Vitamin B17
Vitamin B17 is a highly controversial vitamin that is also goes by the names amygdalin and laetrile. The alternative medicine community claim it is a cure for cancer, but many in traditional medicine call that proclamation quackery. Exacerbating the controversy is the fact that neither side has much scientific proof one way or the other.
Amygdalin is the original name of vitamin B17. A scientist back in the 70s began calling amygdalin a vitamin in order to use it as a cancer treatment. Vitamins do not require approval by the Food & Drug Administration, so changing the name from amygdalin to vitamin B17 allowed it to be sold and used on cancer patients.
There is no direct evidence that vitamin B17 has cured any cancer patients, but many medical professionals say that it is poisonous and actually killed people instead of saving them. You see, vitamin B17 contains cyanide, which is a lethal poison. Some doctors claim that instead of eradicating tumors, the vitamin B17, or amygdalin, gave the cancer patients cyanide poisoning.
In recent years, the sale of laetrile - as it is called in its drug form - was banned in the United States, although vitamin B17 can still be found. Many medical professionals and researchers say there is no proof that vitamin B17 cures cancer, and it is too deadly to be used as a treatment.
Alternative medicine proponents retort that chemotherapy has many more poisonous elements than vitamin B17, and they stick to their claims that the cyanide in vitamin B17 fights against cancerous tumors. This side of the argument also claims that the FDA and medical community in the U.S. has lied to keep laetrile off the market because it negatively affects the enormous profits that drug companies make from cancer drugs.
Vitamin B17 occurs naturally in the following foods:
• berries
• flax
• fruit pits and seeds, with high quantities found in apples, apricots and cherries
• grasses, including wheat grass
• lima beans
• nuts, with the highest quantities found in the bitter almond
Friends of vitamin B17 say that the cyanide found in these foods only emerges when cancer exists in a person's body, and they believe that it is not in the least bit harmful to anyone who does not have cancer. They further claim that it is actually the cyanide that works to kill cancerous tumors, but that it only emerges in the body's of people with cancer.
Since there is no cure for cancer, many of its victims are willing to do pretty much anything to be cured. That is why there is still so much controversy surrounding the use of vitamin B17. Despite the negative claims, many still seek treatment with laetril, and it is legal in Mexico.
The whole situation would probably be well-served by some solid, yet objective scientific evidence one way or the other. There doesn't seem to be anything that looks like that out there today, however, so the controversy goes on.