ABSTRACT
Beginning inauspiciously like hundreds of other small-time anti-cancer schemes, Laetrile soared to a notorious pinnacle as the unorthodox brand-name health promotion generating the largest amount of public furor in the nation's history. Before 1951, when Laetrile surfaced surely in the public record, Dr. Ernst T. Krebs had been involved with both cancer treatments and apricot kernels. Some versions of the Laetrile legend traced the drug's origin to Dr. Krebs' researches in the 1920s aimed at making bootleg liquor palatable. The earlier tale that Dr. Krebs had told about Laetrile's beginning dated its birth to 1951. Ernst Krebs, Jr., who coined the name Laetrile, had come home to California after peripatetic schooling. The Cancer Commission of the California Medical Association sought to secure some Laetrile from Krebs to permit a clinical trial under the direction of the Research Committee and the Tumor Board of the Los Angeles Hospital.
