Amygdalin (Cyanide: worst cancer cure ever.)
23rd May 2006
Here’s a quacky one for you. If you lived through the 70’s, you remember this as Laetrile. Amygdalin is a cyanide compound found in almond, peach pits, and some other stone fruits. Fun fact: “amygdala,” like in your brain, comes from the same Greek root as amygdalin. Here, it describes the source of the compound, in “amygdala,” it describes the shape of the structure. Sort of like naming the pituitary “Mr. Peanut,” then translating it into a dead tongue for some added class.
This was pushed very hard by Ernst Krebs (no relation to Sir Krebs of citric acid cycle fame that I know of) as a cancer cure. It was tried unsuccessfully against cancer before his birth, but, hey, you can’t blame a guy for trying. Wikipedia says it as well as I possibly could:
In the presence of certain enzymes, amygdalin breaks down into glucose, benzaldehyde, and hydrogen cyanide (which is poisonous). It was tried as an anticancer agent in Germany in 1892, but was discarded as ineffective and too toxic for that purpose. Krebs’ father was a San Francisco physician who happened upon amygdalin while looking for a substance which would improve the taste of bootleg whiskey.
Priceless. So, when it breaks down, you get this:
Cyanide everyone knows. It is a general metabolic poison and attacks the Cytochrome C, an electron transport chain enzyme in your mitochondria. Benzaldehyde is pretty benign. A lot isn’t good for you, but it’s used commercially as almond and cherry flavor, so it’s pretty safe.
Aside: I’m told HCN also smells like almonds. I’m also told sodium cyanoborohydride hydrolyzes in moist air, releasing a tiny bit of HCN. I have used NaCNBH3 in organic synthesis. It smells like terrible, terrible farts, right when you open the bottle. So, if this is HCN, there is some individual perception going on here. I am also told the boranes (1/2 B2H6 is another likely hydrolysis product of NaCNBH3) smell like sulfur, though, so this may have something to do with it.
Finally, glucose. You can handle glucose.
Ideas like amygdalin aren’t so off-base. While it is a toxic molecule, so is just about every drug. It’s a matter of degree and specificity. If we had some special molecule that delivered cyanide only to cancer cells, we’d be in fat city. The trouble with amygdalin was, there was no reason at all to suspect it was that sort of drug - it was regular USP Snake Oil.
In case you were wondering whether anyone had tested amygdalin recently, they have. It still doesn’t work.
May 23rd, 2006 at 7:20 pm
Will the phrase “regular USP Snake Oil” become the “100% pure Florida quality evil” of the Web 2.0 generation? Only time will tell.
July 3rd, 2006 at 3:28 am
To term it a drug is wrong, it is a food or nutrient similar to vitamins. Low levels in your body continuously is how it works, don’t be in so much of a hurry to bag it. If you look into it it is a very subtle molecule. Harmless as amygdalin but deadly to a degree when split open.
the enzyme to split it open are in abundance in cancer cells and yet nearly totally absent in all our normal cells. Then the enzyme to break down cyanide is present in all our normal cells but not in cancer cells. that is a way to fight cancer cells slowly, like when they first form.
I have been eating apricot seeds for six years upto 100 at a time, with no side effects. I have also studied biological science at uni so i do have a good understanding of biochemistry.
Either way to fight cancer the doctors will give you a poison, and chemo drugs are some of the most lethal molecules around.
it is all a very contentious issue, the pharmaceutical companies want no research done into it because they can make zero money from it. nothing to patent and all you have to do is eat a few apricot seeds each day all your life and you should be cancer free.
doesn’t sit well with the stockholders
have a healthy day
August 27th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
The time has come for people to stop lying to the public and themselves; if you will not believe past scientific studies proving that Laetrile is one of the only therpaies which does work against cancer, then answer this question. If Laetrile is indeed a toxic drug; where are the deaths? 100,000 people died from Vioxx this is well documented. Where are the Laetrile deaths? You will not find them because Laetrile is uses selective toxicity based on the amount of beta glucosadaise present in the cancer cell. The rest as they say is smoke and mirrors. How do I know? If it were not so, if Laetrile was ineffective but was also not killing anyone, then who cares if a few thousand gullible cancer patients take it? The fact that so much effort and justice and a show of force has been expended should answer this question for you. The little voice in the back of you head knows it is the truth. But that voice does not hide behind clinical trials and molecular constructs, and neither should you. I cannot make you believe that this is the answer any more than I can make someone take the therapy; but I can challenge you to use your brain; use your intuition and what you know to be true about human nature.
September 1st, 2006 at 12:54 am
Laetrile proponents: Please cite your source(s), I did.
September 3rd, 2006 at 10:24 am
yes and for thousands of year Hippocrates taught that all of medicine can be learned from observation only. which meant for thousands of years ‘physicians’ practiced ‘bloodletting’ to treat all types of diseases (http://mouseasthma.blogspot.com/2006/08/asthma-tails-i.html), that doesn’t make it right.
as a young resident I felt the same way as Rod did about the use of magnesium in asthma. I thought that the drug companies were not interested in it because they couldn’t make money. but when the studies were finally done, they showed there was no benefit. anecdotes and testimonials does not make a therapy effective and intuition is not an effective means to treat patients.