CANCER: WHY WE’RE STILL DYING TO KNOW THE TRUTH

For the past four weeks, the US federal Food and Drug Administration has been enforcing restraining orders on companies in the United States who sell the controversial cancer treatment laetrile. FDA attorneys and agents claim that laetrile (Vitamin B17), which is an extract of apricot kernel oil, contains cyanide and is dangerous to the health of those duped by cancer ‘quacks’ into foregoing ‘proven’ conventional therapies in favour of the much maligned substance.

UK health reporter Phillip Day is not surprised. The author of the internationally acclaimed book Cancer: Why We’re Still Dying to Know the Truth has repeatedly stated that the medical and chemical industries have no interest in ending their longstanding and highly lucrative monopoly on state-sanctioned cancer treatments. "Laetrile was tested in the 1970s by top biochemists and a leading government cancer scientist, Dr Kanematsu Sugiura. Their conclusions stated that Vitamin B17’s ability selectively to kill cancer cells and even prevent them from spreading to their deadly secondary state was pronounced and statistically very significant. Yet the authorities were guilty of the classic cover-up over these findings and reported to the public that laetrile was useless, and even dangerous." Day explains in his controversial book that vested interests in America are fighting hard to prevent a commercially useless, unpatentable substance, available at any grocer’s store, from wrecking a $200 billion a year cancer industry.

"What’s even more unconscionable is that it has long been known that existing chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatments are not halting cancer, do not extend life in the major cancers and even contribute to the patient’s early death." Incredibly though, as Day reports, even as the Food & Drug Administration shuts down vitamin companies and continues its demonisation of Vitamin B17 as a cancer treatment, excited scientists have been meeting at Imperial College, London to discuss the cyanide defence system used by the B17-rich cassava plant and its possibilities in selectively killing cancer cells using cyanide! (Telegraph, 07/09/00, p.14)

"This situation would be funny, were it not for the fact that cancer patients are dying at an ever increasing rate, all the while lies and greed proliferate. Those guilty of continuing to withhold this original and valid life-saving information on B17 must be called to account over an issue so vital to the health of the general public."