World Without Cancer: The Story of Vitamin B17 by Edward Griffin

What if the key to cancer control was known, tested, and then buried? G. Edward Griffin asked that question in 1971 — and uncovered a saga that still rattles the medical world. World Without Cancer: The Story of Vitamin B17 tells that story with the force of an indictment and the precision of a case file.

The opening chapters document Dr. Ernst T. Krebs Jr.’s vitamin deficiency thesis, cultures that lived free of cancer, and laboratory evidence that Laetrile — derived from apricot seeds — attacks tumor cells. Griffin also lists the physicians who put their careers on the line to study it, the recoveries their patients credited to B17, and the FDA’s determination to shut it all down. Even the infamous “cyanide scare” is dissected, with evidence showing Laetrile less toxic than sugar.

Then the spotlight shifts to power. Griffin reconstructs how I.G. Farben and its American partners — Standard Oil, Ford, DuPont, and Rockefeller foundations — cartelized medicine itself. Philanthropy became leverage, shaping medical schools into drug-centered pipelines. The AMA rose as enforcer, the FDA as gatekeeper, the press as megaphone. Doctors who defied the line were investigated, stripped of licenses, or prosecuted. Cancer patients who asked questions were branded as dupes.

For Griffin, Laetrile’s story was never just about one compound. It exposed how disease and politics intertwine, how control of treatment means control of lives. World Without Cancer pulls together clinical reports, corporate history, and regulatory records to argue that the battle over B17 is really a battle over freedom — medical, economic, and personal.

Nearly fifty years later, the questions still stand: Who benefits, who pays, and who decides what cures are allowed? (2011ed-3rd Edition, 368pp, pb)