is to create the
basis for informed consent. Although there is much that each of us
can do in the area of prevention, self-treatment for clinical cancer
is not advised.
The administration of
any cancer therapy, including nutritional therapy, should be under
the supervision of health-care professionals who are specialists in
their fields.
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DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Ernst T. Krebs,
Jr., and
John A. Richardson, M.D.
When confronted by the power and malice of
entrenched scientific error, they did not flinch. While others
scampered for protective shelter, they moved to the front line of
battle.
May the telling of their deeds help to arouse an indignant
public which, alone, can break the continuing hold of their enemies
over our lives and our health.
A NOTE OF APPRECIATION AND GRATITUDE
The material in this volume could not have been assembled without
the help and guidance of many others. I am indebted to the late Dr.
John Richardson for his persistent hammering away on the
significance of vitamin therapy until it finally began to penetrate
into this thick skull; and to my wife, Patricia, who, for several
months prior, had attempted to arouse my curiosity on the subject.
I
will always be indebted to the late Dr. Ernst T. Krebs, Jr., for his
patience and thoroughness in explaining and re-explaining so many
scientific matters. I am grateful to Bruce Buchbinder, Ralph Bowman,
Malvina Cassese, Frank Cortese, George Ham, Grace Hamilton, Jim
Foley, Mac and Idell Hays, Pokie Korsgaard, Sanford Kraemer, Dr. J.
Milton Hoffman, Maurice LeCover, Bob Lee, Betty Lee Morales, Beverly
Newkirk, John Pursely, Julie Richardson, Bob Riddel, Lorraine
Rosenthal, Alice Tucker, Lloyd Wallace, M.P Wehling, Kimo Welch,
Melinda Wiman, Ann Yalian, and others too numerous to mention for
their strong encouragement, endless patience, and tangible support.
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FOREWORD
A great deal of drama has been enacted on the cancer stage since the
first edition of this book was published. While it is true that many
of the original actors have been replaced by their understudies, the
plot of the play has not changed. This is the outline of that drama.
Each year, thousands of Americans travel to Mexico and Germany to
receive Laetrile therapy. They do this because it has been
suppressed in the United States. Most of these patients have been
told that their cancer is terminal and they have but a few months to
live.
Yet, an incredible percentage of them have recovered and are
living normal lives. However, the FDA, the AMA, the American Cancer
Society, and the cancer research centers continue to pronounce that
Laetrile is quackery. The recovered patients, they say, either had
"spontaneous remissions" or never had cancer in the first place.
If any of these people ultimately die after seeking Laetrile,
spokesmen for orthodox medicine are quick to proclaim:
"You see?
Laetrile doesn't work!" Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of patients
die each year after undergoing surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy,
but those treatments continue to be touted as "safe and effective."
The average cancer patient undergoing Laetrile therapy will spend
between $5,000 and $25,000 for treatment. That is a lot of money,
but it is peanuts compared to the astronomical bills charged by
conventional medicine. Yet they never tire of complaining that
Laetrile doctors are greedy quacks and charlatans who profiteer from
the sick and the frightened.
That is a classic case of accusing your opponent of exactly what you
yourself are doing. It is common today for an elderly couple to give
their entire life savings to a medical center and a battery of
attending physicians and technicians, all in the vain hope of saving
the husband or wife from cancer. Even their house may have to be
sold to pay the bills. And the maddening part is that, in most
cases, the doctors know there is no chance of long-term success. But
the surviving spouse is seldom told that.
The next time you hear a spokesman for orthodox medicine condemn
those greedy, money-grubbing Laetrile doctors, watch him as he goes
to the parking lot. Chances are, he'll drive off in his new Jaguar.
The only real difference between the controversy today and when it
began in the 1970s is that the media has lost interest in it. The
sparsity of coverage has created the false impression that Laetrile
has fallen into disfavor, but nothing could be further from the
truth. The number of patients using Laetrile today continues to run
in the thousands.
It has been suggested that the mass media have decided to ignore
Laetrile because, when it did receive national publicity, it became
popular. People decided to give it a try in spite of the negative
press. If they had been told they were going to die anyway, why not?
And the clinics in Mexico thrived.
Another reason may be that,
although the controversy continues, there is nothing of substance
that is really new. Each unfolding event is merely an extension of
forces and arguments that have preceded.
For example, in 1977, the parents of
Chad Green kidnapped their own
son and took him to Mexico to avoid being forced by officials in
Massachusetts into giving him chemotherapy for his leukemia. They
preferred nutritional therapy instead. This is part of the heavy
price we pay for allowing government the power to decide what is
best for us and our families. When special-interest groups become
politically strong enough to write the laws, then it is those groups
that tell us what to do-all in the name of protecting us, of course.
The Chad Green story made big headlines but, unfortunately, the same
thing involving other children has happened numerous times since
then with only minor news coverage. For example, in 1999, James and
Donna Navarro were told that their four-year-old son, Thomas, had a
malignant brain tumor. Surgery left the child speechless, blind, and
unable to walk.
When the doctors told the Navarros that Thomas would
also have to undergo radiation and chemotherapy, they researched the
medical literature and learned that these treatments probably would
further impair the boys brain function and that long-term survival
was unlikely anyway. So they decided to try an alternative therapy
called antineoplastons offered at the Stanislaw R. Burzynsky
Research Institute in Houston. At this point, the FDA stepped in and
prohibited Dr.
Burzynsky from accepting the boy as a patient unless he first had
undergone chemotherapy and radiation.
Mr. Navarro explains:
"What they don't understand is that there
won't be anything left of him to salvage if we make him take that
awful treatment first."
When he did not fall in line with the
doctors' demands, he began to receive harassing phone calls from
hospital personnel. One oncologist threatened to file charges with
the state. When Mr. Navarro still refused, the doctor went to the
protective-services agency and filed child-abuse charges against the
parents.
In 1980, movie actor Steve McQueen also made news when he went to
Mexico for Laetrile and other unorthodox therapies. When he died
following surgery four months later, the press had a heyday telling
the American people that Laetrile didn't work. What they failed to
report is that McQueen's cancer was, indeed, apparently cured by
Laetrile, and that only a non-cancerous tumor remained in his
abdomen. (Most tumors are composed of a mixture of cancer and
non-cancerous tissue.)
McQueen was feeling great and decided to have
the bulge removed for cosmetic reasons. It was a complication of
that surgery, not cancer, which caused his death. Not a word of his
prior recovery was to be found in the major press. Consequently,
millions of Americans who followed the story came away with the
conviction that Laetrile is just another hoax.
That, too, is merely
an extension of the kind of biased media reporting that has become a
permanent part of the coverage of Laetrile. It continues today.
The most notable example of continuity has been the so-called
scientific tests conducted by the nation's largest cancer-research
centers to establish if Laetrile works or is a hoax. Both the Mayo
Clinic and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center played
conspicuous roles in this particular act.
The evidence of foul play
that rose from the smolders of the data debris left behind is so
shocking and conclusive that I have created an entire new chapter in
this edition to showcase it. If you read nothing else in this book,
read that section for sure. It will change your view of the
integrity of American medical research, to say the least. But even
that was a continuation of pseudo science enlisted in defense of
economic vested interest that was well established in the early 70s.
So, although many events have happened since this book was first
published, the basic story remains the same. Unfortunately,
to bring it up to date has required an amazingly small amount of
revision. It is still bad news for freedom-of-choice in cancer
therapy.
It was during the summer of 1971 that I first remember hearing
the word Laetrile. The late Dr. John Richardson and I were sharing a
short vacation in Oregon attempting to enjoy the natural beauties of
that state. I say attempting because the good doctor, who was an
extremely intense person, had brought his briefcase with him. It was
not loaded with fishing gear.
In fact, it yielded an almost endless
supply of correspondence, research papers, and books all on the
unlikely subject of "L-mandelonitrilebeta-glucuroniside in the
Treatment of Human Cancer."
At first, I had about as much interest in this topic as in learning
about internal stresses in the construction of girder bridges.
Undoubtedly, these are fascinating subjects to the physician and the
engineer whose professions are wrapped around the minutiae of
related theory and formula.
But to me, the lush green forest and the
babbling stream were objects infinitely more worthy of my attention,
and I'm sure that my impatience had begun to show. But my determined
companion continued with all the persistence of a bulldog with a
fresh hold on a seat of pants. And he insisted that I read the first
draft of a manuscript he had prepared with the possibility of
submission for magazine publication.
In the course of reading that manuscript, I became aware for the
first time that, although there was overwhelming evidence that
vitamin therapy is effective in the treatment of cancer, apparently
there were powerful forces at work to prevent this fact from being
known.
Reacting as most people do when they first hear this
assertion, I remember asking skeptically,
"Who are they, John? Who
on earth would want to hold back a cure for cancer?"
With the asking of that question, my interest finally had been
aroused and, even though I wouldn't have believed it at the time, I
was already embarked upon a course of inquiry that was to lead to
the uncovering of one of the most amazing stories of the twentieth
century.
The ambitious purpose of this book is to present at least
the highlights of that story and to answer the question "Who are
they, John?"
G. Edward Griffin
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