David Rorvik

1. Of Ida Honorof, Defoliants, Deformed Babies, Legal Manslaughter, The EPA, Cancer and You   2. The Swine-Flu Fiasco: You Are The Guinea Pig   3. And a Letter from Time Magazine [For those expecting Laetrile: The Goddamned-Contraband-Apricot Connection, Part II, it is coming. Next. In the meantime, news of two government-supported threats to your health.] Ida Honorof: “Her Talk is Cheap.” — The Los Angeles Times Ida Honorof, a consumer protectionist tough enough, in my view, to loom as the female Ralph Nader, pulls no punches in her unpaid (see L.A. Times quote above) consumer reporting for Los Angeles listener-sponsored KPFK-FM radio station and in her “Report to the Consumer” Newsletter. She has been credited by the L.A. Times and other publications with breaking some of the biggest horror stories of our time. In 1973, Honorof discovered that lettuce was being marketed which had been contaminated with a pesticide known as Monitor 4, a substance related to nerve gas. Regulatory agencies, loathe to admit they weren’t doing their job in monitoring these contaminants, pooh-poohed the feisty lady;

It may not be the “magic bullet” but it scares the hell out of the American Cancer Society. Part I   “Laetrile is goddamned quackery.” — Helene Brown, Project Director, Community Cancer Control, former Chairman of the Board, American Cancer Society of California, Today’s Health, November, 1973. “It is still my belief that amygdalin [Laetrile] cures metastases.” — Dr. Kanematsu Sugiura, Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research, Medical World News, October 6, 1975. “It would therefore seem that, due to the small fraction of significant increases in life spans among nontoxic tests and due to the lack of objective observed significant tumor regressions, amygdalin…is inactive against established subcutaneous Lewis lung tumor.” — Report to the National Cancer Institute from the Southern Research Institute, December 3, 1973. “My analyses and conclusions differ diametrically from those of the Southern Research Institute/National Cancer Institute report wherein it is concluded that amygdalin ‘does not possess activity in the Lewis lung carcinoma system.’…. My analysis of the data is that it is overwhelmingly positive.” — Dr. Dean Burk, while serving as Chief

May 20, 1976    Inveighing ever more stridently against the cancer “quacks,” whose menace in reality is no more than that of mere sitting ducks, the American Cancer Society cautions us to keep our sights firmly on “progress” and “proven cures” in the billion-dollar-a-year “War on Cancer.” In its publication, “Unproven Methods of Cancer Management,” the ACS states: “When one realizes that 1,500,000 Americans are alive today because they went to their doctor in time, and that the proven treatments of radiation and surgery are responsible for these cures, he is less likely to take a chance with a questionable practitioner or an unproven treatment.” While health statisticians seek in vain to discover any substantive data that might even remotely authenticate this broad claim, other ACS spokesmen are not reluctant to make even more preposterous assertions. Helene Brown, president of ACS in California (front line in the guerrilla war with the cancer “quacks”), takes mighty strides against the most-feared disease of our generation each time she makes a public pronouncement, stating on one recent occasion