Cancer: Indicting Krebiozen

After 131 years of medical claims and counterclaims, of whodunit-style charges and countercharges, the loud controversy over the alleged anti-cancer drug Krebiozen seemed headed at last toward orderly disposition. A federal grand jury in Chicago handed up an 85-page indictment listing 49 counts against Dr. Andrew C. Ivy, 71, three associates and a corporation. The charges ranged from mail fraud and conspiracy to mislabeling and making false statements to Government agencies about the drug.

No fewer than 44 of the counts named Dr. Ivy himself, a noted physiologist who was formerly the University of Illinois' vice president of professional colleges. Indicted with him were: Dr. Stevan Durovic, who claimed to have first made Krebiozen in Argentina from the blood of horses; Dr. William F. P. Phillips, a general practitioner; and the Krebiozen Research Foundation. Among the grand jury's allegations: — > Stevan Durovic offered to make 15 grams of Krebiozen for the National Cancer Institute at $170,000 a gram, though Krebiozen is creatine monohydrate, a common chemical costing 300 a gram—and "even if Krebiozen could be produced by the method allegedly used by Durovic, would cost [only] about $8,000 per gram." > Drs. Durovic and Ivy told the FDA that as of 1961 a patient had been "well and free of complaints for nine years since the start of Krebiozen," when in fact the patient died of cancer in 1955. — > Dr. Phillips certified that a patient had died of virus pneumonia in 1953 and an autopsy had been refused, when in fact she died of cancer in 1954 and an autopsy was performed.

All the defendants pleaded not guilty.