[back] Laetrile

ACRES USA How long has your work with Laetrile being going on?

DR MANNER About 6 or 7 years.

ACRES USA Is this orthodox work?

DR MANNER I would say unorthodox because of my belief. I firmly believe that cancer to date is curable. And I further believe that cancer today is preventable. Ant that means it takes care of everyone one way or another. Those who have burning lumps—they have hope. Those who don't have them, there is even greater hope they can be prevented.

ACRES You realize, of course, that these are strong statements. Can we explore the basis for what you are saying. When did you first become involved with cancer research at Loyola University?

DR MANNER I went there in 1972 without any idea that I was going to be working in cancer. By training I am a developmental biologist. This means that anything that has to do with development of cells, normal or abnormal, falls into my province. As you know Loyola is located in Chicago, next to Lake Michigan. I was concerned at that time with pollution of the Great Lakes. I wanted to test the effect of various pollutants on developing fish embryos because these tissues are very susceptible.

It was while I was working in this are that I began to realize most pollutants are carcinogenic. So my library work turned to carcinogens, which was how I came upon a paper back called World Without Cancer. I read the book and nearly laughed out loud. To think that anyone could postulate anything as simple as the laetrile hypothesis developed by Ernst Koreas and his son. How could they develop anything quite so simple for something I considered so very complex as cancer itself? So I put the book away vowing never to take it out again.

ACRES USA Yet it didn't go away?

DR MANNERS No. There was just enough of a ring of truth to what was said. So, I talked to my graduate students and said—Lets get off pollution work for a little while, and lets take this theory and lets subject it to laboratory analysis. That was the first time that I realized I was about to enter something far different than anything I had ever encountered in my 30 years of research work.

ACRES USA How would you characterize that difference?

DR MANNER Well it was not in any way scientific. I saw charges and more charges.....charges that Laetrile was worthless. That it was a panacea. The interesting thing is that most of the reading came from editorials, in newspapers, or paperbacks, and there was very little documentation of scientific evidence. I also realised I was entering something strange when I stated calling some of my friends who were involved in similar areas, and the conversation would be nice, until I mentioned Laetrile. I almost got complete silence, and then an invitation to meet them someplace. I tell you I have met more people in more parked cars and basements of health food stores than I thought I would ever meet in my life.

ACRES USA This was your baptism into the laetrile climate?

DR MANNERS It certainly was. But something else was interesting. I knew the research would cost money, and I couldn't go to government or the pro-laetrile forces as there would be strings attached. I went to the administrator at Loyola University which is a Jesuit school and they managed to provide the money and support my work.

ACRES USA You then encountered no difficulty in doing this work?

DR MANNERS Not exactly "no difficulty". Let me explain just one thing. It has a bearing on the rest of my work. I hold what is called a hard drug or controlled substance license from the state of Illinois....which controls such things a morphine, cocaine, and so on. I also hold the same hard drug license from the US government. I hold the only key to the Loyola hard drug locker. This means my credentials, and background have been investigated. I have never had any trouble in my entire life ordering any drug, any pharmaceutical from any place anywhere in the world until I tried to order the extract of an apricot pit.

ACRES USA And you had to get it if work was to proceed?

DR MANNERS Of course. And please remember that I was not pro-laetrile or anti-laetrile. A scientist has no business being for or against anything. His only business is to be objective, but you need the laetrile....or amygdalin which is the correct name for this substance.

ACRES USA This is available through the usual suppliers you use?

DR MANNERS Yes. One of the companies I do a great deal of business with is Sigma, and right on the pages of their catalogue is amygdalin....50 gms for $90. I wrote out my order, and the school forwarded it to Sigma. Usually in 3 or 4 days I get my shipment. Well, two weeks went by. So I got on the phone....they said we can't ship it....the FDA requires an affidavit.......they want you to state that if we sell it to you that you will promise that you will not use it on any human being. I said you know I am a research biologist, not an MD, and I never use anything in my lab on human beings...so I prepared a good affidavit...

ACRES Was this satisfactory to the FDA?

DR MANNERS Yes to some extent. I sent this off and got my first bottle of amygdalin.

ACRES USA What is the scope of your work?

DR MANNERS I have a very big lab running 2,000 to 3,000 mice at any one time. So I use it very fast.

USA Did you have problems reordering?

DR MANNERS Well, they wanted an affidavit on every order! So I Xeroxed a few hundred of these affidavits, and they go from my secretary's desk to the files of Sigma

About 6 months ago they then wanted 2 affidavits. One that I would not use it on humans, and another that I would not use it on any other animals other than my own. They had heard that vets were getting good results from Laetrile, and they didn't want me to be a fence for hot laetrile.

ACRES USA How did you test the basic hypothesis of Ernst Krebs, Jr?

DR MANNERS He suggested that laetrile when injected......because it contains a deadly cyanide......circulates around the body until it comes into contact with an enzyme, that is capable of releasing that cyanide. As the theory goes, the enzyme that releases it is found in the tumour tissue. But then the cyanide could escape the area of the tumour and get into the general circulatory system, which might be dangerous to the body, so there is another enzyme in all normal tissue called rhodenese, and this neutralizes the cyanide which is then excreted in the urine. It looks very good on paper.

ACRES USA And you decided to test it scientifically?

DR MANNERS Yes. The first thing we wanted to do was check out the enzymes. Are they really where Krebs suggested they were? In general they were. There were a few changes in that we found there was quite a bit in the liver...but in general the highest tissue containing the unlocking enzyme was the tumour tissue itself. Other tissues were very low in it. The second thing we wanted to see was whether or not the material broke down as suggested. So what we did was we injected laetrile into the animals and then we collected their urine for 24 hours looking for the end product--sodium thiocyanate--and hippuric acid, two of the neutralized end products of laetrile.

It was there. As we increased the dosage of laetrile we also got an increase of these compounds in the urine. All this was reported in the scientific journals.

One of the charges being made at that time...and because the FDA's back is against the wall, they're starting to reinstitute those charges...is that laetrile is poisonous. Just a few weeks ago a Dr Lewis...said something about eating lettuce with laetrile pills was liable to cause all kinds of problems. My phone rang off the wall due to this....It was a scare tactic. I object to that coming from the government of the US. I object to that poster hanging in post offices and in doctors offices Laetrile Warning. I've challenged the FDA on national TV--that every one of those statements is not just a half truth, but a downright lie, and they know it. And they are just making an attempt to re-scare the American people.

ACRES USA What about the little girl story allegedly killed by laetrile poisoning?

DR MANNERS Yes, I was lecturing in Buffalo, New York, and a man stood up and asked how I can make strong statements about laetrile when the FDA is making the opposite statements? And how he would have to take theirs...look at that little girl....who died after taking her fathers laetrile tablets.

Just then a lady stood up and said...I think I am entitled to answer that question as I am that little baby's mother. She told the true story, which was that the baby never touched her father's tablets. The doctor...knowing the father was on laetrile...marked down possible cyanide poisoning. At the hospital they used a cyanide antidote, and it was the antidote that killed the child. And yet that statement will continue to appear even though they know it is a lie.

ACRES USA In regard to this alleged toxicity, what have been your findings?

DR MANNERS We ran the tests. We started injecting animals with laetrile. We started with dosages that were very small and ended up with dosages 10 times the maximum dose ever given to any human being in any clinic in the world. After a 4 week period of daily injections, not one of the animals was dead. Not one was sick. In fact, every one looked much better than the controls---hair shiny, eyes glistening, and this was understandable because what we were giving them was not a drug but a natural food product, what Dr Dean Burke called vitamin B17.

ACRES USA You have appeared on platforms opposite FDA spokesman. Why would a scientist refuse to consider your valid scientific evidence?

DR MANNERS I can only speculate on this point....at every meeting I was opposite an FDA representative, Dr Young.....this time it was different as we had finished the toxicity studies. We had shown it to be non-toxic. This was published and sent to the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and to Sloane Kettering. Then at the next legislature meeting I heard Dr Young say to the senators, "Gentlemen, the FDA cannot support the use of laetrile because it is an unsafe substance." I looked at him and said how can you say that? You have my report that it is non-toxic. Oh, I didn't say it was toxic, I said it was unsafe. So you see they are changing the definition. He said "We mean by unsafe that if a person uses it they might not use orthodox therapy", and so for this reason the FDA considers it unsafe.

ACRES USA Of course you can't argue with that kind of double-think by using science. Still, it is difficult for us to believe many fine scientists at Sloane Kettering and NCI would be a party to this.

DR MANNERS This bothered us to...I know many of them... fine scientists. I knew the FDA was constantly saying the results were negative. And this bothered me. Everything we had done said it should work. But here were these people---good qualified scientists....repeating over and over again, No it doesn't work. Sometimes in science you have to slow down.

ACRES USA Did you abandon the experiments?

DR MANNERS No. We decided to repeat what we had done, using their animals and their tumours, the laetrile and the doses they used, we repeated the experiments. And when we were done....and I don't know why it surprised me...we found exactly the same thing they had found....that laetrile when used in the experiments that were done by Sloane Kettering and NCI...was worthless.

ACRES USA Yet this was not the position you ultimately took?

DR MANNERS Well, not a position--it was something that threw us back in our lab. Now the situation was worse than ever. I had on the one hand data that said it should work, and on the other hand I had my own data that said it doesn't work. I suppose we could have quit at that time and joined the public pronouncements that laetrile didn't work, and it might have been the final nail in the laetrile coffin.

ACRES USA What did you do then?

DR MANNERS We stopped and talked about it for several weeks. Two things emerged. One, there was the type of tumour we were using. We would buy the mice from Jackson laboratory up in Maine. These were healthy mice. They dined on Purina Lab-Chow formulated by nutritionists. I'm convinced if the American public ate like my mice we would have far less disease in this country.

Anyway, these mice came to our lab in perfect condition. Then I ordered a couple of mice with a tumour. I'd take that tumour out of those mice, put them in a little glass jar and break the tumour into free cells---then take a hypodermic needle with about a million of those cells and inject it directly into the animal's body, and they multiply. Within about 18 days they die of the tumour. So I submit to you that a human being does not get cancer that way. You don't go to a doctor and say "doctor I feel terrific", and he says, "I'll take care of that" and gives you a shot of something so you get cancer. No way does that happen. This is a transplanted tumour. This was the type of tumour we used, also Sloane Kettering and NCI.

ACRES USA Were you able to get enough mice with built in tumours?

DR MANNERS As it happened, Jackson Lab had a mouse called the C.3H mice which has been bred to develop cancer in their later years (50-55% of them), which is the way humans get it, over a period of time.... we kept them downstairs until we felt a tumour, and then, only then moved them to the experimental lab. We used no carcinogens, no cancer cells, just whatever was happening in that

animal's body to cause it to get cancer.

ACRES USA Did you make any attempt to use the laetrile regimen of doctors around the world who treat cancer with laetrile?

DR MANNERS That was the next thing. I started to travel to learn something more about laetrile. The only place I could really learn was in clinics where laetrile was actually being used, in California with Dr Richardson. Mexico with Dr Contreras and Dr Sotox, Jamaica with Drs Brown & Ransburger, Hanover with Dr Nieper. Each regime was a little different. But one thing was common of all of them--and I don't know how this escaped me, and how it escaped MSK and NCI...was that laetrile was never used by itself...always in conjunction with a complete therapeutic program. And here we were in the lab just using laetrile.

ACRES USA The single variable?

DR MANNERS Yes. And this made it necessary for us to reformulate our experiments. Although the routine did differ from lab to lab. I found some things in common. All of course, used laetrile. All of them used various forms of enzymes. All of them used vitamin C and vitamin A.

ACRES USA Did you duplicate these things in your studies?

DR MANNERS Yes. We started a new series on breast cancers to try to determine whether or not laetrile was effective. It was the results of these experiments that they said dropped a bombshell on the scientific community. I shouldn't have because everything I was doing was relayed by the week to those other national labs if they wanted to follow along with me. We eliminated vitamin C, as it makes its own, unlike humans. That left us with laetrile, enzymes and vitamin A.. We scaled them down to the size of a mouse—so for the purposes of what I am telling you here let me scale them back up again.

ACRES In terms of a human being?

DR MANNERS Yes, in terms of a 60 kilo person.. Laetrile was injected intramuscularly in the rump area every day..and we gave 9-12 grams of laetrile. The vitamin A..we gave 1 million international units each and every day. Now I'm sure you will say "that sure is toxic" and you are right. It is toxic if it is used in the same form in which you normally see vitamin A. But we didn't use it that way. We had it made for us in Germany. One of the firms there manufactured a material called A-mulsion.

This is vitamin A that is highly emulsified, broken down into very fine little particles. It looks like a foam when you use it. When that's taken into the body, it plays tricks. Instead of going to normal channels and going up to the liver where vitamin A damage usual occurs, it goes into the lymphatic system, and this by-passes the liver, and therefore you don't have this toxic effect.

ACRES The enzymes?

DR MANNERS They were not hard enzymes. And were from the lentil bean, the garden pea, the papaya plant, the thymus gland of the rat, and pancreatin from the beef pancreas. This mixture comes from Drs Wolf and Rasburger. It has been shown to have tremendous effect on the tumour.

ACRES What is the rational behind each of these things?

DR MANNERS The tumour as it grows does not belong in the body. I'm convinced that the normal state of the human body is health, it has enough within itself to bring it back to health. We see that in the tremendous surgery that is being done --transplants. We read over and over however, that whenever a heart is put into a person, rejection takes place, it does not belong there, and the body knows it. So rejection takes place. I am convinced that a tumour does not belong in the body and the body should reject it.

ACRES Why does it not do this?

DR MANNERS As a tumour grows it develops around itself a layer of protein which is almost like a plastic bubble. And that thing around a tumour prevents it from being recognised as a foreign invader. So what our enzymes do is not dissolve that tumour, but that protein around the outside. When this is done the body knows it shouldn't be there, and it recognizes it. And the immune system takes over. But usually the immune system at that time is very weak. This is well documented.

ACRES What happens when the protein is fully peeled off that tumour?

DR MANNERS That is when laetrile goes to work. It releases its deadly cyanide and goes to work on those cells.

ACRES USA How did the animal experiments prove this out?

DR MANNERS We used 105 animals in one test. They were broken down into 2 groups. The first was the experimental group. There were 84 animals, 84 that had developed breast cancer. They were the control group. They received injections and oral ingestion’s of physiological saline solution, the normal body fluids. Just to make sure it wasn't the injection or the fluid we were giving. The other animals received the laetrile, the vitamin A and the enzyme. The enzyme was specifically made so that I could inject it near and around the tumour site itself in order to get rid of the protein layer.

ACRES The results?

DR MANNERS Absolutely fantastic. They have been repeated a number of times and people who have been skeptical...who have been to the lab...are seeing it happen. These experiments are still going on. At the end of a 4 to 6 week period...and there was a spread in time...we got some real results. At the end of the second enzyme injection a small pimple appeared at the site of the tumour. It looked like a whitehead, or a boil. After the next injection that whitehead would burst open, and a white pus came out. We took that white pus and put it on a microscope slide and bought it to the pathology lab of the American International Hospital, which works with me....they were dead cancer cells. As we continued the treatments, the pus moved out. As it moved out the tumours got smaller and smaller. At the end of 4-6 weeks in 90% of the animals, the tumours were completely gone. And those animals were taken to the hospital, and autopsied and given a completely clean bill of health. Not a cancer cell anywhere. the other 10% were also affected. At the close of this particular experiment they were in a partial stage of regression.

ACRES USA Have you taken this story to the general public?

DR MANNERS I presented the general story together with slide pictures before over 2000 people in Chicago. It was the annual meeting of the National Health Federation. The next day instead of the AMA at least saying "Well we might have something here" they came out with a blast that went nationwide. The blast had nothing to do with what I was doing or the results achieved. They simply condemned for presenting my material in the wrong place.

ACRES USA What did they want you to do?

DR MANNERS Take it through the normal scientific channels, but I had a special reason for not doing so this time. I'm not playing games with cancer. This would have taken 18 months to 2 years to clear the various journal editors. For a lab to pick it up and repeat it would take another 2 years. That's 4-5 years. A cancer patient doesn't have 5 years. If I were to do again I would do it exactly as I have done, in spite of the ACS.

ACRES USA Yes, but can you take it further than this?

DR MANNERS By myself, no. But people can. And they have in a number of ways. One thing that happened that has never happened to me in my life is what we call the "widows mite". I would start getting checks across my desk...$5...$10... saying here is some money to support your research. We set up a fund called the Manner Research Fund... and received over $60,000 since July last year. Biotic Lab in Texas has supported us. The Food Science Lab as well. The key to the whole thing is that with that support our lab can remain free with allegiance only to the people of the US. And don't think that does not bother those agencies that wish they could pull their funds from under me.

ACRES USA But that's still animal research. How can this be taken to the patient with cancer?

DR MANNERS Well, for one thing women who have been in the audience have been sitting there with something burning in their breasts. They have gone to their doctors and they have said "before we take it off I'd like to try this Manner technique". I can assure you I have had phone calls from more irate surgeons in this country than you can believe.

ACRES USA How do they come on?

DR MANNERS Usually they indicate to me in no uncertain terms that they don't believe a word of what I am saying. But at the insistence of the patients they'll try it. And then they ask me how it works.

ACRES USA Do you charge for this service?

DR MANNERS Only one thing. I ask for and am beginning to get the complete reports from these physicians concerning their patients; patients starting with a complete biopsy showing malignancy with a prognosis of radical mastectomy; with a subsequent refusal of the patient to endure that surgery; hospital records showing the administration of laetrile, vitamin A and the enzyme; and then at the end, a complete clean bill of health. In consulting with these doctors I have indicated to everyone that I will not charge, but I want the records.

ACRES USA Then there is a cure?

DR MANNERS From any other source I would consider that a trick question. The definition of a cure is a 5 year period with no re-occurrence. I can't say that those women will not get a re-occurrence within a 5 year period. They will have to wait. I can tell you one thing, while they're waiting those 5 years, they will be waiting with hope.

Harold Manner Memorial Hospital http://www.manner.com.mx/

Laetrile