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Show The Paper That Dares To Take A Stand Page 6 The Utah Independent March 18, 1976 DOCTOR OttTHEYR ating in southern California, entrusted with cracking down on what tional. An appeals court did not agree, but the battle is continuing. as it has has been called an international conWhen state law fails in suppressing Laetended to fail spiracy to smuggle prohibited medicines." trile, there is always peer review" as nabbed a tactic. Hence the case of Palo Alto, Alleged smuggler Bradford, near Morgan Hill, California, is presCalifornia, physician Stewart Jones, ident and one of the founders of the who is an advocate of Laetrile and a Committee for Freedom of Choice in man who has dared to attack the canCancer Therapy, Inc., a California-base- d cer Establishment in print and from organization which in thirty the lectern. Dr. Jones was set up, as months grew from a meeting of five Dr. Richardson had been, by an agent citizens in a private home to a national posing as a cancer patient. network of 22,000 members, 330 chapAware that state law was failing to Defense ters, and a special Physicians stop Dr. Richardson and others, the holds symposia, seminars, keepers of Establishment medicine Group. It and doctors' workshops across the decided to use the California State country, shows filmstrips, and sells Board of Medical Examiners to get at books, pamphlets, and tape cassettes. Dr. Jones. He was charged by the It has become the major proponent board with a series of Awful Things of the legalization of Laetrile in the for daring to use Laetrile in his mediUnited States and the major exponent cal practice. Jones and Richardson of the rapidly growing Held of metan doctors using were the bolic therapy or holistic medicine," Laetrile in California. which stresses prevention rather than In late 1975, Dr. Stewart Jones was treatment in the elimination of the cleared of all but one charge violaof modem diseases the killer secCode of an Administrative tion great world. tion of dubious constitutionality for Freedom of Committee The which states that Laetrile may not be Choice sprang up originally to help given to any patient who has or bewith the defense of California physilieves he has or may have cancer." A cian John Richardson of Albany. Dr. suspension of Dr. Jones's liRichardson made a kind of history in cense was stayed. A feature of the California: Starting in 1972, he was case was the departure from the board a terdragged through three misdemeanor of one of its key members trials for daring to use Laetrile in the minal" cancer patient who has for treatment of cancer. After the third years been using Laetrile on himself, and only California one, the state and who could not stomach the speclaws has specific tacle of being asked to pass judgment He the thus a set charges. on another physician charged with dropped Vitaas Laetrile, whereby precedent dispensing Laetrile. min B17, might be used' if nothing Respected physicians Stewart were specifically said about cancer Jones, John Richardson, and James if, indeed, it were administered along Privitera fell into the toils of the law, with other vitamins to enable the. written and unwritten, because they metabolism to do its own treating of were true to the Hippocratic Oath. disease. This argument enrages the They are pioneers in Laetrile therapy, A.M.A. and the American Cancer Soand are convinced it works! And there ciety. are others like them including such John Richardsons problems were outstanding M.D.s as Paul Wedel in by no means over, of course. He had Oregon, Philip Binzel in Ohio, and ruffled the feathers of Big Brother, some 600 physician-member- s of the and was soon being pursued by such Committee for Freedom of Choice in big birds as the Internal Revenue SerCancer Therapy all respected docvice and the Federal Trade Commistors willing to challenge orthodox sion. Bureaucratic harassment contreatment of cancer that has so Doctor but John" still treats tinues, failed. Doctors Jones, Richardson, and patients openly with Laetrile as Vitamin B17. Privitera have meanwhile been haNor have the Kernel rassed by bureaucratic agency after Commandos settled for trying to deagency, each equipped with a bevy of Dr. Richardson. In 1974, Dr. attorneys, trying to force them into stroyJames Privitera of West Covina, Caliline. Donna Schuster, Donald Hanson, fornia, was brought to his office one. and Robert Bradford who are not weekend on the ruse that the premises have as we have noted physicians had been burglarized. Once there, this received similar treatment. Mrs. Schuster is the daughter-in-larespected physician was manacled, of the retired chairman of the dragged off to jail, and charged, along with other individuals, on assorted board of the Mayo Clinic. She is widecounts involving Laetrile and other ly known and liked in her community. modalities in cancer treatment. Outraged at the incredible setup and Raiders also kicked in the door of Miss entrapment of Mrs.' Schuster and Carroll Leslie, a vitamin distributor vitamin dealer Don Hanson, syndiwho had worked with Privitera, handcated columnist James Jackson Kilcuffed her, and threw her into a police patrick, supported locally by the car. Rochester has made the Schuster-Hanso- n James Privitera and his case a cause cilibre. were soon exonerated of almost She has already retained Minneapolis constitutional attorney James Malevery charge, including those associharass-mentated with earlier arrests and colm Williams to initiate civil suits The early legal victories were against the government, charging enpart of an incredible record put to- trapment, libel, the making of false statements before a U.S. magistrate, gether by Modesto, California, attorLaethe and a series of other crimes committed ney George Kell, trile lawyer." But the prosecution now by federal officers. moved to up the ante in this vicious The govemitaent's own affidavit conharassment, bringing charges of outlining the Schuster-Hanso- n is a shocking expression of a spiracy to commit a misdemeanor felony in California. In an incredible totalitarian arrogance. It is a detailed trial, Dr. Privitera and Carroll Leslie account of how U.S. Customs, workwere found guilty.' The Doctor and ing with an operative inside Mexico Miss Leslie may be jailed and Privitera where Laetrile is legal, as it is in could lose his license. As part of one most other countries, had arranged to of these cases, however, the local musmuggle 5,000 tablets and 299 vials of found California's Laetrile from Mexico into the U.S.; nicipal court judge how federal officers secured warrants statute to be unconstitu ' best-know- one-ye- anti-Laetri- ar le grue-some- Anti-Apric- ly ot w un-polit- ic Post-Bulleti- n, nts s. so-call- ed nts anti-Laetri- le . for its seizure from the post office in San Diego; how it was specially packaged, specially addressed, and then mail to placed in special-deliver- y Rochester; and, then, how its time of delivery was established so that warrants could be secured from a federal magistrate for the raids on two residences at or about the time the merchandise was to arrive. As one lady who wrote to Mrs. Schuster lamented: Why are they doing this to decent people?" The case of Bob Bradford was more of the same. Bradford is an engineer and physicist connected with Stanford Linear Accelerator. A re' spected scientist, he was one of a group of Bay Area citizens disturbed at the harassment and arrest of Dr. whose office was Richardson raided in a glare of publicity provided by television camera crews set up to record the event by prior arrangement with the fanatics, a dedicated physician whose records and personal belongings were seized, a respected member of his profession and of his community who was paraded as a criminal on a misdemeanor charge to satisfy the dictators of Establishment medicine. Bradford helped found the Com-- . mittee for Freedom of Choice in Cancer Therapy, became its president, and ultimately took a leave of absence from Stanford University to devote full time to the cause. At the beginning of this year, his organization counted 1,100 medical professionals (including those 600 M.D.s we mentioned earlier) among its 22,000 members. Setting him up for arrest might well have been expected. Instantly the State Board of Equalization moved to seal off his safety deposit box and confiscate his bank account. This, mind you, before he has been convicted of anything. His automobile was confiscated, numerous personal gifts and even clothes were seized. A - anti-Laetri- le Customs agent told this reporter that Bradfords 1969 Cadillac would make an excellent undercover car." When I asked him if it was possible that an automobile confiscated from a citizen might never be returned, I was told: Sure. Many times the person may not be convicted, but the car is guilty if you see what I mean. Twenty agents in thirteen cars to arrest three people for conspiracy to smuggle the extract of apricot kernels! An international conspiracy by the U.S. Government to smuggle Laetrile and entrap two citizens in Rochester, Minnesota, as part of a gang of kernel pushers! A Laetrile Task Force" on the border lying in wait to pounce on cancer victims who might be crossing the border with their own 'supplies of Laetrile! The manacling of conscientious physicians who use a vitamin in cancer treatment! What is going on here? It is not the scope of this article to make the scientific case for Laetrile, the brand name (based on trile) for the extracted form of the chemical amygdalin, a . non-tox- ic Laetrile-enzymes-di- on heart-diseas- e, st er iaevo-mandelo- ni class of chemicals (also called nitrilo-side- s or Vitamin B17) that occurs naturally in more than 1,200 fruits, ber- ries, grasses, and vegetables. Suffice it to say that between 35,000 and 40,000 Americans are on" Laetrile either because they are using it in cancer treatment or prevention, or for other physiological reasons. Laetrile has behind it some credible scientific work. The renowned Dr. Hans Nieper has pioneered megadoses of activated amygdalin" in West Germany; Bouxiane in Canada, Sakai in Japan, Navarro in The Philippines, et no-w- apricot-- dozen-memb- as well as leading scientists in France, Belgium, and Italy, have provided impressive documentation of at least some efficacy from Laetrile in cancer therapy. No one has contended that Laetrile is an absolute cancer cure not even San Francisco biochemist Ernst T. Krebs Jr., who pioneered the revolutionary theory that cancer is as preventable through the natural ingestion of Vitamin B17 in food as scurvy is preventable by ingesting Vitamin C. Suffice it to say, also, that Laetrile is legal, or at least unharassed by govthe ernment, in 24 other countries nearest being Mexico, where' under the name amigdalina it is a product legally specified for the treatment of lung cancer as an analgesic. In Tijuana, where the CytoPharma de Mexico laboratory has a monopoly provided by the Mexican Government to manufacture the product Laetrile from apricot kernels, there are four Laetrile treatment centers. The two bigger ones are that operated by the famed Dr. Ernesto Contreras, who has dealt with more than 5,000 patients since 1963; and the new CUnica Cydel , which functions as an extension of CytoPharma and partially as a project of the Committee for Freedom of Choice in Cancer Therapy. . Because of the legal situation in the United States, where natural, cancer therapies have long been suppressed, thousands of Americans have found themselves literally fleeing the country usually to Mexico, but sometimes to West Germany and Thq, Philippines, for the combination approach to cancer. These patients are, in the main, desperate cancer victims already considered terminal" by American medical orthodoxy and usually given only months to live. They are people who are already seen as fatal statistics in the U.S. Government's War on Cancer." If our country were doing anything right about eliminating cancer, if the statistics had peaked out, there would be no need to look at the unorthodox, or to fight far Laetrile," says Robert Bradford. But under the approach of legal, orthodox therapy, we are losing over 1,000 Americans per day to cancer." The American Cancer Society reports that cancer, behind the complex of conditions known as is the second-biggenatural killer in the United States, striking two of every three families, one of every four people, and slated to kill 370,000 Americans in 1976. The legal" apradical surgery, proaches to cancer poisonous chemotherapy, and h radiation have done nothing to dent the statistics. Indeed, the National Cancer Institute expressed alarm in late 1975 that the incidence of cancer rose 5.2 percent in the first seven months of 1975 alone. The N.C.I. director has also noted though the percentage is extrapolated from his remarks that Americans in whom cancer has spread (metastasized) have only about a 7.5 percent chance to survive for five years under the orthodox approach. But what about the unorthodox" approach? Why not try that? Your reporter learned early in his investigation into these matters! that despite the $100 million a year in donations to the American Cancer Society and the several billion dollars in tax monies and research grants handled through the federally declared War on Cancer," no effort was being made to probe the theory of cancer prevention and treatment or to examine the claims made for Laetrile. last-ditc- . vitamin-nutrition- al in |