laetrile cancer therapy

Scambuster said:

Works for some
Brad,
There is always the 'For & Against' in alternative treatments. My readings over the years shows many people benefited from Laetrile. If you do the apricot seeds, best to get organic seeds and crack the shells and eat all of the inside as the husky part is a big part of it. They are quite bitter and I recall you can eat up to 15 a day. I toss a few on my cereal. I think it is definitely worth a go.

I would also urge you to consider the whole scene re: diet. That would mean going Vegan, juicing, eliminating all processed, fried and sugared foods and stay with fresh raw fruits and vegetables. As you know - many disagree with this approach, the transition takes some effort but once you are there, it is not that difficult. PM me if you need further help.

Scam

Tricia02 said:

Laetrile is a partly man
Laetrile is a partly man made (synthetic) form of the natural substance amygdalin. Amygdalin is a plant substance found naturally in raw nuts and the pips of many fruits, particularly apricot pips, or kernels. Some people call laetrile vitamin B17, although it isn’t a vitamin. Manufacturers of laetrile promote it as an alternative cancer treatment. This means it is used instead of conventional cancer treatment. The first use of laetrile as a treatment for cancer was in Russia in 1845, and it was used in the USA from the 1920s. In the 1950s, some people began promoting laetrile as a ‘highly active compound’ that can cure cancer. Unfortunately, this is simply not true - laetrile cannot cure cancer. Some people want to use it if they are told that their cancer can't be cured with conventional cancer treatments because they hope that laetrile will be able to control or cure their cancer.

There is no scientific evidence to support any of these reasons for using laetrile.

Most of the websites or magazines promoting laetrile base their claims on unsupported opinions and anecdotal evidence. There isn’t any evidence that laetrile is an effective treatment for cancer or any other illness.

The USA’s National Cancer Institute reviews the results of clinical research into the use of laetrile for cancer on its website. One animal study claimed that amygdalin slowed the growth of cancer in animals and helped stop tumours spreading to the lungs. But repeated studies couldn’t show similar results, so the treatment remains unproven.

Amygdalin (the active ingredient in laetrile) has shown anti-cancer activity in two laboratory studies when given with particular enzymes called glucosidase. This is probably because the enzymes made the amygdalin release cyanide which killed the cancer cells grown in the lab. But in the body the cyanide would also damage healthy cells. This problem is the main difficulty in a great deal of cancer research - as many cancer therapies are poisons. Researchers have developed some treatments that are directed at the subtle differences between normal cells and cancer cells - in other words targeted treatments. But there is no evidence that this is possible with laetrile.