ABSTRACT
During the 1970s, another fake cancer cure, laetrile, began to be widely promoted and used. Despite the fact that absolutely no scientific evidence existed for its therapeutic efficacy, demand for the product became so great that by 1981 the legislatures of some twenty-three states had legalized its use.2 This whole sordid history, highlighted by (but not restricted to) Mary Johnson's "receipt," krebiozen, and laetrile, apparently indicates that in the absence of a cure for a terminal disease, desperate people want hope, not facts.
