This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Citing articles on Web of Science (1)  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Ronald C. Backer, PhD
Office of the Chief Medical Examiner State of West Virginia South Charleston

Victor Herbert, MD, JD
Veterans Administration Hospital Bronx, NY State University of New York Downstate Medical Center Brooklyn

JAMA. 1979;241(18):1891-1892.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

To the Editor.—

As previously reported in THE JOURNAL (240:1139, 1978), the "antineoplastic diet" of laetrile proponents calls for megadoses of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) among other dietary requirements.

We performed a series of experiments designed to see if ascorbic acid would increase the hydrolysis of laetrile (amygdalin) to benzaldehyde and hydrocyanic acid (HCN), and therefore increase the probability that the patient would suffer from cyanide poisoning while receiving laetrile therapy.

Six Conway microdiffusion cells were prepared as shown in the Table. A plastic cover was sealed in place with a water-soluble starch-glycerol paste. The sealed cells were incubated at 37 °C for one hour and then left an additional hour at room temperature. The potassium hydroxide solutions were then analyzed for cyanide levels by the method of Valentour.¹ The results are also shown in the Table.

The Table shows that the presence of ascorbic acid did increase the . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?