Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: Vitamin B17

Episode Date: December 15, 2018

This week's episode of Sawbones is all about "Vitamin B17" which is, brace yourself ... not a vitamin. Yup, it's gonna be one of those sorts of episodes. Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

Saubones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. that weird growth. You're worth it. Alright, time is about to books. One, two, one, two, three, four. I'm here to welcome you to the best of the world. I'm here to welcome you to the best of the world. I'm here to welcome you to the

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best of the world. I'm here to welcome you to the best of the world. I'm here to welcome you to the best of the world. I'm here to welcome you to the best of the world. I'm here to welcome you to the best of the world. I'm here to welcome you to the best of the world. I'm here to welcome you to the best of the world. I'm here to welcome you to the best of the world. best of the world. I'm here to welcome you to the best of the world. I'm here, everybody, and welcome to Saubones,

a mayor and a tour of Miss Guy, to betta said, I'm your co-host Justin McElroy. And I'm Sydney McElroy. Said you said you were very confident about this. You were like, I'll get us into it. Step back out of the way. Well, let me do it. I'll let me park hands.

We're back. We had to take a week off. We're sorry about that, but we're back. I'm not sorry. I am. I'll let me podcast. We're back. We had to take a week off. We're sorry about that, but we're back. I'm not sorry. I am. I hate any week we can't. It's a holiday. It's a holliday.

But I am excited to get into the story, not, I mean, I thought that sounds weird. Like it's not a good one, but it's a big story. And I just, I want to get into it. Okay. There was a topic that was suggested to us by several people, Jay and John and Heather and I looked into it because I thought that can't be right. Surely this can't be happening still, but it's an old story. It's old is time really, the story of fake medicines that is current today.

And Justin, I want to start off by asking you, what is vitamin B 17? Ah, yes. One of the most important bees that we have, obviously, the highest bee vitamin there is of full of explosive power. If you saw it on a shelf, yeah, I bet it's big. I bet it's big pills. Would it be my guess? Well, but you wouldn't necessarily think there was anything wrong, right? If you heard vitamin B17 as a non-medical person,

it would not occur to you that that is odd, correct? This feels like a trap, but I'm gonna grant you that no, I wouldn't know. No, right? And like if a doctor said you should take more B vitamins and then didn't say anything else and then you saw a B17, you might think, well, maybe that's something.

Yeah, so it is extremely confusing. Right. Okay. So we're going to talk about vitamin B17 and how it's not a vitamin. Oh, at all. That is, you know, it's funny about that, is the name feels like almost like a misnomer to me as a result. Well, that's exactly speaking of misnomer.

That's exactly what Ernest Krebs Jr. was hoping you would fall into that trap. You know, you start to get a sense of people doing fake medicine things by their names. And folks from here to tell you as a layman who doesn't know anything about the story, Ernest Krebs Jr. is not a good start. I want to tell everybody who has any sort of scientific background who listens to our show right up front that this Krebs has nothing to do with the crebs of the crebs cycle. I know Justin you're thinking why would she make this point because my first thought when I read this guy's name was like of the crebs cycle.

Do you know what the crebs cycle is? is, yeah, man. It's what our cells do to generate energy when they're using aerobic respiration. It's a cycle that happens. It doesn't matter. The only reason that I mention it is that if you've taken science classes, you've probably had to learn the crebs cycle. And it's the thing that doctors always like to reference is like the thing that doesn't matter anymore

for them to know, like, listen, I don't remember the Krebs cycle, but I know how to handle hypertension. It's like our favorite thing to throw out there is like an example of a basic science concept that we don't remember and don't need to remember is the Krebs cycle. Anyway, this has nothing to do with that Krebs.

That's a different Krebs. It sounds like he's not important anyway. No, he's a good guy who made a cycle. I mean, I don't actually, I don't know anything about him, but he made a cycle and he was right. We didn't make it. He named it. He named it.

He found it. He named it. More evolution in science. Let's not debate that on podcast. The little baby, carst child. Ernest Krebs was born. Ernest Martin, you'll be smirching him. It was born in Carson, sitting Nevada in 1911.

And his dad was a doctor, an actual doctor, but he had some very strong opinions about some medicines that he said could be used for cancer. This is Ernest Krebs senior. Both Krebs are involved in this, really. So senior Krebs, who was a doctor, believed a theory that had been created by a British embryologist named John Beard, that all cancers come from trophoblasts. And I'm guessing you probably don't know what

trophoblasts are. I am not familiar with the word trophoblasts, but I like it. They are cells that form the outer layer of a blast assist, which is what provides nutrients to the embryo and the placenta and development and embryology. OK. So they're just a certain kind of cells that are formed during the first stage of pregnancy and they are the first ones that kind of differentiate from the egg that has been fertilized.

Okay, these are trophoblasts. He thought that kind of we're born with cancer and the cure for cancer all in eight in the developing fetus. The tropha blasts could be cancer. We're born with cancer. We're born with it as well as the treatment. And he believed that enzymes from our pancreas, specifically trips in, are the treatment. So we are born with these trophoblasts that can cause cancer, and we're born with these enzymes that can cure cancer.

And what's supposed to happen is that when you're developing embryo, these enzymes will stop the cancer from growing. And so you won't get cancer unless something goes wrong. In which case, the cancer is there. And it's just gonna like pop up at some point in your life, right? So like it's too late. Like you were born with the cancer from your trophoblasts, your pancreatic enzymes, the tripsin did not take care of it.

Someday, it will manifest. This was his theory. This is not true. By the way, I don't know if you knew that, like this is not. It sounded suspicious to me. I will grant you. So he believed then that if you didn't take care of it

as a developing embryo, then the treatment for cancer must be to just get some of these enzymes, these little proteins from your pancreas to get some of these enzymes and to inject them into you. And then walk your cancer that way. That was his belief based on this theory. He wrote this big paper on this and I will say that, I mean, this stuff was wrong,

and it takes us in a very upsetting direction, since this will lead to a fake cancer cure that is still in the market today eventually. That is where the story ends, as you probably guessed. Fantastic. But the paper itself, I will say, is pretty fantastic. It's bananas. He compares himself in his paper about his theory, his theory that he just came up with. He compares himself to Galileo and Lister and Symmovice and Pasteur. Wow. Because he is this genius who has come up with this amazing theory.

And nobody believes him, but he is so sure of himself. He writes in it, this is my favorite. I mean, you should, like, you could read the whole thing. And it's just, like, I was, I was laughing. I don't know if everybody would laugh. I was laughing. But he writes, this is the reason which confers a lasting truth on the words which I wrote down

on December 8th, 1904, and which almost immediately gave the solution of the problem of cancer. The mammalian embryo solved the problem of cancer ages ago. Still it moves, commented Galileo. What? Galileo supposedly said that, still it moves. About his thing, like Galileo really is thing. He is comparing, he is saying that is what Galileo.

My version of Galileo said. What I just said is just like when Galileo said, still it moves. I will say it's not like T-shirt worthy. The mammalian embryo solved the problem of cancer ages ago. It's not like a bumper sticker. It's not the same as still at moves. Blacks the peneh.

But I do love the, I love the Hutzpah. Yeah, it's excellent. I celebrate the Hutzpah. Even though he was wrong. So based on... Perhaps time will tell. No, he's wrong. Based on this wrong idea from our embryologist John Beard based on this theory crebs senior

Because he bought it decided he would sell a Pancreatic enzyme. He would sell an enzyme from your pancreas when I say that it's just an enzyme made by your pancreas Okay, how would he say would he extract it from other people? He said he can well, he said he could make it. So he promoted something called Khymo Tripsin, which the Ninzai, and he said, you can treat cancer this way. He had already, by the way, it's worth noting that before he started into the fake cancer treatment business, he'd already made a bit of a name for himself,

treating patients during the flu epidemic of 1918, the big giant influenza. Yeah, I'll break. He had made a syrup out of parsley called syrup leptinol, and he would try to treat patients who were dying of flu with this. He also treated like asthma and tuberculosis and whooping cough and pneumonia

I mean anything like that but also the flu It didn't work at all and the FDA had already seized a bunch of Serap leptinol in the early 1920s and said stop stop This is fake. This is nothing stop people are dying of flu and then you're making them pay for parsley syrup on the way. Sounds like a cocktail mixer though, doesn't it? Parsley syrup. This is something you'd added like gin and... I mean, people may have. A lot of those old, I mean, we've talked about before, a lot of those old patent medicines

were like, I mean, bitters. Bitters, yeah. So who knows? Anyway, so he already was selling fake years before he got into this kind of trips and cancer business. Now, just to take a quick detour to tell you where Ernest Krebs Jr. fits into this picture, because this is really a father-son act that will, you know, that we're going to follow. So his son was also was seeking to become a doctor, but not quite as successful as his father.

He attended the Hanuman Medical College, which is now Drexel University College of Medicine. Hanuman. I feel like he's had a Hanuman on the show before. Named for the father of homiopathy. Hanuman Yopathy, yeah, okay. Yeah. So he attended the medical college for three

years, but he had to repeat one year and then eventually he flunked out. So he never actually got a medical degree. You know, what's a piece of paper? He went on to take more science courses to try to pursue a degree in Mississippi and in California, in Tennessee, but he, um, he failed all of his science courses. So he kept skipping around a different university. He's trying to find a degree, right? And he couldn't pass the classes. So he finally did get a BA from the University of Illinois. Um, he called himself a doctor, even though he did, he did not have a doctorate. He claimed to have a PhD, but actually the only thing that he had gotten that was, I guess, somewhat similar to a doctorate was an

honorary degree from the American Christian College in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which I guess does not exist anymore. It did. It was a small Bible college. It was not actually, they did not have the accreditation to award any advanced degrees, but they gave them any way, I guess. Of course, it was an honorary degree, so I guess anybody can give those, right? I did, so speaking of, I also didn't have a Department of Science.

Okay, not great. Just so you know, no Department of Science. Speaking of, I am still looking for any higher education facility that will give me an honorary doctorate. I would love nothing more than to be able to say doctors just in the city, McAroy, I will do anything. It, whatever it takes to get this honorary doctorate, it just, it has to count. It has to be a real, a real honorary, a real fake doctorate. It just it has to count. It has to be a real a real honorary, a real fake doctorate, but I will do pretty much anything. So please talk to your college. I'll fly out there. I'll do whatever it takes. Please, please, can't ask enough.

On the flip side, I would ask, please, nobody can just in a degree, an honorary doctorate. You shouldn't. I worked really hard for mine. You shouldn't feel threatened. I worked really hard. Sydney, I'm a straight white man. Don't I deserve it? Think about it for a second. Doesn't it seem like I should have one?

That's right. I forgot it. Just go out of it. I'll just say you think about it. So anyway, he got this honorary degree from this now-defunct college that did not have a department of science. By the way, I looked into how he got it. I was like, did he attend there? What did he do? He he went and gave a lecture on one of the fake medicines that he was promoting at the time. One of his dad's fake medicines.

that he was promoting at the time. One of his dad's fake medicines, an hour long lecture, and for giving this hour long, which sales pitch, essentially, it was a sales pitch, they gave him the honorary degree. If that's all it takes, y'all. I'm happy to come tell you about some fake medicine. He did,

later spend two years doing some graduate work in anatomy. I don't know how that works when you don't, I mean, well, he did have a degree, he did get a BA, but he didn't get a medical degree. He has this honorary doctorate, and then he did two years in some sort of fashion, doing graduate work in anatomy, but they kicked him out.

He didn't get to complete the work for, and this is a quote, his pursuit of what was deemed unorthodox. See, that's how they got Frankenstein. They got all the really good ones. I don't know the details. Man, I wish I did. Dr. Jekyll, like anybody who's doing cool stuff is going to get that. That sounds like being persecuted by the Fuddy Dutdies that don't accept. I don't know.

I think that I think there's some foreshadowing there. I think that's the very dark. This is where we take a dark turn. But anyway, so we've got, but what are we foreshadowing? Well, I'm going to tell you. Okay. But first let's head to the building department. Let's go. The medicines, the medicines that ask you let my God before the mouth.

So when we left, when we left the Krebs, Krebs Jr. was getting his honorary degree, but no other degree. And that's okay though, because he was gonna practice fake medicine anyway, so you don't need a real medical degree. Right. To practice fake medicine. Absolutely. you don't need a real medical degree. Right. To practice fake medicine. Absolutely.

You don't need any kind of certification. You just go for it. Yeah, that's what we've learned. So him and his dad, I mean, that's kind of like, I guess that's kind of nice. Oh, that is nice. Father's son, just a little. Found a project they can work on together. Senior junior project.

They started promoting fake cancer cures. First was the chymotripsin, as I already mentioned, but they needed to go bigger, they needed to go further. They wanted their own meds. So CREB senior started promoting a substance called Pangamic Acid. They named it for the words that mean universal and seed, and they said that it came from seeds,

specifically apricot seeds. We're going to get into some more apricot seeds, but initially they're just saying, we've got this stuff that comes from seeds. They patented the process that they used to isolate it. That's good, you gotta protect your work. Except no one could ever reproduce this process. That's a whole other next level patent. Here's the wild thing about this.

We've talked about a lot of fake medicines on this show. And most of the time, it's like it was really just some like honey and whiskey and maybe some cocaine thrown in there, whatever and some herbal stuff. This substance, whatever this supposedly was, we've never been able to isolate what it is. It may not have ever been one thing. They may have made it all up. So they were, I mean, there was an actual physical substance that they were selling. Something was in the bottle. Something was in the bottle, but as far as what it was,

all the studies of the various, uh, pangamic acid brands that that sprung up after this and things that were being sold, none of them were found to be the same thing. Same thing. One was just lactose. I mean, they never, some preparations actually had cancer causing substances in them. They found bad. So it was never like the FDA eventually said, this is an unidentifiable substance. We don't even know how to ban it because it's not a thing.

You're just selling bottles that say, ping, ping, and he has it. We don't know how to ban the trash in your bottle. It is bad. We don't want to ban lactose, but we do want you to stop selling and calling it something else. They claimed it could be used for detox, which we know right, is not a thing. You don't need to be detoxed. Put up your alarms every time. Yeah, you're livers and kidneys do that for you. They also said it was a treatment for, I mean, it was one of those curals, asthma or joint pain or if your nerves hurt, her if you have skin problems.

You know how when your nerves hurt. They also said it was good for race horses. No. So, You're getting that for race horses, good enough for me, I say. So you can take it for your asthma or give it to your horse, they started referring to it as vitamin B15. Oh, not quite 17 yet. I had a few more

bees. And they would also market it later for cancer, for schizophrenia, and then they would say things like it improves your oxygen. It's good for your heart. The more you eat it, the more you fart. Sorry, it's a side effect. Folks, we're working on it. Okay. Not tended. That's how you know it's working. This vitamin thing is a trend.

We'll get into it a little bit. But if you call something a vitamin, it's regulated differently. It's a supplement. It's no longer a treatment. Burden of proof much, much lower. So it's easier to get away with certain things. If you're wondering why they're making up vitamins. And apparently it's not that...

I would have thought it would be really hard to make up a vitamin. Yeah, right. But as we've discussed, ping-a-mick acid wasn't even a substance. And it got the name to vitamin.ac acid wasn't even a substance. And it got the name of the vitamin. And it wasn't even a thing. Hi, science is me. CREBS.

I've invented a new vitamin. What's in it, CREBS? I don't know. Nothing. It depends on which bottle you get, I guess. It's trash and nothing. And I put it in a bottle. Is it a vitamin?

Yeah, I guess so. What's the next number? It's trash and nothing and I put it in a bottle. Is it a vitamin? Yeah, I guess so. What's the next number? It's not taken. You get 17, it's not right in there. Perfect. Okay, so this wasn't enough. This was not to be their legacy. This, because they needed a substance.

They needed something that could be put in multiple bottles and at least proven to be the same thing, even if it was still not effective in any way. Right. So their greatest legacy is substance that they built upon the work of other scientists who had been isolating something from almond seeds called amygdalen. And they wanted to isolate this same thing, a Migdalen. Now, Krebs senior had a lot of different stories about where and why he got this stuff, how

he came up with it and what his process was and all that. In his book, he said that he had already theorized that cancer proteins, whatever he was calling cancer proteins, could be was calling cancer proteins, could be broken down by an enzyme, and he had actually made this when he was a student. He initially tried it out in animals, and he found that it was toxic, so he had to boil it down,

and eventually he came up with this substance that we are going to learn the name of is Leitril. Leitril. Leitril. Leitril. L-A-E-T-R-I-L-E. To make up things, so. Who cares? Leitril. So, Leitril. Now, there were other stories later that came up, so it's not quite clear exactly how he came up with this stuff or how his version was synthesized. And as time would go on, it would be a variety of different things as well, although there is something here, there's an actual substance that they're root of it all.

There was another story that he, for a while, ran a business where he would analyze whiskey for wood alcohol and he developed it while he was working on a bourbon-flavoring extract somehow. Just kind of a side hustle. A side hustle to hearing cancer. Yeah, that he somehow isolated this enzyme accidentally from mold growing on bear. I don't know. There's a bunch of wild stories. What he eventually started using

to get this substance, to synthesize the substance. However, he started, he eventually started using apricot pits for it. So that is where to get the whiskey, no, to get the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, a scientific discovery is made, it's a pretty clear cut story. We've talked about Flemmane and Penicillin, right? It is what it is. He left some petri dishes out and then I'm old grew. It's not like,

you know, there's not a mysterious, convoluted, multiple tales about where it came from. There's usually just like, it's like putting in a paper. It's not various legends. No, and most of the time it's not even as exotic as Fleming's penicillin story. It's usually just like, We tried a bunch of things and then one thing worked and,

it's like formula 409, right? It was the 409th formula. That's usually the way these stories work. So when you see all these like myth, mythos surrounding the origins, I would raise an eyebrow. Anyway, so they've they finally settled on apricot pits as the the way to get this extract and sell it as And in 1949, June, June, you're actually modified the process and branded it. And that was the official. This is the beginning of this substance, lateral. It was pushed as a medicine that could cure cancer at first.

This is a treatment. They started selling it as a medicine as a treatment. This will cure your cancer. We know because of this weird background story and we promise we did some animal studies. We're gonna suggest maybe we did some human studies even though we definitely did not. We did not do any studies. We're gonna kind of hint that we might have

and we're gonna sell it. And of course the FDA came in and was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't know, no, no, no, no. None of this is right, you can't say any of this. So they rebranded it as a vitamin B17. Okay. Sure. Now here was the problem.

It already came up. Yes, I agree with me. They said that it worked by breaking down cancer proteins, right? Like that was their whole thing. We know how cancer is formed. We have this weird theory and we need to break down these proteins, these cancer cells that come from triphoblastone, we need to break it down with enzymes, and this is why this works.

Well, if all of a sudden it's a vitamin, that whole theory falls apart. So they changed their theory about cancer to go with it. Then they said, never mind, we were wrong about what cancer is caused by. Instead, it's just a deficiency of this. All cancer is just a deficiency of vitamin B17, and we sell vitamin B17.

So you do the math. So this is all fake, but it's a very simple pitch. And it's easy to see, I think, why people sometimes fall into the traps of these fake cures, because that's a very logical progression. If you accept that cancer is just a deficiency of a vitamin, then taking the vitamin would cure cancer. Sure. That makes sense.

Now, all of this is wrong, but it's a lot simpler of a pitch than the actual science behind anything in medicine, right? Which is a lot more hard. It was a lot more difficult to explain. Anyway, a lot of different doctors and medical boards started hearing these claims and getting complaints about it because this was bananas. However, there were other doctors who heard them and said, hey, maybe that's true. Specifically, there was a family medicine doctor. It hurts my heart. I know.

Bad job, you know. In California, I named Arthur Harris, who became a huge supporter. He changed the name of his office, his family medicine office, to the Harris Cancer Clinic. I don't think you're allowed. I mean, I guess you shouldn't do that. I'm not of your allowed to, you shouldn't. And the California Medical Association began to receive complaints. So they actually approached Krebs and said,

we need some evidence of this. Like now we've got these cancer clinics popping up and we don't know why and this shouldn't work. And oh, you know, give us some evidence. He provided some case reports like, well, here's some stories of patients I cured, but no trials, no big, large studies to prove anything. Right.

They offered him the chance to perform a study at LA County Hospital. And he did it and it worked. No, he said, I will only do it if you let me put my supporters in charge of the entire study. Hey, no, bad. Right? That's bad, right? For science. Well, that doesn't. So, I'm, of course, the California Medical Association said, well, no, we can't, that, no, we can't do that. And so he said, well, never mind, you can't do the study then. So that was that. Yeah. can't do the study then. So that was that. Yeah. Um, this may have just faded away, like there are other attempts at fake medicines. If it weren't for a certain individual who

was not, uh, not necessarily he did, he had no medical training, but he did have money and, uh, power and the ability to market a substance. Andrew McNoff done. Who's that? Uh, this was a guy he met Crabbs in 1965 and he had already kind of made for a name for himself as like a test pilot for the Royal Canadian Air Force. Um, he'd gotten training in electrical engineering and geology and mining and business. And he'd, he'd already made a huge fortune. He was a very rich, powerful guy. Like he'd worked with Castro and Castro had made him an honorary citizen of Cuba for some of his, some

of the work he'd done. Folks again, if you can't offer it, if you can't offer an honorary doctorate, if you can't make me an honorary citizen of Cuba, that would work too. That's fine. Take what I can get at this point. Just honorary anything. Honor anything. So it doesn't require work, but does seem impressive. I'm down for. So McNaughton's this big powerful rich guy who already has a foundation where he's trying to fund projects that he deems on the outer limits of scientific knowledge. Ooh, spooky.

So he meets Krebs and Krebs intrigues him. He tells him about the late royal wars, the wars over this. He's created a cure for cancer and nobody wants him to get it to the public. He is a guts. He is totally swayed by this argument and he starts promoting and distributing it. He founded the International Biosymes Limited to distribute it in Canada and he built factories in seven countries and he basically makes it this giant thing. He even like helps with the PR for it. He commissions a freelance writer to publish articles about it to write a book. This

guy Glenn Kittler writes a whole book about the hidden cancer cure that nobody wants you to know about. He paid for a surgeon to come this guy John Morone to come attend a lecture and then publish articles about it. So MacNoften is really the guy who, I think they call him now like the godfather of Leia Trull or whatever, but he is the guy who made it a thing with his money and his influence. Everybody got on board. If you're curious, he would later get in trouble for stock fraud. But all he was fine, $10,000 and was sentenced to one day in jail. He served neither. He did not pay the money nor did he serve the day in jail. I think he just left

Canada or something. So anyway, because of all this, more doctors got on board with this fake cure. It became very popular with Dr. Ernesto Contreras, who was working just across the border from where Krebs was a lot of the time in Tijuana. And so it became like this. He would like funnel patients down as stuff was getting cracked down in the US. More and more doctors are getting shut down for doing this in the US. CREBS would just kind of draw patients in and then funnel them down across the border

to portray us where he could give them the the lateral charge them like $150 a month. He treated thousands of patients there and, when they asked for any evidence, do you have anything to publish? Like you treated thousands of patients, you say you cure them, where's your dad at? I don't have to. Yeah, he only ever presented 12 cases. And of the 12, six of them had still died.

So it didn't work. Two ended up using conventional cancer treatments. One still had cancer, but was still alive. And three, they could never find. So that's a, out of the thousands he claimed that that's a zero. Right on that. That's a zilchio. So legal battles raged over this for years. Various doctors getting shut down and reprimanded and losing their licenses. The government seizing shipments of leotrol and different parts of the country and all kinds of stuff. The National Cancer Institute did two studies to try to like, one, investigate, or, I mean, you know, is there anything here? And to prove if there isn't, let's just put it to bed.

One was like a retrospective study where they just sent letters out to like every doctor and health professional who had ever used it. It was like 385,000 doctors and 70,000 other health professionals and said, send us your cases. Send us your proof. They got 93 responses of these, only two of those patients were actually in cancer remission, four were in partial remission,

and they could never prove that these people even existed. Great. It was all just word of mouth. It was all just stated. They also received a bunch of case reports from doctors saying that it didn't work, which they didn't ask for. They just said, send us your success stories and they got a bunch of, well, I don't have those, but here are a bunch of cases.

There's another nothing I have. They did a clinical trial after that using Liatrall and the results were absolutely clear. Not a single patient was cured, not a single patient was stabilized using the Liatrall and they used the stuff made by his company, by the way. So the official? The official Liatrall. The survival rate was 4.8 months from the start of therapy and in those who were still alive their tumors had gotten bigger In addition several patients experienced symptoms of cyanide toxicity Why did they experience symptoms of cyanide toxicity well because in apricot seeds much like limo beans and apple seeds and a few other things, there's something in it that causes your body to produce cyanide.

Yep. Very good, Justin. Thank you. I remember that. Very, very good. So, yes, not only was it not curing cancer, or your body produces cyanide or processes as cyanide? You end up as a byproduct, you have cyanide. Okay.

Yeah, so yes. So it also was giving some people cyanide poisoning. Cool, cool vitamin. Yeah, so it is not a vitamin. It might kill you and it won't cure your cancer. It's in the fun zone, so on. This, and this study, by the way, is back in the 80s, this should have closed the books on leotrull forever.

Should have. Should have. Should have. Should have. It doesn't work and it might give you cyanide poisoning. Yes. Despite all this, you can still buy apricot seeds, apricot pits. You can buy B17, you can buy a migdalen,

whatever you want to call it online. It's still sold. I don't know if Leia troll the brand. Yeah, yeah. Well, I think it's still, but I think they still use that name. Proponents of it still use that name. The hospital that Contreras founded down in Tijuana is still open. They provide a variety of alternative treatments for cancer and fake treatments for cancer.

And this is among them, you can still get this. It can indeed give you cyanide poisoning. I'm not gonna say that happens most of the time, but it might happen to you. It's possible. And more importantly, it does not treat or cure cancer at all periods. It doesn't do anything.

No, it doesn't do anything. But it's still out there and you can buy them online. I found that that was how I got to this topic is our wonderful listener suggested it and I followed their link and found where I could buy bags of apricot seeds. And they're actually- What is that URL so people can get some of their very own.

Right now. I do that. I mean, you can look at it, but they tout them for everything. Because they've changed their claims over the years. They've said, well, maybe it doesn't cure cancer, but it definitely stabilizes it. Well, maybe it doesn't stabilize it,

but it definitely helps chemo. If you get chemo, you can do this too, and it helps it. Well, maybe it doesn't do that, but it definitely helps cancer pain. Okay, well, maybe it doesn't do any of that, but it's really good for you. It detoxes you, and it's good for general wellness.

That's what when you don't know what else to say about your fake medicine slash supplement, just say it's good for general wellness because that means nothing. It's absolutely nothing. And you can, I guess, put it on a bag and sell it to people on the internet. There you go. Well, folks, B17 sounds real. It isn't.

So if you see anybody you know and love talking about B17, make sure you point them towards this episode. So the rich, full rich understanding. Yes. It might harm them and it will not help them. Sid, the holiday season has arrived. And we had a special special a special plug. Two things we wanted to mention. Why don't you go first? Then I'll guess I got.

Well, first of all, we would ask again this year, we are, we are doing the candle night stars. If you remember, last year, we picked a, an organization in our, in the state of West Virginia that needed a little bit of help this time of year. And we are doing the same thing this year with the women's health clinic of West Virginia, women's health center of West Virginia. They are the last remaining health clinic in this state that provides comprehensive reproductive health services for anyone in need. It is a nonprofit organization. They won't turn you away no matter what.

And so they need donations to help keep them afloat. Even if you don't have insurance, they don't care. They're there to help you. They provide comprehensive gynecologic family planning services, contraception, pregnancy management, everything, all reproductive health services. And they're the last one in the state. And they need our help. And so we are asking if you would like to contribute to that, we have a GoFundMe page for Candlenite Stars.

So just go to bit.ly-cand Candle Night Star. And if you can contribute, anything will help them. What we're asking is if you can give $5, we will put your name on a star and it will be displayed on the Candle Night stage this year. We're not doing a giant banner because that took a really long time. We're going to do it in beautiful garlands. Beautiful beautiful garlands. Beautiful, beautiful garlands. We also won't accidentally get hot glue on the stage that way. In our hands. And that's a beautiful, maybe, bigger thing.

But if you can give even $5, if you can't, even just sharing the link, spreading the word, it really helps people in need, people who deserve to receive reproductive health services and might not be able to in this state. Folks, I have one real quick too. It's my brother, my brother, me, Angels time. Once again, there's this list called empty stockings that our local paper puts out every year, which features a lot of really heartbreaking needs in our area for this holiday season.

Some are parents who just want to get something under the tree for their kids. Some are adults who which features a lot of really heartbreaking needs in our area for this holiday season. Some are parents who just want to get something under the tree for their kids. Some are adults who need a little help. And we are, well, our listeners really work together every year to try and meet those needs. If you go to mbmbangles.com, you can claim items. They are almost all claimed up, but you can also donate money that'll be go towards larger items. They've bought beds. They've bought

wheelchair ramps for places. It is really an amazing effort. If you go to mbmbangels.com, you can get involved with that. So folks, that's going to do it for us. Thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate you. Sitting anything else. No, I think that'll do it. Thank you so much. And um, oh, thanks to the taxpayers for these through some medicines as the intern algebra program. That too. That's gonna be a first of all. So until next time, my name is Justin McElroy. I'm sitting McElroy. And as always, don't do the hole in your head! Maximumfund.org Comedy and culture, artist owned Listener supported