Laetrile
Sir: Not long ago (8 October) you published a letter from a Dr Templeton-Wade claiming cancer specialist Dr Virginia Livingston as an opponent of laetrile therapy.
In fact, she writes in Cancer: A New Breakthrough (pp. 186-7): 'Cancer cells contain chorionic gonadotrophin (HCG). .Laetrile is obtained by extraction from the apricot pit by solvents. This process makes the laetrile injectable but the solvent carries away the vitamin A material, the retinoic acids, the abscisins which are responsible for destroying the HCG 'Laetrile does have some analgesic effect on the pain produced in cancer.. .There are some patients who appear to do well. Very likely the change in their dietary habits and the use of enzymes and other supportive measures as well as avoidance of cancer stimulating agents help to regress the tumours. . .1 favour the legalisation of laetrile so that the cancer victims themselves can judge the effects of this non-toxic material but I also urge that the materials discarded by the extraction [vitamin A and abscisic acid] be replaced in the product.'
This should put the record straight.
S. A. Konnet Eastover, Portsmouth, RI, USA Sir: Dr Templeton-Wade accused me of ignorance, only to expose his own (Letters, 8 October). In trying to exculpate the Maoists of any dope-trafficking connection, he ignores documentation such as Stanton Candlin's Psycho-Chemical Warfare (Arlington House, 1974) and Richard Deacon's History of the Chinese Secret Ser 'vice (Muller, 1974) which proved the involvement of Peking. US narcotics officials discreetly confirm that opium — produced not only in northern Thailand, Laos, the Shan and Kachin areas of Burma, but also in the Yunnen province of China — is exported and converted into various brands of illicit diacetylmorphine. As this Asian 'triangle of death' has become increasingly organised by communist governments or guerrillas, the flow of 'Chinese heroin' into Europe, America and Australia has accelerated.
Dr Templeton-Wade even compares laetrile, whose medical application has never injured but only relieved numerous cancer patients, with heroin, whose use has ruined unnumerable addicts. The cyanide. he mentions in laetrile is locked within a sugar molecule that exerts no poisonous influence upon human metabolism. Primitive people who eat fruit-seeds and plantfoods containing natural forms of laetrile consume over 250 milligrams of organic cyanide daily and enjoy long life cancerfree. He misquotes Virginia Livingston, who actually urges legalisation of laetrile as a 'non-toxic food factor' which greatly reduces pain.
My critic cites an early California Medical Association enquiry which collected information on only 44 patients undergoing various treatments including very low dosages of laetrile. Despite the acknowledged importance of overcoming cachexia in cancer management, that report arbitrarily discounted the unanimous opinion of their doctors that these patients experienced improved appetite and weight-gain, and less mental or physical discomfort, through laetrile. Why ignore all the subsequent casehistories from American, Mexican and Philippine clinics that support the conclusion of the outstanding cancer specialist, Hans Nieper, that laetrile is superior to any known treatment or preventative of cancer and the only existing possibility for its ultimate control?
I do not subscribe to the John Birch Society, which Dr Templeton-Wade calls 'notorious', but I am aware of its view that certain vested interests have been behind the reluctance of Washington either to sanction nutritional cancer therapy or to express disapproval of Red China. This conspiracy theory hardly becomes less plausible just because a few Birchers are convicted, not for pushing dangerous drugs but for handling apricot seeds.
Robert Stanton Bodgara Way Liskeard lbA Binder for the Spectator You can bind your copies of The Spectator week y week in a special binding case, with stiff dark blue covers and gilt-lettered spine, designed to hold twenty-six copies. Price £3.00 (including VAT) post free from: The Sales Manager, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London Wel N 2LL. .
Previous page
