ABSTRACT
Like practically every aspect of the scientific and political history of Laetrile, the testing of the compound at Sloan-Kettering has been surrounded by controversy. From both a scientific and public relations viewpoint Sloan-Kettering should have been the ideal institution to render a final verdict on Laetrile. Sloan-Kettering's response to Kanematsu Sugiura's results and the attendant publicity was to step up the Laetrile research program. The technician reported longer life, healthier appearance, retarded tumor growth and fewer lung metastases among the mice treated with Laetrile than among control animals. The cancer center maintained its initial conclusions about Laetrile and allowed Sugiura's anomalous results to stand unexplained. The Sloan-Kettering experience with Laetrile, characterized by journalist Nicholas Wade of Science as "a painful case of overexposure," appears to have been one in which the political and scientific domains inter-penetrated and affected each other's processes to a far greater extent than usual.
