All is not peaches and cream within the Washington health establishment, where bureaucrats are being driven bananas by apricot pits, and if people’s hopes—and perhaps lives—weren’t involved, the federal flip-flops on the laetrile issue would be downright hilarious.
When the flap first blew into a page-one story, along about the same time the FDA decided to confiscate our Frescas, the official line was that laetrile was absolutely worthless, no more effective in the treatment of cancer than cherry stones or apple cores. The uproar did not abate, however, and so a number of confused officials, unaccustomed to having their pronouncements questioned by the uninformed general public, said they would devise a testing program for laetrile. Older, more entrenched officials weren’t to be stampeded, however, and so the line quickly changed again. Suddenly there were people like Donald Kennedy, FDA Commissioner, telling us that apricot pits were dangerous to our health and that laetrile would not be tested.
Comments