Cancer - The New Approach
by Phillip Day

In spite of the medical establishment's dictatorial attitude towards protecting their cancer income, huge inroads into conquering cancer were made at the turn of the 1900s by Professor John Beard of Edinburgh University. Beard was no exception in that he received harassment for what he subsequently found. But like many pioneers, he soldiered on nonetheless. John Beard can justifiably be praised for being the individual who broke the back of cancer's mystery and brought its demise forward by many decades.

Beard was an embryologist who was one of the first doctors to study embryonic stem cells, these enigmatic pre-embryonic cells that reside within our body. Beard had noticed that these cells had the ability to develop into the cell structure of any body part, and even into a new embryo, if given the right morphogenetic, hormonal stimulus.

He discovered that in pregnancy, the body uses the hormone estrogen to stimulate these stem cells into rapidly multiplying into a cell mass Beard called 'trophoblast', releasing quantities of human chorionic gonadotrophin (hCG), the hormone later to be detected with a pregnancy test. Beard's thesis stated that these trophoblastic cells have a job to do in pregnancy, namely to etch away part of the uterus wall so that the embryo can attach itself and start to develop. Once this has been achieved, the trophoblastic cells are destroyed around the 56th day of pregnancy when the baby's pancreas comes online and emits its enzymes, which deconstruct the outer coating of the trophoblast, allowing the immune system to clear away the remainder of these cells. Beard had discovered that in the event that the baby's pancreas fails, both the mother and the child die of cancer. In fact, what they die from is an uncontrolled and unregulated proliferation of these trophoblast cells, which now have no pancreatic enzyme 'termination' agents to curtail them.

CANCER AS A ROGUE HEALING PROCESS
Beard found that these stem cells also exist in our body for healing. When we hurt ourselves, our bodies initiate an automatic healing process (survival response) - we know this, and have seen it happen a thousand times. But intriguingly, the healing process commences the same way as with pregnancy trophoblast, namely, the hormone estrogen stimulates our stem cells into producing a trophoblastic 'carpet' of cells which seals off the damaged area and repairs it with cells formed into the cell structure of the bodypart that is being fixed. This healing process is then terminated by pancreatic enzymes upon completion of the task. In the event that we have low levels of these vital pancreatic enzymes, there is no termination agent for the trophoblast in our body and the trophoblast therefore continues to multiply and proliferate unopposed. The result is an ever expanding mass of trophoblastic cells in our body at the site specific to the original area of damage. Today we call this cell mass a tumour.

Beard discovered that our bodies become depleted of these vital pancreatic enzymes when we eat a diet rich in animal proteins. Without this protection, we become prone to developing cancer if the healing processes that initiate in our bodies are not terminated upon completion of their task. Beard began treating cancer patients to great effect using pancreatic enzymes trypsin and chymotrypsin, as well as other vital nutrients, up until his death around the beginning of World War 1. His theory, as expounded in his papers, was that, by introducing pancreatic enzymes into a cancer patient's body, the enzymes would continue with their job of digesting the outer protein coating of the trophoblast cells, allowing the body to clear away any dangerous trophoblastic proliferation.

We must remember that after Beard's career, medicine began treating cancer patients with Marie Curie's radium and other desperate remedies, causing further trauma, and no doubt generating more trophoblast as a survival response to counter the hurt being done to the body. Beard's work was largely ignored until Ernst T Krebs Jr, a biochemist from Nevada, came across Beard's thesis during his work with enzymes and nutrition.

Krebs was studying those cultures on Earth who did not suffer from cancer. He was aware that men like Albert Schweitzer and explorer Roald Amundsen were coming back from remote areas of the globe reporting that cancer just didn't exist among the populations they had encountered. To the Labrador Eskimos, the Thlinglets, the tribes of Gabon, the Vilcabambans of Ecuador, the Georgian tribes of southern Russia, the Karakorum and Hunzas of eastern Pakistan and the Hopi Indians of Arizona, cancer was unknown - and Krebs was keen to find out why.

He discovered that these peoples differed from westernised populations because they were doing one or all of the following which Krebs believed resulted in their pronounced and healthy longevity:

• They lived in environments devoid of man-made toxins.
  
• They ate diets rich in minerals and raw whole foods.
  
• They ate the dietary compound hydrocyanic acid, a staple of the nitriloside food group, which had been largely eliminated from the diets of Western populations.

Krebs' work on hydrocyanic acid was especially controversial, even as it still is today. The biochemist found that this compound was contained within the apricot seeds of the Hunzas - indeed within all the seeds of the common fruits, excluding citrus, as well as other foods that had largely been cut out of Western diets. The Hunzas were cracking open their apricot pits and consuming the soft seed within along with the pulp of the fruit. In addition, their womenfolk pressed the oil out of the kernels they collected and used it for cooking and cosmetics.

Krebs analysed hydrocyanic acid to discover its life-preserving qualities and reported that when this compound came into contact with trophoblast cells, it selectively killed them by manufacturing two poisons in minute quantities - hydrogen cyanide and benzaldehyde. Krebs also discovered that this reaction did not occur with healthy cells, thus preserving and even nourishing healthy tissue. Research demonstrated that the hydrocyanic acid compound could only be 'unlocked' by beta-glucosidase, a cellular enzyme which, although present throughout the body in minute quantities, was located in huge amounts at the site of trophoblast tumours. The beta-glucosidase contained in the trophoblast cells appeared to 'unlock' the hydrocyanic acid contained in the food to produce hydrogen cyanide and benzaldehyde at the cancer site. The two poisons combined synergistically to produce a super-poison many times more deadly than either substance in isolation. Thus the cancer cell met its chemical death at the hands of this unique compound's selective toxicity.

Krebs ran toxicity studies to determine whether hydrocyanic acid, or Laetrile/amygdalin/Vitamin B17, as the active principal would later become known, was dangerous to the organism if ingested in abnormal quantities. He reported that Vitamin B17 was harmless and chemically inert until stimulated by the beta-glucosidase available within cancer cells.

Later other researchers would replicate Krebs' work to confirm these findings. Sheep fed the equivalent of 8-10mg of HCN (hydrogen cyanide) per kilogram per day as linseed meal showed no toxic effects whatsoever. Sheep weighing 66kg were intravenously administered a three-hour dose of 2.7 gms of B17 yielding 300mg of HCN. New Zealand researchers Coop and Blakely reported that "...at no time during the experiment were even the slightest symptoms observed." A total of 568mg of HCN was given to a 76kg sheep in the course of an hour. The only symptom the animal showed was "a general sleepiness for an hour". Van der Walt failed to produce chronic poisoning in sheep even after administering 3.2mg HCN/kg daily for two years. Worden showed that repeated dosing in rabbits does not produce a cumulative effect and the animal was capable of eliminating excess B17 within two and a half hours.

Other researchers, such as Dr Harold Manner, head of biology at Loyola University, Chicago, ever mindful of the extreme flak Krebs began receiving following the publication of his findings, put further pieces of the cancer puzzle together. Manner began combining Beard's pancreatic enzymes, trypsin and chymotrypsin, with Vitamin A emulsion and B17-Laetrile, and used this protocol with a radical change of diet supplemented with minerals and antioxidants such as Vitamin C and selenium to supercharge the cancer patient to halt the progression of rogue trophoblast and even eliminate it altogether. This procedure was later to form the basis of the nutritional Metabolic Therapy we see practised in the most successful cancer clinics today.

The public and press began showing a marked interest in this controversial research, especially in view of the fact that this new approach to cancer treatment did not involve the use of toxic or radical treatments that were now increasingly becoming viewed as largely useless and 'ethically questionable':

When President Richard Nixon was deluged with tens of thousands of petitions from ordinary citizens everywhere demanding clinical trials for Laetrile, these demands were forwarded to his cancer advisor, Benno Schmidt... When Schmidt consulted all of his medical colleagues about Laetrile, he found them vehemently opposed to it. But, interestingly enough, as he told reporters later: "I couldn't get anybody to show me scientific proof that the stuff didn't work."

In 1973 a three-month trial at the Southern Research Institute in Birmingham, Alabama, intensively researched the therapeutic properties of Laetrile. The institute finally released its findings to the National Cancer Institute which proceeded to announce to the public that once again studies proved that B17-Laetrile had no effect whatsoever in the treatment of cancer. However not all was as it appeared. When the data and protocols from these experiments were subsequently studied in more detail by Dr Dean Burk, one of the National Cancer Institute's founders and head of its Department of Cytochemistry, inconsistencies in the trial protocols began to appear. Researcher G Edward Griffin, whose controversial book World Without Cancer broke the Laetrile story to the public in the 1970s, explains:

"Every [Laetrile] study had been tarnished with the same kind of scientific ineptitude, bias, and outright deception as found in the 1953 MacDonald/Garland California report. Some of these studies openly admitted evidence of anti-cancer effect but hastened to attribute this effect to other causes. Some were toxicity studies only, which means that they weren't trying to see if Laetrile was effective, but merely to determine how much of it was required to kill the patient."

Despite announcing to the world that Laetrile was useless, the National Cancer Institute, the American Medical Association and the drug cartels looked on with anger as a national grass-roots movement sprang up across America as a result of the many cancer recoveries being reported and attributed to Laetrile and supporting nutrition. It was the '70s and people were distrustful of their government as a result of Watergate and Vietnam. The Committee for Freedom-of-Choice in Cancer Therapy was formed, founding several hundred chapters across America which in turn held public meetings, press conferences and pressured state legislative committees into calling for the 'legalisation' of Vitamin B17.

The federal government eventually persuaded the cancer industry to test Laetrile, which they did - without the pancreatic enzymes and other supporting co-factors required to break down the cancer cell. Of course the trials failed and the results - or lack of them - were subsequently reported, the summary declaring that Laetrile has no anti-cancer benefit whatsoever. Meanwhile, other cancer industry-appointed scientists, such as Dr Kanematsu Sugiura, Dr Elizabeth Stockert and Dr Lloyd Schoen, were using the correct protocols at Memorial Sloan-Kettering and achieving startling results, as others would around the world in the years to come.

But even these results were mis-reported, and once again B17 was 'tossed under the bus' with Memorial Sloan-Kettering's incredible conclusion: "These results allow no definite conclusion supporting the anti-cancer activity of Laetrile."

This did not stop many physicians across America and later the world from implementing this therapy into their treatments of cancer patients. Many of these professionals received constant harassment at the hand of the medical authorities, who accused them of practising quackery and treating their patients with an 'unappoved drug' which contained the dangerous 'cyanide'. Gradually, through persistent and at times downright paranoid propaganda, the little yellow apricot became a natural-born killer in the eyes of many. Interestingly, the establishment proved dismal in the consistency of its opposition, focusing on "cyanide - what are you crazy?!" but failing to pillory Vitamin B12 as a 'deadly agent', containing as it does the cyanide radical also (Vitamin B12 is known as cyanocobalamin).

Philip Binzel MD, a doctor who retrained to treat his cancer patients with this nutritional therapy, foregoing the dangers of toxic chemotherapy and radiation treatments, highlights in his book Alive and Well the problem many doctors were having with an inherent lack of knowledge on nutrition:

"Most of my first patients were those who had all of the surgery, radiation and chemotherapy they could tolerate and their tumors were still growing. I did for these patients the best I knew to do. My biggest problem at the time was understanding nutrition. In four years of medical school, one year of Family Practice residency, I had not had even one lecture on nutrition." [emphasis mine]

Binzel's book catalogues the repeated harassment he received at the hands of the Ohio State Medical Board and the Food & Drug Administration over his use of Laetrile and nutritional co-factors for his cancer patients. Binzel's incredible story of amazing tumour regressions and eliminations amid the backdrop of draconian treatment at the hands of his peers is typical of the rollercoaster ride many courageous doctors underwent in order to bring the truth of wellness to their suffering patients.

Even the Food & Drug Administration had its defectors. June de Spain, one of its pharmacologists and toxicologists, wrote The Little Cyanide Cookbook, in which she dispels the 'deadly-cyanide-in-its-natural-form' myth and lays out hundreds of diets containing the essential nitriloside factor. De Spain sums up her own findings on the back cover of her book:

"Because of its unique molecular structure, this compound releases cyanide only at the cancer site, thus destroying cancer cells while nourishing non-cancer tissue. Those populations in the world which eat these vitamin-rich foods simply do not get cancer - and they live to be much older than those who subsist on the typical modern diet.

Cyanide in minute quantities and in the proper food forms, instead of being poisonous, actually is an essential component of normal body chemistry. Vitamin B12, for instance, contains cyanide in the form of cyanocobalamin."

Other doctors around the world were doing their own research, such as Dr Hans Nieper, former Director of the Department of Medicine at Silbersee Hospital in Hanover, Germany: During a visit to the United States in 1972, Dr Nieper told reporters: "After more than twenty years of such specialised work, I have found non-toxic nitrilosides - that is, Laetrile - far superior to any other known cancer treatment or preventative. In my opinion, it is the only existing possibility for the ultimate control of cancer."

In Canada, Dr N R Bouziane, former Director of Research Laboratories at St Jeanne D'Arc Hospital in Montreal, published his repeated successes in treating cancers with nutrition, which were written up in the medical literature, including the Cancer News Journal, Jan/April 1971, p.20, under the article heading "The Laetrile Story".

In the Philippines, Dr Manuel Navarro, former Professor of Medicine and Surgery at the University of Santo Tomas, Manila, and an internationally recognised cancer researcher with over 100 major scientific papers to his credit, treated terminally ill cancer patients with Laetrile for over 25 years. He stated in the Cancer News Journal: "It is my carefully considered clinical judgement, as a practising oncologist and researcher in this field, that I have obtained most significant and encouraging results with the use of Laetrile-amygdalin in the treatment of terminal cancer patients..."

In Mexico, Dr Ernesto Contreras, one of the country's leading medical specialists in nutritional treatment for cancer for over 30 years, remarks of B17-Laetrile's action with extreme terminal cancer cases: "The palliative action [the ability of a substance to improve the comfort of a patient] is in about 60% of the cases. Frequently, enough to be significant, I see arrest of the disease or even regression in some 15% of the very advanced cases."

Ernesto's son Francisco Contreras continues the work today after his father's retirement. Francisco is author of The Hope of Living Cancer Free in which he lays out the protocols his clinic has used to marvellous success in treating thousands of patients since 1963.

In Italy, Professor Etore Guidetti, of the University of Turin Medical School, announced startling results with Laetrile in successfully combating many types of cancer, including cervix, breast, uterus and rectum. After a speech, an American doctor rose in the audience, challenging the Italian professor that Laetrile had been found to be worthless in the United States. Dr Guidetti was abrupt and dismissive: "I care not what was determined in the United States. I am merely reporting what I saw in my own clinic."
Extracted from B17 Metabolic Therapy by Phillip Day
© Copyright 2003

Further Resources:
B17 Metabolic Therapy by Phillip Day
The ABC's of Disease by Phillip Day
Cancer: Why We're Still Dying to Know the Truth by Phillip Day
Great News on Cancer in the 21st Century by Steven Ransom

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