Medicine: Apricot Power

Washington to test Laetrile

At a briefing for National Cancer Institute staffers in Washington last week, Director Arthur Upton reviewed the NCI's progress and goals, and then quietly dropped a bombshell: the institute plans a $250,000 test on humans of the controversial cancer drug Laetrile.

While the decision spread joy through the ranks of the highly vocal Laetrile supporters, who for 15 years have been urging the NCI to test the drug, Upton's decision was apparently due more to political pressure than to scientific evidence. Laetrile promoters claim that some 70,000 cancer victims are...