The Mayo Clinic places laetrile to the take a look at to see whether it is an efficient most cancers remedy.
My video Does Laetrile (Amygdalin or Vitamin B17) Work as an Alternative Cancer Cure? seems to be at amygdalin and whether or not it is “quackery or cure.”
A cyanide-containing compound present in apple seeds, amygdalin is ten occasions extra concentrated within the seeds of peaches, apricots, and bitter almonds. It could be offered as a spinoff referred to as laetrile, which has been marketed with the misnomer “vitamin B17.” “Amygdalin gained high popularity among cancer patients in the 1970s” as an different remedy, however the purpose researchers printed a overview of amygdalin in 2016 and why I’m doing movies about it’s that it has “experienced a renaissance,” because of the web.
Back within the Seventies, the FDA might solely send out its Bulletin to one million medical doctors and different well being professionals, warning them that laetrile just isn’t solely nugatory, however harmful. About ten thousand copies of the alert have been posted in U.S. submit workplaces, and The New York Times editorialized that we should always be capable to select our personal placebo. But laetrile was killing folks. Finally, because the New England Journal of Medicine reported it, the “Supreme Court stops the nonsense” with Justice Thurgood Marshall writing the unanimous courtroom opinion that terminally in poor health sufferers deserve the identical FDA protections in opposition to unsafe medicine. At final, laetrile was banned on a federal stage.
Rational argument failed to dissuade folks, although, so the State stepped in, however that had the other impact. “Cancer victims and their families almost universally respond[ed] by accusing organized government and organized medicine of conspiracy.” At an FDA assembly, for instance, a doctor from M.D. Anderson Cancer Hospital rhetorically asked: “‘You surely cannot believe that the quarter of a million of American physicians are sitting on a cancer cure just so they can get rich?’ He was answered with a chorus of yeses from the audience, many of whom had been borne to the hearings on chartered buses.” Some laetrile advocates were getting wealthy, although, like the pinnacle of the “Committee for Freedom of Choice in Cancer Therapy.” More like dedicated to the liberty of pocketing hundreds of thousands a yr in laetrile gross sales.
“Laetrile’s proponents consider it to be a ‘natural cancer cure’; whereas opponents consider it ‘the slickest, most sophisticated, and certainly the most remunerative [lucrative and profitable] cancer quack promotion in medical history.’” Which is it? You don’t know till you set it to the take a look at.
“The National Cancer Institute, in response to widespread public interest, undertook a retrospective analysis of Laetrile treatment.” In different phrases, it despatched out a letter to each doctor within the nation and tens of hundreds of different well being professionals, and contacted the entire pro-laetrile teams, principally saying, ship us the most effective you bought. Although at the least 70,000 Americans are estimated to have used laetrile, solely 93 circumstances have been submitted for analysis, and, of these, solely six seemed to be reliable, the place taking laetrile was related to at the least some partial enchancment.
Now, in fact, the folks sending in these experiences could have gotten issues unsuitable or falsified information, however, possibly these six truly did reply to the remedy. If that’s out of 70,000 handled, although, you’d suppose possibly that’d simply be by likelihood. Regardless, the truth that so many individuals tried it ought to rely for one thing. They could have all simply been boondoggled, however possibly there’s one thing to it. Certainly, the truth that it didn’t appear to assist with any of the laboratory animal cancers doesn’t imply it couldn’t work in folks. The solely option to know for positive is to place it to the take a look at: “a tightly controlled clinical trial performed in competent and experienced hands.” The Mayo Clinic accepted the problem.
One hundred seventy-eight most cancers sufferers have been handled with it and the entire sufferers died quickly. “No substantive benefit was observed in terms of cure, improvement, or stabilization of cancer, improvement of symptoms related to cancer, or extension of life span.” There have been solely hostile results of cyanide toxicity.
The conclusion? “Amygdalin (Laetrile) is a toxic drug that is not effective as a cancer treatment.”
The books have been closed on this for greater than 30 years. “Laetrile doesn’t work.” It is unsafe and ineffective. Researchers “found no sound evidence that laetrile is effective as an anticancer agent.” So, the label “unproven” most cancers treatment could also be too beneficiant at this level; “it is time to vehemently assert that laetrile cancer therapy has been ‘disproven.’”
What about consuming apricot seeds immediately? In case you missed my earlier video, take a look at Do Apricot Seeds Work as an Alternative Cancer Cure?.