252 TH E CH I NA STU DY
In the mid-1970s, along came a prime example of a health scam, at
least according to the medical establishment. It concerned an alternative
cancer treatment called Laetrile, a natural compound made largely from
apricot pits. If you had cancer and had been unsuccessfully treated by
your regular doctors here in the United States, you may have considered
heading to Tijuana, Mexico. Washington Post Magazine documented the
story of Sylvia Dutton, a fifty-three-year-old woman from Florida, who
had done just that as a last attempt to thwart a cancer that had already
spread from her ovaries to her lymph system. 1 Friends and fellow
churchgoers had told her and her husband about the Laetrile treatment
and its ability to cure advanced cancer. In the magazine article, 1 Sylvia's
husband said, "There are at least a dozen people in this area who were
told they were going to be dead from cancer who used Laetrile and now
they're out playing tennis."
The catch, however, was that Laetrile was a highly contentious treat-
ment. Some people in the medical establishment argued that animal
studies had repeatedly shown Laetrile to have no effect on tumors. 1
Because of this, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had decided
to suppress the use of Laetrile, which gave rise to the popular clinics
south of the border. One famous hospital in Tijuana treated "as many
as 20,000 American patients a year."l One of those patients was Sylvia
Dutton, for whom Laetrile unfortunately did not work.
But Laetrile was only one of many alternative health products. By the
end of the 1970s, Americans were spending $1 billion a year on vari-
ous supplements and potions that promised magical benefits.^2 These
included pangamic acid, which was touted as a previously undiscovered
vitamin with virtually unlimited powers, various bee concoctions and
other supplement products including garlic and zinc.^2
At the same time in the scientific community, more and more health
information, specifically nutrition information, was being generated
at a furious pace. In 1976, Senator George McGovern had convened
a committee that drafted dietary goals recommending decreased con-
sumption of fatty animal foods and increased consumption of fruits and
vegetables because of their effects on heart disease. The first draft of this
report, linking heart disease and food, caused such an uproar that a ma-
jor revision was required before it was released for publication. In a per-
sonal conversation McGovern told me that he and five other powerful
senators from agricultural states lost their respective elections in 1980
in part because they had dared to take on the animal foods industry.