Behind the Bastards - Part One: Laetrile: The Fake Cancer Cure That Birthed The Right-Wing Medical Grifting Industry

Episode Date: July 22, 2025

Robert sits down with Miles Gray to talk about Laetrile, a fraudulent cancer "cure" embraced by the John Birch society as a way to tie right wing politics to alternative medicine. (2 Part Series) Sources: Sci-Hub | Laetrile: A Lesson in Cancer Quackery. CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, 31(2), 91–95 | 10.3322/canjclin.31.2.91 The Controversy Surrounding Chad Green Nation: A Battle over Cancer Care - TIME Dr. Ernesto Contreras, Sr. / Oasis of Hope Hospital | Big Statues first-page-pdf Natural Cancer Cures Pioneer Dr. Ernesto Contreras, Founder of Oasis of Hope Cancer Hospital Medicine: Debate over Laetrile | TIME Ernesto Contreras' TJ laetrile clinic | San Diego Reader Laetrile in Historical Perspective | Quackwatch Dr Ernst T. Krebs - ENCOGNITIVE.COM.pdf OBITUARY -- Ernst T. Krebs Jr. The Story of Ernest Krebs, Jr., and Bunk Cancer Cure “Vitamin B17” – Patient Worthy Ernst T. Krebs, Jr. (1912-1996) The Rise and Fall of Laetrile | QuackwatchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

CALL ZONE MEDIA Whoa! It's behind the bastards time already? Oh my god, I would never have guessed because I woke up mere minutes ago, even though it is, it's later than it should be. Uh, this is a podcast about bad people, the kind of people who keep you up at night, which is the excuse I'm going with. Here to distract you from the holes in my story

and the inconsistencies is Miles Gray. Hey, thank you. Miles, how you doing? I'm good. I know I'm going to be better because, you know, I'm kind of going through a down, bummer period. And the point of this show is to cheer people up, right? So I'm just so looking forward to hearing about something

that will uplift my soul and get me kind of out of this rut since my house burned down earlier this year. And I'm just really feeling like you're gonna lift my spirit. So I'm so happy to be here, man. Yeah, you know, Sophie sent me a text the other day saying, I think Miles is having a rough one, you know, it's been a hard year for him and his family. Get him on.

Maybe we bring him on. We talk to him about a fake cancer cure that killed a shitload of children and also gave birth to the right wing anti-medicine movement that's culminated in RFK Jr. destroying to destroyed vaccines as a concept, you know? Let's just talk about that and cheer him up. Yep. Thanks.

Hey Miles, how you feeling? Hey buddy. I feel fucking great. Yeah. Oh fuck, where you feeling? Hey buddy. I feel fucking great. Yeah. Oh fuck, where's my vape pen? I mean, it's, yeah. Those are load bearing for a lot of people these days, huh? Just to get to this recording, fuck. Again, we all keep learning, you know, how much wisdom there was buried in those Lord of the Rings movies.

I get Gandalf just constantly, every ten seconds, like, no man, I need a hit. I need that Shireweed now. Shit is fucked up right now. Yeah, just he's like, damn, he's like, how'd you blow that dragon out? He's like, I don't even know, man. Yeah, yeah. I don't even know. When you smoke enough, that shit just happens.

Just happens, man. Other things that just happen is Americans being like, you know, all this medicine we've got that like works sometimes, what have we used medicine that doesn't ever work and except for when it kills your children? And then what if we, what if we made defending our right to poison our own kids and ourselves with that nonsense and to like the only actual right that is protected in the United States today. Like there's really one right that you have as an American

that has not in any way been impeded by the rush of the current regime. And that is the right to put whatever you want in your body as long as it will poison you and someone tells you it's a cure for cancer. Right? That's an absolute right you have. Yeah, I have the right to be God,

I think is what so much of like the American attitude is to, on some level. It's like, I have the right to be the creator or destroyer of worlds. Mainly of my own children, right? Like that's, cause that's the root of what we're talking about here. This is why I wanted to do this episode

is I think there was a lot of people who got confused in the last 10 years as all these like kind of weird, crunchy, different, like health fad by people who believe in these weird different like health diets, which traditionally seemed kind of more left-coded, especially with a lot of the, oh, I don't trust big pharma, I like herbal medicine. And that all took a lot of the, oh, I don't trust big pharma, I like herbal medicine. And that all took a lot of those communities,

took a hard right turn and have kind of been embodied in the support for RFK Jr. And it surprised people. And this story is about how that stuff has been going on a long time. We are talking about the first step on the roads to RFK Jr. on the roads to the anti-vax, like the modern anti-vax movement,

on the road to people taking ivermectin and poisoning themselves as a cure-all for everything. Like this is the first drug, not just, this is not the first quack drug Americans got into, but it was the first major fake cancer cure. And it was the first time a fake drug came out, there was a backlash against it from the professionals, and the political right wing lined up behind it to support it in an organized way.

This is how the far right got in bed with quack medicine. Wow. This is the story of a drug called Latril. Wow. Great. So we're walking up to the actual crossroads where we started down the road of completely fucking ourselves over.

Yeah. Okay. Now, Lettrill is L-A-E-T-R-I-L-E. Oh, not Lettrill Spreewell? No, no. Robert doesn't know who that is. Okay, my bad, my bad. Yeah.

Well, you have his sneakers on, so I thought you knew what this was. Did he also kill Steve McQueen? Because this latrille killed Steve McQueen. Oh, really? Yeah, yeah, this is how fucking Steve McQueen dies, taking the stuff. I had no fucking clue.

Right, right, right. Oh, but he was all in on that latrille. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he went to fucking Mexico to get it. Oh, Jesus Christ. Such a bummer. There's so much Mexico in this story. That's why I wanted to do it is I feel like, and sorry, it's Latril. Oh, sorry.

It doesn't matter. I think it's Vita, yeah. Fuck it. It's French Canadian. It's a fake drug. The pronunciation can also be fake. Latril, it's this drug that like, yeah, it went super viral and it's one of these,

we haven't had a story that wound up with like, and then everyone went to Mexico in a long enough time. And so for you, Miles, I wanted to have another story that ends inevitably in Tijuana, right? Just for you, Miles. I love that, thank you so much. This is an iHeart Podcast. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime.

On the new podcast, America's Crime Lab, every case has a story to tell and the DNA holds the truth. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen and I was just like, ah, gotcha. This technology is already solving so many cases. Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969

when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. Every week, we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ian Faff, the creator and host of the Uncle Chris podcast. My Uncle Chris was a real character, a garbage truck driver from South Carolina who is now buried in Panama City alongside the founding families of Panama. He also happens to be responsible

for the craziest night of my life. Wild stories about adventure, romance, crime, history, and war intertwine as I share the tall tales and hard truths that have helped me understand Uncle Chris. Listen now to Uncle Chris on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Bob Crawford, host of American History Hotline, a different type of podcast. You, the listener, ask the questions. Did George Washington really cut down a cherry tree? Were JFK and Marilyn Monroe having an affair? And I find the answers. I'm so glad you asked me this question.

This is such a ridiculous story. You can listen to American History Hotline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So basically what we're talking about here is the idea, the origins of the idea and a political movement based around the idea that medical patients have a right to experiment on themselves with whatever treatments they want.

Now this is not a real right. What it actually is, is a way to cover the people who want to sell fake cures and treatments by getting the people they're poisoning to become activists for them, right? And the idea that like, if I feel like a doctor, I should be able to call myself a doctor. That's all wrapped up in this. And I do agree with that part of it, right? Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, I do that every day. It should be like appointing a discordian pope. I should be able to just declare people doctors and then they have the right to walk onto like, the you know The scenes of accidents and be like I'm taking over here Way paramedic, I'm a surgeon. Yeah, I But okay, I think we're all in agreement. That's a good idea I've seen Robert I've seen Robert practice medicine and he was very professional and his bedside manner was fantastic. It was fantastic Thank you, Miles.

Don't define this man. He only said fuck you a couple times. And like a good number of those people survived, you know, a double digit percentage, sure. We don't need to say how high that percentage was. They came in for things like broken fingers and sprained wrists, but most of them lived. Serious injuries, yeah.

So, Latril is the brand name that this fake medicine will later be marketed under, but like most bogus stories of cancer cures this one starts with a real chemical discovered by real scientists trying to do real work in 1832 French scientists isolated a the chemical called Amygdalin kind of spelled like your amygdala but with a Lynn on on the end there for the very first time and like your amygdala, but with a Lin on the end there. For the very first time. And amygdalin is a naturally occurring compound that you find in the seeds of many plants that we eat,

including apples, peaches, cherries, and of course the humble apricot. Are you an apricot man? Oh, ever since I saw call me by your name, absolutely. That got you on the apricot train, huh? That was like, oh, I missed it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You do not actually want to be apricot train, huh? That was like, oh, I missed it out. Apropyled. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You do not actually want to be apricot-pilled, Miles,

because it can poison you to death. No. So. When I was a kid, I read this like- Just seeing Miles' soul leave his body. I'm worried. I'm gonna be a little boy. What does it mean, like don't ingest the pit?

Well, yeah, I mean, it's hard. You have to work to eat an apricot pit because they're not small. And you have to like break them up and stuff. Like you have to really want to get that fucker. You shouldn't, and I'm gonna tell you why. So. Oh shit, all right. When I was a little kid,

I read like a children's detective book. I think I couldn't have been older than 11 or 12. Or like the central mystery was this whole class gets horribly poisoned with cyanide and like no one can figure out why. And the answer is that the school was making its own applesauce and they left the seeds in. And a bunch of seeds got like concentrated

in a chunk of the batch. And the kids who ate from that got sick because cyanide exists inside apple seeds or amygdala exists inside apple seeds. It's not quite true that there's just straight up cyanide in there, but that is the case with a bunch of different fruit seeds that they have a compound amygdala that can become cyanide because when you expose amygdala into different enzymes, those enzymes will break down this other thing in amygdala

into hydrogen cyanide, right? As well as several other compounds. So it's not that there's straight up cyanide in there, but there's an enzyme that's in your body that it can, it doesn't necessarily, but it can potentially turn it into cyanide. Oh, okay, so you're setting the stage. Oh my God.

I'm setting the stage here, I'm setting the stage. I don't think that book I read as a kid was entirely accurate, but it did inform me that this was in apple seeds. It was called the Hardy Boys. And it's in apricot seeds. Yeah, it was the fucking Hardy. I don't think so. Back in the early days of cancer treatment, and again, amygdalin is discovered in the

1830s by French guys not trying to do cancer drugs. But the 1830s is, we're kind of starting in the mid 1800s to understand cancers a thing in a way that approaches a modern understanding. This is a slow process. And we're starting to experiment, particularly in the late 1800s, with some like prototypes of what will become some actual cancer treatments. And one of the things that we understand from a pretty early point, and this is primarily when we're thinking of cancer, is just a couple of different cancers that create like visible bumps and tumors and stuff, right?

Some melanomas and stuff, or you can see it as opposed to a lot of the cancers that are harder to diagnose. And one of the first things we do that does kind of work in some ways is you burn it, right? Like you get rid of that fucking thing. You do something to burn away that tumor, cut it away, cauterize the edges. Wait, that was early cancer treatment?

Yeah, yeah. And that can work. Like if you catch like a skin cancer early and you just cut that fuck around. Oh, like something topical, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because they're not like looking inside people in the mid-18, just being like,

ah, he's got like this weird colon cancer or something like that as much. Burning. That's a lot harder to do. Yeah. But the cancers that people are finding early, they're like, well, sometimes you can cut it off or burn it off or whatnot.

They're using different compounds and sometimes that helps, right? Okay. Thank you for saying right as if I have any kind of like chemistry or medical background, right? Yeah, exactly, dude. I can break that down to the cyanide for sure.

First you got to think about it. Like the first cancers people are aware of is like, okay, well, Craig's sick and he's got this big thing on his face or whatever. What if we try cutting that fucker off? Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Is that gonna help? You know? And so they're also, they're using different kinds of,

certain different kinds of chemicals as well to like burn it away. And there's a thought that like, well, cyanide kills stuff in the human body. It like kills cells. Maybe it could kill cancer cells. Unfortunately, when German scientists, and of course it was German scientists who were first like,

let's give people cyanide to try to fix this. But who will we give it to? Normal members of society. Yes, yes, ethically, yes. Ethically. So they try this in the early 1890s and it's very immediately clear like, oh, this is ineffective and dangerous, right? Maybe there could be some way to do this, but it's kind of impossible to stop the cyanide

from killing everything else. Right, yeah. Pretty effective like that, yeah. There's this initial thought that like maybe amygdalin could be a cancer treatment that gets dropped because it doesn't work. And so far, no one's a bastard here, right? You're talking about the early, in the 1890s,

you're like, fuck, why not? Let's give it a shot, you know? Yeah, yeah, yeah, fuck it. You're throwing everything at the cancer wall you can. These cancer. We just found out about germ theory, folks. Right, right. We don't know much. Still early doors, man.

Let's figure it out. All right, fuck it, let's try. So enter Ernst T. Krebs. This is the Krebs family. Of the Krebs cycle? Yeah, sure, why not? Let's credit him for that, absolutely not. The Krebs cycle is correct, and nothing Ernst T. Krebs Sr. ever said was right.

So the Krebs cycle is not his baby. Ernst T. Krebs Sr. though, he is almost unique among our medical grifters in that he was an actual MD. Now that said, he is born in the late 1800s. So he gets his MD at a period of time in which at least half of people who get a real MD are not in any way doctors, right? Because there's not as much standardization. You're talking the

late 1800s. Half people who are doctors are like, yes, I am trying to use actual science. I am attempting to. Obviously, there's still a lot that they're getting wrong because it's the early 1900s, but they are trying to use science in a way that we would understand to improve people's health care outcomes. And the other half are, I'm pouring shit in a jug and selling it as a cure-all. Right, right.

You know? Wait, where did you go to medical school? Oh, up there. Up there? Yeah, yeah. I got an MD. Now, is there anyone saying, is there anyone making sure every MD knows a goddamn thing about medicine?

Not really, not quite yet. Hey, you got confidence. I like that, bro. You're a doctor now. You got confidence, a piece of paper, and a stethoscope. All right, welcome in. Cut into my kids. So, Krebs Sr. is on the quack side of guys with a real MD,

but he is an actual MD. He is Dr. Krebs Sr. is on the quack side of guys with a real MD, but he is an actual MD. He is Dr. Krebs Sr. His first job in his initial medical training was as a pharmacist. And then he gets his MD in 1903. He had been practicing for a decade and a half when the influenza pandemic started to hit and millions of people around the world began dying at a terrific pace. The influenza, you have this horrible war, World War I, and then influenza sweeps in, just kills even more people than the war had. Like, it's just horrible.

When you say terrific pace, how are we using terrific? Fast, terrific. Wow, that's fucking terrible, yeah. Is it derived from terrifying? Yeah, probably, why not? Wow, I don't know, I was thinking like, terrific, wee! It's. I don't know, I was thinking like terrific, whee. It's just like a great pace, but like great as a quantity.

Like I said, I don't know anything about anything, like not even chemistry or words, so apologies to your listeners. It's definitely correct to use it as like, wow, it is like just tearing through the human population. Oh yeah, I'm just here for the lesson, thank you. And Ernst Krebs Sr. is, you know, you have to have some sympathy at this point

because anyone who is an experienced doctor when the influenza pandemic hits is going to be confronting some trauma, right? Like you are going to be looking at fucking corpse piles and mass graves and the constant danger that you yourself get this death plague that's sweeping through. And like many people who had to confront the epidemic

head on, he wound up, because unfortunately, and he gets into alternate medicine to try to find cures for it, right? He starts looking at stuff that is not scientifically based medicine. And you do have to be more sympathetic of a guy at this point in that position in the medical field, because influenza is just like, oh my God,

for all the progress we've made in the last couple of decades, nothing is stopping this, right? Like we're not even able to, other than just having people stay inside, we can't slow this fucking thing down. We don't know how to make vaccines or whatever yet. Like we can barely do palliative care. So it's not, you're not a bastard

at this level of scientific knowledge for being like, I'm gonna go look for something else because it's just, you're not a bastard at this level of scientific knowledge for being like, I'm gonna go look for something else because it's just a fucking emergency. So this is not like an oppositional defiant thing, right? You can at least initially look at this as like, influence is clearly overwhelmed medical science, so I need to look for something new. Fucking anything, yeah.

And he looks, he doesn't look in an unreasonable place. He starts looking inside the annals of indigenous American medicine, right? Of different like plant-based medicines Anything. Yeah. And he looks, he doesn't look in an unreasonable place. He starts looking inside the annals of indigenous American medicine, right? Of different like plant-based medicines that people have been using in the Americas since time immemorial, which is not a bad place. There's a lot of real medicines that are found

one way or the other through doing that. And he finds through his research that the Washoe tribe who hail from around the Lake Tahoe region had for a long time utilized a species of parsley known today as Fernleaf Desert parsley or Fernleaf Biscuit root, which is also used as a food. It's one of those plants that's got a hundred different uses, but you can in fact make food out of it.

They used it, I think it mainly is like a tea, as a treatment for colds and flus. Now, they used it for other things. These plants they would make, if people had injuries, you would make like a poultice, which is like basically mashed up plant matter that you make into like a plaster basically to put over a wound. And fern leaf can help with that.

The plant does have antiviral antibiotic properties. If you are living just on the earth and it's this period of time, this is one of your better methods of like dealing with an injury in the areas where this plant is there, right, like this is not bogus, there's actual medical uses here, right? Right, right.

And so he hears, hey, the Washoe use this stuff when they've got like a flu. And he also hears, and none of them are dying, cause he's living in Nevada, right? And he's working in around communities. And he's heard that like, hey, none of the Was dying, because he's living in Nevada, right? And he's working in around communities. And he's heard that like, hey, none of the Washoe have died of influenza. Maybe this plant that they're using

is like a cure-all for this horrible flu, right? So let's look into it. Now, here's the thing, number one, the Washoe, I don't know if none of the Washoe died as a result of the influenza pandemic. The only source for that seems to be him and articles about him, right? I did find one article on the University of Nevada's website

about Krebs and about this medicine by a second year student lamenting that, oh my God, they could have solved the pandemic if they just, you know, more people had trusted Krebs about this herb because it protected the Washoe. However, his only source is Dr. Krebs, right? Like this paper's only source. I haven't found any objective evidence that like,

number one, no members of the tribe died of influenza. Sure. And there's other explanations, because it's possible that no Washoe died from this. But it sounds like, he already sounds like a guest on Rogan, who's like, you know, an influenza dude, you know who didn't get sick? The Washoe?

Really? Yeah, man. If that was true, and that's a big if, there are reasons other than this fern leaf for it, which is that Nevada was the least populous state in the Union during the pandemic, right? An article by a local historian in Carson Now that I found and noted that other tribes in the area abided

by strict quarantine conditions, which it's possible the Washoe did too. And maybe that's why none of them died is because from the jump, like other tribes in the area, they were like, okay, well, we need to like isolate, right? Yeah. And also it just wasn't that about 4,000 people total died in Nevada of influenza.

And even in Las Vegas, the largest city, only 20 people are known to have died. So it's just not that weird that people who are maybe living out in the sticks and avoiding people during the pandemic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's explanations besides this leaf, right? No, man, so I'm selling this biscuit wheat paste, man. It's gotta be it, it's gotta be it.

And that's what he's like, he just, he either makes up that fact, because again, he could just be lying about the Washoe, but he either makes it up or he hears it and he just decides it's this thing. And I'm going to immediately, rather than, I'm not at all interested in the scientific process. No, no, no, no. Maybe at this time,

he's justifying it by like, there's not enough time, but he immediately sets into marketing this as a cure. He cooks the plant down into a syrup, which he pairs up with the, he finds a company called the Balsamia Corporation, and he gets them to manufacture a syrup called Leptinol. Now, this is marketed as like a miracle cough syrup that'll treat your influenza,

but also your asthma or your tuberculosis. Oh, come on, baby. So like all of them, it gets all of them. And again, like this is a plant that can be useful on like open wounds and stuff like that. I'm not saying maybe it has some sort of palliative help as a as a T as well. But if that case is like echinacea, it's not like a miracle cure. It's a thing that can alleviate symptoms and maybe be useful for helping on like a wound to stop it from getting infected.

That doesn't mean if you eat it, it's gonna kill influenza. I love the confidence. Also way too much dip on your chip as a scammer. Like you should've just stuck with one thing. And now you're saying- Just one thing at a time. Hey, you know all those bloody hankies

that you'd be coughing into because you got the burculosus? Well, guess what? You wanna keep your hankies white, take this fucking into because you got tuberculosis. Well, guess what? You wanna keep your hankies white, take this fucking leptinol shit. I can already see the fucking, the scam display. You're like, sir, let me see your handkerchief. Oh, yes.

Ah, this man has tuberculosis. Now drink some of this and cough into this clean napkin. Yeah. Nothing, exactly. Now I should say, the other reason why this is definitely bullshit is that even if none of the Weshaw died, he talks about this stuff, like this fern like only the washoe. It's a washoe

career and like this plant grows all over like the Americas, particularly in like the southwest around like the Vada, Colorado and stuff like that. A lot of tribes use it, including tribes that did lose people to the pandemic, right? Focus focus on the wash show. Okay. Who knows what they were getting into over there? This belief that like just because it's like natural indigenous medicine, it's like all powerful is like, look, man, medicine is pretty advanced now, but like I can't walk into a grocery store and buy a cure to every disease. Right?

Yeah. Like the fact that you have some useful medicines doesn't mean that they're going to cure things. I know. Just like the exoticism of like indigenous Americans to help kind of fuel it is just also so fucking despicable to be like, you know, the mystical, the native American plant, you should drink it. Yeah. First you do a genocide that is in large part fueled by your use of disease to kill people and then they're like they have

I'm gonna market their cures to get rich. Yeah So American so anyway speaking of bad things and add things a Foot washed up a shoe with some bones in it. They had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified

in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues and evidence so tiny you might just miss it. He never thought he was going to get caught. And I just looked at my computer screen and I was just like, ah, gotcha. On America's crime lab, we'll learn about victims and survivors. And you'll meet the team behind the scenes at Authram, the Houston lab that takes on the most hopeless cases, to finally solve the unsolvable.

Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. There's a famous headline, I think, in the New York Daily News.

It's, Teddy escapes, blonde drowns. And in a strange way, right, that sort of tells you. The story really became about Ted's political future, Ted's political hopes. Will Ted become president? Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death and how the Kennedy machine took control. And he's not the only Kennedy to survive a scandal.

The Kennedys have lived through disgrace, affairs, violence, you name it. So is there a curse? Every week we go behind the headlines and beyond the drama of America's royal family. Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Kelly Harnett spent over a decade in prison for a murder she says she didn't commit. I'm 100% innocent. While behind bars, she learned the law from scratch. Because, oh God, her and that jailhouse lawyer. And as she fought for herself, she also became a lifeline for the women locked up alongside her. You're supposed to have faith in God, but I had nothing but faith in her.

So many of these women had lived the same stories. — I said, were you a victim of domestic violence? And she was like, yeah. — But maybe Kelly could change the ending. — I said, how many people have gotten other incarcerated individuals out of here? I'm going to be the first one to do that. — This is the story of Kelly Harnett, a woman who spent 12 years fighting not just for her own freedom,

but her girlfriends too. I think I have a mission from God to save souls by getting people out of prison. The Girlfriends, Jailhouse Lawyer. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. you at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. For My Heart podcasts and Rococo Punch, this is the turning, River Road. I knew I wanted to obey and submit, but I didn't fully grasp for the rest of my life what that meant. In the woods of Minnesota, a cult leader married himself to 10 girls and forced them into a secret life of abuse.

Why did I think that way? Why did I allow myself to get so sucked in by this man and in thinking to the point that if I died for him, that would be the greatest honor. But in 2014, the youngest of the girls escaped and sparked an international manhunt. For all those years, you know, he was the predator and I was the prey. And then he became the prey. Listen to The Turning, River Road, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. I should also note that when I did this research, I noted that sadly the COVID pandemic did kill a number of members of the Washoe tribe. So if this herb really was like the perfect and all, and they are not making the claim that this herb cures everything. Fucking Dr. Krebs's, that's who I'm busting here.

Doctor even. Just go fucking Krebs dude. I'm just saying, there's a lot of evidence that this is nonsense medicine, right? I just need to be clear about that. And that it's his nonsense, right? It's not theirs. They're using it in ways

where it actually demonstrably does work. If I may defend my friend Krebs, who I used to drink without a bar, I mean, he saw it with his own eyes, man. He saw it with his own eyes. A lot of people don't know this, but Miles is 119 years young. Thank you.

Yeah, yeah. Just now, this is why you take HGH, everybody. Exactly, my head though is fucking, my skull is so big now. Yeah, it's huge. It's twice the size it was. I wear a size 10 and a half hat. We put that filter on you that they put on Jon Hamm so that your head fits inside the frame. Oh yeah.

Yeah, no, it's like Lord of the Rings style like shooting tricks here. Exactly. I'm using this Snapchat filter that gives you a tiny head to make my head look normal right now. That's right. that's right. So at any rate, Dr. Krebs Sr., and I'm going to be specifying Sr. because Dr. Krebs Jr. is also a major character in this. But Krebs Sr. decides this is the way to save the world from the deadliest plague of the modern era.

And he starts selling syrup leptinol, advertising it as this indigenous cure for influenza. And it sells really well. Thousands and thousands of terrified people buy it. And it sells so well that he alters the recipe to put out a new edition of the product called syrup balsamia, which is basically the original recipe with rhubarb added for taste. Oh. Which does sound better. I could go for some. So it's new Coke. Yeah, it's new Coke. It's new Coke, but better than new Coke.

It's Crystal Pepsi. Yeah, with added rhubarb, of course. A lot of people don't know this. Crystal Pepsi does cure influenza. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why they took it away from us, you know, for big pharma. I had an ACL injury and I just soaked my knee

in Crystal Pepsi. Yeah. It cured it, it cured it. I only my knee in Crystal Pepsi, it cured it. I only bathe in Crystal Pepsi and it is running me out of house and home. Ruinously expensive. Finding that shit on eBay, man. Half of it's turned slightly yellow, man.

If you could find that shit Crystal. It does not look good anymore. The cans are bulging. It needs to have been refrigerated since 91. So a very good article on Latril in Quack Watch claims that this new syrup with rhubarb quote bore labeling which recounted how leptotemia had protected the Wachos and which promised users miraculous results. It strikes at the cause, the circular red, quickly checking germ action.

Now his marketing is good, but the product is utterly bogus in part because there's no way to even verify what's actually in these syrups, right? Is there even any of this plant in there? You don't know. Nobody knows. You have no way of knowing what Dr. Krebs is selling you. I forgot about how fucking... There's no way to know.

And a lot of medicines, the medicines these guys will be involved in later, they'll be like, these are not standardized. Like when the FDA tries to test some of the other stuff, they'll be like, we found like four different formulations in here. Like which one is right? And he's like, I don't know. Which one worked for you? Yeah.

That one. So in short order, because you know, we do have a basic understanding of science, there's a lot of data that people who take this medicine are still fucking dying, which elicits outrage from other doctors. Quack Watch notes that Dr. Krebs Sr. resigned from medical societies and never rejoined. So doctors unfairly are like,

hey, it seems like everyone's dying who takes this medicine. Why are you still selling it as a cure-all? And he says, well, fuck you. That's why. Yeah. Also, you know what? Fuck you. I'm out of here, guys. Fuck you. Yeah, I don't even need this, right? I don't even need to be here. Yeah. You guys, you've never believed in my ability to sell syrup as a cure-all for everything. Exactly. Just like everybody else in my life. Yeah. So, so far, you know, he's, he's gotten disgraced,

but he's, it's a slap on the wrist, right? This is not a serious punishment. He just kind of had to leave because everyone was making fun of him. But the government very quickly got interested in what he was doing. The Pure Food and Drugs Act had passed in 1906. And this is, you know, part of why,

as we've talked about in our milk episodes, it used to be when you bought milk for your baby, if you weren't rich, it was just like a pile of worms inside some liquid, right? Like things used to be bad and will be again very soon. You had to get pulp-free milk. Yeah. Ooh.

I'm so sorry. The Peer Food and Drugs Act had passed in 1906. And so now the Department of Agriculture had this group called the Bureau of Chemistry whose job was to like look at the things people were selling and say like, this is that, this is what you're saying it is or this is not what you're saying it is. Oh shit, the receipt group, the receipt lab, okay.

These are the guys who are, they're seizing medicine made by Krebs' company in several states and testing it. And they're like, well, this is different everywhere. And also there's no evidence that this ever works. You haven't provided presented any evidence that this has helped a single sick person. And it's interesting to me that like the two of the states where they're first seizing this stuff are Illinois and Oregon. Oregon always on brand when it comes to fake medicine stuff.

We've been loving this shit from the beginning. So if Dr. Krebs had had evidence that this stuff actually worked and he claimed to have tons of different case studies of it saving people's lives, he should have been able to show up in court and argue to have his stuff returned, but he didn't. And the seized medicine was always destroyed

because he has no data, which is going to be a recurring thing with Dr. Krebs Sr. He however kept right on selling his placebo syrup. Up through the end of the 1950s he did this without getting seriously punished. Krebs even pivoted after the discovery of antibiotics and the first medical craze they ignited and started claiming that his syrup was the first antibiotic. They're like, no, I figured it out first. This is the first antibiotic.

That's how it worked the whole time, right? I was just trying to tell you guys, you didn't get it until that fucker with his bread, you know, but he didn't, he wasn't first, it was me. And this is not really true. Krebs marketed his syrups as cures for viruses as well, which are not stopped by antibiotics, right? And this thing does have like topically,

it's got some of those characteristics, but that's not the same as it like being something you can just take and have it work as an antibiotic, you know? Just like how you can sterilize a wound with isopropyl alcohol, but you shouldn't like, if you have an internal infection, you shouldn't just drink isopropyl alcohol.

Why not? But then it's going inside. That'll be bad for you, yeah. Ah, it's making everything clean. If it's good outside, it must be good inside. But it's only gonna do the parts that I'm digesting. Won't work for the other, ah, damn it. All right, I guess I can see the logic there.

The main thing that kept his syrup of balsamia business going for so long was that as an actual MD, Krebs did know enough of the law surrounding medications to like take advantage of it. And he knew that he'd discovered a loophole, which was that unproven treatments could be sold and distributed if they were marketed as quote, investigational prescription drugs. So this is how he sold his syrup, right? In the later days. And I wish that loophole was still around, man. Oh my god. You know what, I feel like the Jerry's still out on morphine. Let me investigate some of that shit. I'm gonna investigate

some Dilaudid while I'm at it. Hey, y'all got some Laudanum? Yeah, you got some Laudanum? Yeah, I need some Laudanum. I feel the need to investigate. Yeah. Combine the two, Dilaudinum? Hey, you know, there's a concert this weekend. Can my friends and I investigate some of that Molly? Yeah, exactly. So what we see with this guy is a kind of hybrid Andrew Wakefield and RFK Jr., right? Where there is a legitimate medical background, but he seems to have basically early on encountered

that some illnesses we just couldn't cure and say like, fuck it, I'll just sell lies instead. And while his syrup still sold till the end of the 1950s, he was aware by the 40s that like, this isn't gonna last forever. I need to come up with another fake medicine if I'm gonna stay profitable, right? Like I gotta pivot.

And per Quack Watch in the late 1940s is when we first have records of Dr. Krebs Sr. started to explore the use of new compounds meant to treat a disease that our understanding had been, was building on, and that was even deadlier and more frightening than influenza. And I'm talking, of course, about cancer. So, right, by the time we're in the 40s,

we have a much better understanding that like, cancer is a bunch of different things, and, you know, but there's certain commonalities and like what's going on, you've got these, this like type of, you know, this tumor, you've got this cancerous flesh that's like growing and growing, and we're starting to understand that.

We're starting to get some more effective methods of fighting it, right? Other than just, well, maybe we can chop it off outside. And part of why cancer becomes more of a focus and more of like a center of public fears is that the thing that had been killing more people previously, which was just like, oh, I scraped myself. Oh, you know, I got a flu or something.

I guess I'm gonna die or cold or something. I guess I'm gonna die. Now we got antibiotics. So a lot of the things that had killed people much more easily are harder to kill people with because antibiotics exist, right? And we're starting to get better at vaccines too. We're like starting to figure some of that.

So a lot of these, what had previously been much scarier things than cancers were suddenly under control and people are like living longer but also people who would have died from some of these other things are living long enough to get these horrifying cancers. So people really start to focus more on the cancer. It's just like more a thing, you're likelier to get cancer if you're less likely to die

of the other shit. So we start pouring more and more resources into the fight against what is still a very confusing constellation of illnesses that we don't really have a great grip on. And one of the first major breakthroughs in cancer treatment came as a partial result of mankind's insatiable hunger to kill each other. I'm talking about mustard gas. Did you know that mustard gas was the root

of one of the first, like, there's a line from that to like modern chemotherapy. What? Yeah, yeah. How? Mustard gas is this horrible, poisonous gas that we use a lot in World War I, and then it gets banned in like 25 under the Geneva Protocol, which halts research into similar substances for a while.

It doesn't shut it down entirely, but people are like, it's got a bad rap, you know, because of all the deaths. And then we get World War II. Now Hitler, Germany has big stockpiles of mustard gas still, you know, when Hitler's in charge, but Hitler's a gas survivor. And this was one of his few in a military terms. He was unwilling to use gas as a weapon of war, right?

Not, I'm not, obviously he's Hitler. He gases lots of people, but he's because of his own experiences, he never really embraces the idea of like using this as a, and there's other reasons, right? If you start using it, then everyone's going to start using their shit and it probably works out as a net negative. I'm not trying to give Hitler any credit here. But what does happen is we don't know that he's not going to use it, right?

And we know that Germany has these stockpiles. So we continue to have, you know, chemical weapons, protective gear that we're issuing some soldiers. And we're continuing to do research, the US is, into different chemical weapons. If he uses shit, we need to have something more effective that we can deploy, right? And one of the things they do is while they're having scientists look back into mustard gas, they're like,

hey, see if maybe there's any medical use for some of this stuff, right? Maybe there's some other things we can do with this. Can you rub some gas on my, this like mole I have? See if it helps. Yeah. And shockingly, this turns out to be a good idea. So there's this team of researchers who are tasked with this modified,

you know, modifying mustard gas to try to create something safer and more, because mustard gas is too dangerous to test as like a cancer treatment. And they wind up creating something called nitrogen mustard, which actually proves to be useful in treating lymphoma. It's able to kill some of these tumors and stop them from growing. And so they're like, hey, we actually might be able

to use a derivation of this poison gas weapon to treat people's cancers. This actually seems like it's kind of helpful. And weirdly, like the research gets a shot on the arm after, in December 1943, there's this German air raid in Italy and it hits a boat that's full of mustard gas. And so like a shitload of people get gassed

and it's an accident, but like a fucking thousand people either get injured or killed by this gas that gets blown up. And they do autopsies on a bunch of them. And the autopsies show that like some of these guys, cause we can identify these people, had cancer before they were killed by this poison gas and this freak accident. And their tumors seem to have been suppressed. Right?

So they're like, that's at least what they're finding. I don't know if, you know, how much of this is like, maybe just they're not doing as good a work as they would have later, but there starts to be some evidence that like, yeah, there might be something in mustard gas that's helpful as like a way to kill tumors. Right?

So by the time the post-war period starts, derivations of these different like things that started out as mustard gas are actually seem to be a really promising lead on a cancer treatment, right? And this promising lead, this thing that might be able to save a lot of people's lives is based on a terrifying death chemical. Now, in the post-war period,

Americans aren't squeamish about exposing themselves to like weird modern chemical poisons, right? This was not that far from the days of like, we discover radium and we start drinking it, you know? There's this idea that like the more powerful the poison, the more it must help. Let's give it to me, I'll take all the poisons. I'm smoking 40 packs a day, baby.

Everything's plastic. Fuck it. Yeah. So at first Americans are like, the scarier and crazier the chemical. Like put it in my body if I'm sick. Absolutely, who gives a shit. Just fuck me up right now.

And cancer therapies in the post-war period also continue to advance by utilizing a bunch of different scary chemicals, you know? The stuff that's not in this mustard gas line of descent, but it's like fucked up. So like methotrex state, right? And eventually, my dad went to college. Yeah, methotrex state.

And by hook and crook, we figure out chemotherapy, right? Eventually, you know, and chemotherapy is also a terrifying poison that can kill cancer, right? Like it's, it's both something that's like scary and kind of it And again does a lot of damage to the rest of the body and can kill cancer So people are thinking about cancer cures in this way that it's like well if the medicine's got to be almost as bad as the cure That's just the way things work. Yeah, it's like look dude. It's got to be scarier than cancer right Right, that's the only thing that can beat it. Kind of go with like a Pokemon logic here.

You know what I mean? And if it's not entirely wrong. Yeah. Like, I don't know. It's scarier than cancer. Maybe it'll that it'll fuck that thing up. You know what else is scarier than cancer, Miles? Mm hmm. A life spent, a life wasted, I'd say, without the products and services that support this podcast, you know. Oh, I love these.

Yeah. A foot washed up, a shoe with some bones in it, they had no idea who it was. Most everything was burned up pretty good from the fire that not a whole lot was salvageable. These are the coldest of cold cases, but everything is about to change. Every case that is a cold case that has DNA right now in a backlog will be identified in our lifetime. A small lab in Texas is cracking the code on DNA. Using new scientific tools, they're finding clues and evidence so tiny you might just miss it.

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Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. There's a famous headline, I think, in the New York Daily News. It's, Teddy escapes, Blonde drowns. And in a strange way, right, that sort of tells you. The story really became about Ted's political future, Ted's political hopes.

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Listen to United States of Kennedy on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Kelly Harnett spent over a decade in prison for a murder she says she didn't commit. I'm 100% innocent. While behind bars, she learned the law from scratch. Because oh God, Harnett, jailhouse lawyer. And as she fought for herself, she also became a lifeline for the women locked up alongside her. — You're supposed to have faith in God, but I had nothing but faith in her. — So many of these women had lived the same stories.

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So by this time, you know, the kind of post-war period, the late 40s, Dr. Krebs Sr. is an experienced medical grifter, and he can tell cancer cures are gonna be the next big moneymaker, right? There's people are both— people are reading every week about new breakthroughs in cancer treatment, and also people are more scared of cancer than they used to be, so like, that's the fucking place to be. And he also knows people expect a cancer cure to sound metal as fuck, right? The first versions of these like anti-tumor agents

are literally made from WMDs, right? So you gotta, it's gotta be some powerful shit if it's gonna do anything. And there's a lot of use in this period. There's people using different acids to like burn away tumors. And he had started in his own writings to theorize that cancer proteins might be broken down by an enzyme that he'd prepared and played around with back in pharmacy school. An enzyme made out of apricot kernels, right?

So he's thinking about amygdalin, this stuff that contains a form of cyanide and cyanide can burn away at a tumor. So he starts fucking around with different extracts from these seeds and he creates something that's like Amygdalin and a couple of other things a mix of them that he calls Sarcanase and he tests this on rats to be like does this save the rats from cancer? Now most credible versions of the story and we have a few versions of how he comes up with Le Tril But most versions of this story will say that the Sarcanase proves so toxic and dangerous to the rats that he's like, well, back to the drawing board, killed all my rats. Ah, shit.

All right, it's not going to work as a mayonnaise, guys. Let's try and reformulate this. I thought Sarkinase would be a hit. Now, that may be what happened. I found a positive account about Dr. Krebs in an article for the San Diego Reader because a lot of real journalists did a lot to launder this guy's nonsense. And that article claims, and I'm thinking this is pretty close to the claims like Krebs was making, Dr. Krebs administered his extract to cancerous laboratory mice in the hope that

the condition of the mice would improve sufficiently to substantiate his beliefs. The results were encouraging and disappointing at the same time. Some of the mice showed signs of improving, and there was evidence that the growth of their cancers had actually been slowed, but others showed no reactions to the drug whatsoever. Worse yet, some of the mice died suddenly. Since scientific judgments are based on recognizable and predictable patterns, and since no definite pattern of success had emerged, Dr. Krebs could only conclude that the substance in its present form was not adequate."

And you see how they're like, no, it's not totally bad. Some of the mice looked like the cancers were slower. We can't say that they were cured. We're not actually claiming that, but also a bunch died. But it wasn't totally bad. What's the balance, Dr. Krebs? What's the balance there? What'd you say, like 60, 40 were cured and 40% died?

What are you thinking? This is like, again, if I'm drunk driving my 4Runner through a trailer park and I hit six people and three of them live, I'm like, look, there was success and failure in me driving through that trailer park and I hit six people and three of them live. I'm like, look, there was success and failure in me driving through that trailer park. We had both, it's mixed. It's too early to say if this is bad for trailer parks.

It's a push, find a new angle. It's a push. I gotta reformulate. Jesus Christ. Maybe get a different kind of Toyota to drive through a trailer park. Less acid next time I get in the FourRunner. Sure, sure.

It's really gonna help us with getting that Toyota sponsorship Robert. Sure, sure. It's really gonna help us with getting that Toyota sponsorship from her. Toyota, you sponsor this podcast and I'll lie about doing that kind of shit in the Ford. What a Chevy, fuck it. So there's no evidence that any mice were cured by this bullshit, but we do know that Dr. Krebs Sr.

lied frequently about having records and notes from his experiments that he didn't have. Whichever version of the tale you believe, he starts exploring with other less toxic formulations after this. In 1949, per the official story, his son, Dr. Ernst Krebs Jr., who is not a doctor, but is a junior, starts working with his father

and modifies his toxic sarcanase compound into something closer to straight amygdalin, and he names it Latril. And this is the official bio as given by Latril devotees. Devotees. How did I say that one wrong? Weird. Now there are alternate stories as to how Latril comes around and one of them is pretty fun. A later dealer of this stuff Michael Cuthbert who knew Krebs senior made this claim and I'm gonna quote from a Quack Watch article here. Krebs ran a lucrative business analyzing smuggled whiskey for wood alcohol and developed L'Etril while working on a bourbon flavoring extract. During experiments with mold growing on the

barrels in which the whiskey was aged, he isolated an enzyme that he thought might have anti-tumor activity. When a supply of barrel mold was exhausted, he switched to apricot pits and used extracts, which he called sarcidase for various tests. And what I love about this is that like, this is dressing it up, but when you're analyzing smuggled whiskey for wood alcohol and developing a flavor, he's in the bootlegging business.

He's being given different kinds of moonshine and his job as a chemist is to make it taste like whiskey. Right? That's where this medicine comes from. So your doctor, nah, I'm like a illegal booze flavor adder. That's like hearing like, yeah, so look, that's like if your doctor's like, yeah, I got this cancer cure I invented.

Oh, how'd you invent it? Well, I was cutting cocaine for a friend of mine and I got this perfect mix of like baby laxative and fentanyl that I really think knocks out tumors Yeah, it's called it's called the eye of the needle cuz I've threaded that shit. I'll take that shit perfectly They send me the base straight from Bolivia and I step on that shit like 16 fucking times Is man Hines the way I'm stepping on this like He's like rubbing his gums the whole time, blinking his shitload.

So basically, old man Krebs wound up, you know, bootlegging his way into a cancer treatment. Now, most stories do agree that it's his son Krebs Jr. who ultimately figures out the final version of the substance, Littriol. And so before we go further, it's probably worth talking about his son a little bit and giving that bio too, because there's a couple of bastards and Krebs Jr. is one of the substance, Latril. And so before we go further, it's probably worth talking about his son a little bit and giving that bio too, because there's a couple of bastards and Krebs Jr. is one of the big ones. Just sounds like not a real person.

I know, I know. Ernst Krebs Jr. was born in Nevada, and most articles, especially from fake clinics that market Latril and other bogus cures, will say that he's a doctor, right? Dr. Ernst Krebs Jr. I won't be calling him that because he wasn't one. He said he was a biochemist and an MD, but he was neither.

Unlike his father, he lacked the discipline to get a medical degree, although maybe that's not true. Maybe it's just that when his dad got an MD, it was a lot easier. And by the time Junior's going to school, we've actually turned medicine into a real job. Right, right, right. It's not just like, how fast can you work a saw? You think his dad was kind of like,

you don't need medical school, dude. What do you mean medical school? My medical school was watching a man lose his leg to a cannonball. Exactly, exactly. And then wondering why he died when I got my shit smeared hands all over the wound. It was a big question mark.

Yeah, and I got so much shit in his open wound, you know shit makes plants grow. What should have made his leg grow back I don't get it We're gonna fertilize your wound back to health, sir. You'll be right as rain No, look, there's tons of worms in the dirt. There's worms in your leg. Everything's going fine. Oh, you're dead The worms come together. I don't know if you saw Terminator 2, but like how the fucking like how it come together and reform That's what the worms do with your leg. Right, right, right Terminator 2, what are you talking about, sir? Doctor in the 1880s. It's like basing his medicine on an unreleased James Cameron

Virtuosity virtue a member Sid 6.7 like Russell Crowe He used glass to regenerate his wounds, man. That's what the worms are gonna do for you, bro. Yeah, great stuff. So whatever the case, he doesn't actually get an MD. He bounces around several schools. He goes to, he spends some time in California, he spends some time in Tennessee, he spends some time in Mississippi, and none of them give him a degree.

Eventually he manages to get one, a BA, from the University of Illinois in 1942. And honestly, if you'd asked which of these colleges in the 40s was easier for a grifter to get a degree from, I would have said Mississippi, but it's the U of Illinois, everybody. So congratulations, Mississippi. You done it. You did it. So Krebs Jr. attempts to follow his father. He wants to get an MD and he gets admitted

to the Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia. And he spends two or three years as an honest to God med student there. However, he's never a good med student. In fact, he's so bad that he has to repeat his first year during his second year. Like he gets held back for being so bad at medicine. He gives up being a doctor after this. I think his third year doesn Like he gets held back for being so bad at medicine.

He gives up being a doctor after this. I think his third year doesn't go any better. And he transfers to the University of California where he studies anatomy and he's trying to get a degree in that, but he gets dismissed. The University of California looks at his research and are like, this is too unorthodox for us. So we're not giving you a degree.

Great question, great question. What does unorthodox mean? Yeah, yeah, so I don't know dude sounds kind of that sounds kind of fucked up They'd say that about my research but go ahead Yeah We'll talk about that because there's a separate quack watch article from the one I quoted earlier by a guy named dr Ben Wilson which provides an explanation as to what his unorthodox beliefs about anatomy were quote in 1902 a Scottish embryologist named John Beard theorized that cancer cells and

cells produced during pregnancy, called trophoblasts, are one in the same. According to Beard, trophoblasts invade the uterine wall to form the placenta and umbilical cord. The pancreas then produces chymotrypsin, which destroys the trophoblasts. Beard postulated that if the pancreas fails to produce enough chymotrypsin, trophoblasts. Beard postulated that if the pancreas fails to produce enough chymotrypsin, trophoblasts circulate through the body of both mother and infant, making them vulnerable throughout life to cancer.

And, you know, this is Beard is making this theory in 1902, so he's not a bastard for just being wrong. You know, there's a lot of no bad ideas at this point. Yeah, yeah, truly. However- Oh, you got the answer? And everyone's like, no. I will say though, this is also very in line with a,

we know on this show, having talked about like our, the history of like autism, you know, different diagnoses and whatnot, that it was very popular in the early 20th century for medical guys to be like, everything's the mom's fault. Cancer? That's gotta come from your mom. Yep.

It's all mom's. Moms are responsible for all the diseases. No, I don't have an come from your mom. It's all moms. Moms are responsible for all the diseases. No, I don't have an issue with my mom. What do you mean? So John Beard, again, he proposes this in 1902. And by 1905, when Krebs Sr. founds the John Beard Institute, the state of medical science had advanced well beyond Beard's theories. But he and his son are obsessed with Beard because they love pseudoscience and they don't really care about regular science.

So they are convinced this guy's got it right. Now Krebs Jr. at this point, after he gets kicked out of the University of California for spreading this nonsense, seems to have accepted, okay, no respectable scientific institution wants anything to do with me because I'm the bad boy of science. Exactly.

He still really wants his MD. His brother Byron had become an osteopath and an osteopath is not an MD, but it is a fully licensed physician. And so Byron Krebs is a kind of doctor and dad's a kind of doctor. I got to be a kind of doctor. And the fact that no medical school would take him anymore could have been a real problem, but thankfully he gets asked right around this point to deliver an hour long lecture at a Bible college in Tulsa because he is a weird religious extremist too. Now this Bible college, which is now defunct,

awards him an honorary doctorate for his one hour speech. Yes. Ah, now we're good! I'm a doctor! Got it! Fuck yeah, fuck yeah! Thank you so much. He's like doing karate kicks and shit. No, first off, honorary doctorate, not a real doctorate.

Second, the school was not even accredited by the state to grant any kind of doctorate, right? They can't give real people, like real students, a doctorate, let alone fake ones. I'm a kinda doctor. That was it. That was the only thing I was reaching for, to be a kinda doctor. And from this point forward, Krebs Jr. will be called Dr. Krebs Jr. by his supporters

for the rest of his life. Good for him. Now, I gotta find a way to become a Kentucky Colonel, Miles. That's my dream. We could do that. We could do that. We could do that. And then I can walk around and give the National Guard orders if I understand how the military works, which I don't.

Yeah, or just work for like open AI. Sure, yeah, yeah. I think that's like another quick way to become a Colonel or something. I'm already a Colonel, guys. Bring me in. Hell yeah. Now, once every respectable learning institution

had turned him down, Krebs Jr. continued his research into Beard's theories with an actual doctor named Charles Gershaw, who's a French pharmacologist who had left his university for similar reasons, which is that he's obsessed with John Beard and the college is like, well, that's bullshit. You have to stop.

You have to start doing real science. And he's like, fuck you. So he and Gershaw, Krebs Jr. and Gershaw, publish a letter in the journal Science. And this is not a study, it's a letter to the journal in which they argue that people should adopt Beardian methods of oncology. And this article is the basis in 1950 for a thesis,

which they publish and lay out a synthesis of Beard's theory. So basically they're taking this guy from 1902 and they're adding some modern understanding to it to modernize Beard's cancer theories for a new generation. And I'm gonna quote from an article by Dr. James Harvey Young here. "'All cancer,' they asserted,

"'is one brought on when the normal trophoblast cell "'goes wrong. "'This cell, which in both sexes emerges from a very primitive cell, is best known for its role in securing the embryo to the uterine wall. This function, the Krebs stated, demands erosion, infiltration, and metastasizing. In becoming cancerous, trophoblasts do the same things, dangerously. Beard had said that some pancreatic enzymes attack trophoblasts. Krebs and Grachot had found an enzyme they believe to be specifically antithetical

to malignant cells. So basically they're like, yeah, it's all the fault of these trophoblasts. And my dad found out that there's these pancreatic enzymes that attack trophoblasts. So what we gotta do is find an enzyme that specifically attacks just these trophoblasts when they're going crazy.

And we think we've got it. We found it out, right? Boom. Huzzah. Exactly. Now, given that this is about Latril, and I've already told you that Krebs Jr. discovers how to make Latril in 1951, you might expect that to be the enzyme

that he and Gershaw put forward in their 1950 study. It is not. The initial cancer silver bullet they're selling is a different enzyme called chymotrypsin, which has nothing to do with Latril. But for whatever reason, they switched to Latril in 1951 and edit their theory about how cancer works so that this new substance is what makes most sense as a treatment. That's how real science works, baby. Holy shit. They're like, well, we got this other one we can sell. All right, get some white out. Get some white out. Get some white out. Get some white out.

Get some white out. Nobody's gonna remember. It's late trill. It's always been late trill, y'all. This is the new formula. We just spelled it wrong. I got this thing. I write like my L's as C's. You know how it goes. Guys, you know, I was going through a Benzo withdrawal then.

I was fucking wacky, man. I didn't know what I was saying. Yeah. So the proposed method of action for Latril was based on the fact that it contained a precursor chemical, which as I said, there's this amygdalin in there, which has like a precursor to fucking cyanide. And when that chemical is hydrolyzed by an enzyme called beta glucosidase

that is in a high concentration near tumors, the latrille will release hydrogen cyanide, right? So basically the problem is, we know cyanide can kill tumors, but it also just kills everything else. How do you just get the cyanide to the tumor? Oh, well, if people get latrille injected into them at a tumor, then this beta glucosidase will turn the chemical in latril into hydrogen cyanide and it'll just get released on the tumor, right? Then where does it go? Great question, Miles.

First off, there's a lot of issues with this. That's not even the first issue with this. First off, they believe, but that is, but that I am explaining that like, this is what they're, how they're saying. Right, right, right, right. That like, you shoot it in, the beta glucosidase will turn it into cyanide around the tumor, but not anywhere else.

So it'll be, whatever we inject into you will be fine for the rest of your body. And he even, it comes up with a method that like, well, normal cells are actually gonna be safe from the rest of this stuff, because normal healthy cells that aren't cancers contain something called rodencies, which is an enzyme that detoxifies hydrogen cyanide and isn't found in cancerous cells.

Now, you might have noticed a problem with this, which is that cyanide kills people. And if like cyanide kills healthy people, so if your normal healthy cells have a thing that detoxifies hydrogen cyanide, how does cyanide kill people? Mm-hmm. people? How? You see the maybe problem? If that's normal for cells to just detoxify cyanide? I don't know. That's one issue here, right?

The other issue is that all this stuff they're saying about like, oh yeah, there's this beta glucosidase and it's in high concentration to your tumors and that turns the latrille into cyanide. None of that's true. But beta glucosidase does turn amygdalin into cyanide, right, it does cause that release. Like beta-glucosidase does work the way that they say it does.

However, there's not an abnormal amount of beta-glucosidase in cancerous tissue. And in fact, there's more in healthy tissue under normal conditions. Come on. The good news is that because of how our bodies work, if you're taking the Trill, if you're like eating it, if you're basically doing anything but like injecting it,

and even then sometimes if you inject it, there's good odds that it just passes through your body because we don't have a ton of beta glucosidase, right? And so like the actual reality is if you just eat an apricot pill or a ground up apricot pill, you shouldn't, but there's a decent chance that just passes through you without hurting you, right? Now, not always because different people's bodies

are different and sometimes people have more of this. And also if you're just injecting it into a part of the body, you might inject it into cells that have this and then you're basically just poisoning people with cyanide. So it's not impossible. You can, in fact, give people cyanide poisoning this way. It's just that most people, especially who take it as a pill, are just gonna piss it out or shit it out or whatever,

and it'll be fine. Right, and then it's just their own little placebo effect in their mind or something. Yeah, right, right. Generally, that's what's going to happen, but not always. And put a pin in that. So once Latril is ready for the prime time, which they decide is now,

Dr. Krebs Sr. and his not-a-doctor son start a full court PR press, bragging to magazines and other doctors that we have cracked the cancer code, we found a cure, we've solved it. Hell yeah. They start using the John Beard Memorial Foundation to finalize a recipe, and they start using the John Beard Memorial Foundation to finalize a recipe and they start producing

the foundation contracts with a company in Pasadena to produce Latril. And Latril starts being distributed. And again, they're not distributing it as a normal prescription medication. They're using a loophole, which is that they're calling it an investigational drug. So we're producing it to test it.

Who are we testing it on? Anyone who will pay. Anyone who's down. Are we taking data on testing it? Absolutely not. No, no, we're gonna call this one Deep Space Nine cause there's no data. Yeah, this is just like how when,

as a kid we were doing research chemicals. We were like, yeah, we're all investigating how these things work. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What, six people have taken this weird drug? I'm going to be seven. Fuck it. I don't know.

Yeah, let's huff this paper bag with the spray paint in it. Let's just see where this thing goes. I'm going to learn where the fatal dose lies on fucking 2CT7 or whatever. Yeah. So, since cancer treatment was in an even more primitive state back then, lots of patients and doctors were open to something that might succeed where other treatments had failed and some of them, and you're guessing these are not the best doctors, read the Krebs's explanation and are like, well, I guess that makes sense. And a lot of California doctors start prescribing this to patients, right? In short order. And

these are, you know, it's at the start, a lot of what's going on here is these are people taking other treatments. They're not taking this instead of other stuff. And these are people who are like, well, shit, they're not responding to the medicine that we know sometimes works. Hail Mary, right? You know, can't be any worse, right? Can't be.

So, you know, requests are primarily the West Coast, California and Oregon is where this really gets started, but requests trickle in from the rest of the country. And he's, you know, he very, Krebs very quickly gets like a patent in England and he's selling it in England. He's not doing, not making a lot of money yet, but it's like starting to pick up, right? And one of the things that separates Littrill from modern scam cures and a lot of scam cures of the day is that, and this is one of the smart things, Krebs is not, he's not like putting ads in that are like, can't secure, this'll

fix whatever ails you, why are they true, right? It's not spreading primarily that way from these shady catalogs. And so there's not a lot of illegal evidence of like, they have this big publication where they're saying it does this. Instead, he's selling it through respected medical doctors in their clinics primarily, or face to face,

because they've got practices. So they're selling it in their own practices and they're getting doctors and whatnot to start pushing it. It's a lot closer to what the pharmaceutical industry is gonna be doing with stuff like fucking hydro, oxycodone and a couple of generations, right? Right, right, right. They're like, actually, I got a thing

that might help you. Let's start spreading this through doctors, right? And so it's less initially visible to the regulators that do care and that Krebs Sr. has had go after him for a quack cure before, right? How did you hear about this hydrocodone doctor? Were you doing research? I was on a golf trip actually.

Yeah, I was on a cruise. All the best medicines discovered on cruises. Yeah, you always, the best, it's weird, the best medicines I discover are like on these sick ass vacations that the pharmaceutical companies take me on. No, I, look, ma'am, I'm not gonna lie. Your tumor is very aggressive,

but I think if I spend six weeks on the Greek isles, I think I might figure out a cure. I might figure something out. So I'm off to Mykonos, but I will see you. Hey, sit tight, sit tight. Now, one of the first Latril merchants was a guy named, I love this name, Glyn Kittler. And yes, his last name is spelled exactly how you'd spell Kitten Hitler's name. Glyn Kittler. K-I-T-T? Yeah, Kitten Hitler. Kittler? Kittler? Jesus

Christ. K-I-T-T-L-E-R, it's so funny. Um, he was the manager for a clinic representing a bunch of doctors in New Jersey, and he's not like an oncologist or anything, but he heard a tape of Krebs Jr. explaining Beard's theories and decided, this Krebs fellow is on his way to a Nobel Prize! Uh-oh. Um, another early doctor and Latril advocate was Arthur Harris, a Scottish physician who'd studied under John Beard before moving to Southern California.

Once he heard about Latrill, he renamed his practice the Harris Cancer Clinic, and several months later wrote an article for Coronet Magazine that he was working on something that might be the answer to curing cancer. So, and stuff like this, you know, doctors are talking to magazines, there's early stories, some of which are,

but it starts to get this buzz that like, there's a cancer cure out in California that's like works better than anything. You know? It's fucking crazy that you're hyping cancer medicine like like a rapper is announcing and like teasing an album. He's like, you know, I'm actually in the lab right now. I'm cooking something up. I'm cooking some shit up. It's gonna blow your fucking mind. You guys are gonna fucking flip when I release this shit. It's a certified banger and by that I mean cancer cure, okay? Right.

Buckle up. So by the mid 1950s, hundreds of Americans at least are taking Latril, and some of them even claim to have been cured by it. And in any of these stories, you'll come across like, oh, this person, and sometimes we'll get the person up, was like, they had, they were told they were dead, they had an incurable cancer and then Littrill cured them. And often what's happening, there's a couple of things that are going on with these.

Some of these are true stories of people that were sick with the cancer and then got better. And usually when they look into these stories, they're also taking like chemo or another real cancer treatment and Littrill and the the littoral just doesn't hurt them. But, you know, we declare that that's what saved them. Now, the other kind of thing that's happening, and this is just a reality. Sometimes people get sick and with stuff they shouldn't get better from and get better and we don't really know why. Like shit happens in medicine.

You get a couple of those. Yeah. But and that's all you need. And that's all you need is like one or two cases. Now, a part of why that happens more often here is that there's a lot of people that get diagnosed with cancer who don't have cancer, because it's the 50s and they're worse at it.

And so they start taking the trill and they get better because it's something that's not cancer that does get better. And then they're like, well, obviously I must have been, the medical science told me this was incurable. And it's just that like, well, medical science diagnosed you wrong, bro, you didn't have cancer, right? Like, sorry, we fuck up sometimes.

They mixed up the x-rays. Right. Yeah. Again, everyone's pretty drunk, especially the doctors. So like, people fuck up, you know? A cancer diagnosis in 1950 could be a lot of other things. Oh yeah, they're looking at the fucking negatives all backwards and shit, smash. Oh yeah, that's cancer.

And again, everyone's, the doctors are drunk, the patients are drunk, and these patients, there's also a lot more medical sciences and just science in general from 1900 to 1950 has made so many insane leaps that if somebody who's like a scientist, and these are real doctors selling Latril, people are not generally buying this.

At this stage, they're just like seeing it in a catalog or having like some flim flam artists walk up to say, I know what you need. Like it is a doctor in a medical office saying, try this. So I wanna make it clear, the first regular people who are buying Latril for their cancer are not quacks and they haven't been conned. They are generally people who are trusting their doctors.

Right, right, right. That is the start of the Latril story, right? Is not people who have been conned. It's just people whose doctors are wrong. Going with the flow of what they felt was normal medical practice. Some of those doctors are just fucking up, right? Cause less is known,

but the people at this stage are not coops, right? They're not even all that into alternate medicine. They've just been told, we can do nothing for up, right? Because less is known, but the people at this stage are not coops, right? And they're not even all that into alternate medicine. They've just been told, we can do nothing for you, right? But here, let me try this. Now, the reality is also that I've stated that like, okay, there's some real cases of people who got better because they had other treatments they were doing alongside the trill.

And there's cases of people who we don't exactly know why, and maybe they didn't have cancer. But when the majority of the case studies that were being, because they bring up names, they would name patients and whatnot, and reputable researchers would trace back these patients. And the majority of the time, either the patient was not a real person,

or the patient had died since giving the testimonial about how Littrell had saved their lives, right? That is overwhelmingly what we start finding you're talking about like modern-day bots for your medical Yeah, cuz who's gonna check on it. I know just yeah. Oh my god these poor fucking people these guys were making fucking names What's hard is that initially they're not putting this out in articles where they're naming people, where it's a lot easier. It's like a doctor talking to other doctors at a conference or one of Krebs or one of their people talking to people at a conference

and naming all these people, but it's just in the room. And like, who are you gonna do? Go online and search this shit? You're gonna start filing records requests in other states? Right, right. No, you've got drinking to do. Bart Simpson was cured. It's the 50s, yeah.

So state regulators though, do start to get more involved in the late 1950s. The California Medical Association's Cancer Commission is the first professional organization that starts looking, reaching out to Krebs Sr. and saying like, hey, we've heard about this Latril stuff, it's getting prescribed everywhere. And the doctors that we've talked to, who talked to you, said that you've got data on this stuff working.

Can we see it? Yeah. Right? It's like that scene from The Simpsons where like Skinner and the superintendent are like, the aurora borealis contained entirely within your house. Can I see it? And he's like, of course, no. No.

I'm going to quote from Dr. Young's article again. He claimed that limited trials of toxicity in animals had been performed with satisfactory results, but that the records had been destroyed. You gotta protect the animals privacy. Hipple laws, man. That's not bad, Miles. No human trials involving Littrell had been undertaken, but the Commission was offered case reports of patients in which spectacular results had supposedly been observed. However, the details claimed by the Krebs team could not be confirmed by other sources.

The commission was able to obtain a small supply of Littrill for animal tests at three medical centers, all of which produced negative results." So they cannot actually pin him down. He's just claiming to have this data, but he won't present it. And when they get some Littrill to try, they don't see any evidence that it does shit. Well, what kind of animals are you using? Do they have cancer? Yeah.

How bad is it? Oh, no, wrong kind of cancer. Were they messed up? What do you mean, messed up? Is that a medical term? They gotta be fucked up. Yeah. They gotta be fucking messed up, bro, or the Littrill won't work.

Yeah. So this begins the process of medical experts trying to clamp down on Littrill hysteria. And over the next years, the Krebs face increasing resistance to their business selling this stuff. In 1956, as a result, Krebs Jr. makes contact with a wealthy Canadian benefactor R.L. McNaughton, who would go on to be one of the most important people for popularizing this stuff. Everybody in this script sounds like a fake person.

They do. R.L. McNaughton is very real.. R.L. McNaughton's very real. Andrew R.L. McNaughton or something like that is his full name, yeah. R.L. Stein, these are all very real names. You wanna know who McNaughton was? No. It's gonna blow me out.

It's cool. This guy is fascinating. So if the last name McNaughton sounds familiar to our Canadian listeners, it's because his dad was General A.G.L. MacNaughton, commander of Canada's armed forces in World War II. During the war, Andrew worked as a test pilot for the Royal Canadian Air Force,

and after it, he used his experience. He'd gone to business school prior to the war. And so when the war ends, he's like, "'Wow, there's a lot of war surplus that we don't need, "'but other countries might need it "'cause they like fighting wars. "'What if I start running guns? You know?

He's like this fail son of this successful general and is like, well, I'm done being an adrenaline junkie as a pilot, I'm going to be an adrenaline junkie smuggling arms illegally into war zones. Yeah, he's just like drunk, he's like, dude, my dad's got a shitload of guns at home. Yeah, there's a lot of them lying around. He's got so many guns, dude. He won't even fucking know.

He becomes, he's one of the first people to smuggle guns into Palestine before Israel is a state. He's smuggling them into the Haganah, right? Like, and then it kind of the early days of the Israeli state, he's smuggling them guns, right? So like that's one of his first jobs. But also this guy crosses the spectrum because he also, he pretends to be working to sell weapons

to the Batista government in Cuba, right? Which is the government that Castro overthrows. So you think like, oh, okay, that's consistent. You know, that's consistent with his other smuggling. But no, he's not actually working for Batista. He's really, he's completely on board with Castro. He fucking loves Castro. And so he's pretending to sell guns to Batista.

But whenever a shipment comes in, he's tipping off Castro's rebels so they can steal the guns. He gets, Castro makes him an honorary Cuban citizen because of how crucial he is to the revolution. He was a shady drug dealer who is setting up his fucking custies like that. He's like, yeah, dude.

And he's doing both. He's smuggling arms to Israel and to Castro. It's fucking wild stuff. He's about that money. He's just about that money, bro. He's about both, he's smuggling arms to Israel and to Castro. It's fucking wild stuff. He's about that money. He's just about that money, bro. He's about that money. And I think honestly, I suspect a lot of it is just like, these are the two scariest places

to smuggle guns into right now, and I'm kind of an adrenaline junkie, so fuck it. And he's like, dude, and I take them on me. I carry them on me. I love it, I love it. I walk like this, dude. I've got so many guns on me, dude. Just walk right in. Anything to declare, nothing at all. I'm it. I love it. I walk like this dude. I've got so many guns on me So there's bullets falling out of your pan like nah, that's hairs pubic hair gotta go It's my pubic hair. It looks that way. I have a lot of copper in my diet. Bye

So this shady gun dealer was not at all concerned about the fact that modern medical science could provide no evidence that Littrill worked. The fact that people didn't want it sold seemed to excite him because again, he's the guy that like, where don't people want me smuggling guns? That's where I'm smuggling guns, baby.

He founded a company, Bioenzymes International, and he built factories in seven countries to sell Littril. McNaughton's business started operating in 1961, and there's evidence that at least one of its funders was a Jersey mobster. In 1977, McNaughton would admit that, yes, a Jersey mob, a major mafioso, gave me the startup capital. But not because this is a mob front or a crooked business.

No, no, no, no, no. I cured his sister with Latril and the mobster is a wonderful guy and he wanted to help other people have access to this medicine. No. Why is everyone upset? Wait, so do you think that's real? Like he actually just hoodwinked a mobster? Absolutely not. No, it's a mob business. He just did mob money. I just love though this- He didn't hear anybody. This potential soprano storyline that Tony Soprano's dad was the guy who fucking- Yeah, gets the trill off the ground. Yeah, take the fucking latrille.

Robert's never seen the Sopranos. That's fine. Yeah, but I'm Italian. It's coded into my DNA. That's fine. It's for all the people that are listening that have. I know, but it upsets me. Look, I know how to do two things. I know those Sopranos. This is epigenetic I know the Sopranos and I know how to lose a war in Western Germany, you know, but those are Italian heritage and beat the fuck out of the Belgians to if you just give me a chance

We did it once look so We're getting ahead of ourselves here because in 1961 the same year that McNaughton started his operation, Krebs Jr. and the John Beard Foundation were indicted for interstate shipment of an undocumented drug. Now, this was not Littrill. This was a totally different quack remedy they were selling, got like panthogenic acid or something, which we'll talk about later. But the whole fact of this, they're going after them for that, but they really are trying to stop them from selling the trill.

So Krebs Jr. gets sentenced to prison, but his sentence is suspended to a three-year probation. And as the terms of the settlement to keep them out of jail, both Krebs has agreed that neither they nor their foundation will produce or sell the trill again until it's been approved for testing by the FDA. Right? So that's the end of the story.

We're good. Everything's fine. Yeah, people stop taking this stuff. Dodged a bullet there. Uh-oh, Miles, shit. Quick question. Is 10 less than 21? Is 10, ah, man, I couldn't tell you.

I'm gonna go say yes. Then I think we might have a part two coming up. You know what? We're gonna take a break and come back Thursday and we'll figure out if I wrote another 11 pages. No, you didn't. You know, yeah, there's no way to tell other than by looking at the document in front of me. At the page number I am currently on. At the page number that I'm currently looking at.

Can confirm. Yeah. Do you have anything you want to plug? Yeah. Vaccines, generally, medicines, what else is there? Medafinil, other nootropic drugs, I think those are really good. Medafinil.

No, just come check me out on the Daily Zeitgeist every day and then if you don't like hearing about news, I dissociate on 420 Day Fiance, where I talk with Sophia Alexandra about 90 Day Fiance, but like faded, so check that out. Yeah. Hell yeah. Well, everybody, do something or not.

You know what? Find your own cancer cure. Declare it to work. We're in a different era now. Anyone can cure any disease and make money off of it. As long as you don't... Really, there's not even any, as long as, just do it. Just sell fake weapons.

You'll be fine. Nike style, Phil Knight style, y'all. Yeah. Behind the Bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolZoneMedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Behind the Bastards is now available on YouTube. New episodes every Wednesday and Friday.

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Listen to America's Crime Lab on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So what happened at Chappaquiddick? Well, it really depends on who you talk to. There are many versions of what happened in 1969 when a young Ted Kennedy drove a car into a pond. And left a woman behind to drown. Chappaquiddick is a story of a tragic death

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