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INQUIRY CASTS DOUBT ON LAETRILE FIGURES

By RICHARD D. LYONS JUNE 26, 1977

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LOS ALTOS, Calif.—With states

legalizing the use of laetrile at an
increasing rate, an inquiry into the

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 background of some leaders of the
movement to promote the
purported anticancer drug shows
that they have frequently been the
subject of exaggerated claims about
their scientific and medical
competence.

The inquiry, which dealt with four

men, also disclosed various brushes
with the aw, including a number of
convictions stemming primarily
from their efforts to Drcmote and
distribute laetrile.

The leaders included the following:

Robert W. Bradford of Los Altos,

VIEW PAGE IN TIMESMACHINE
June 26, 1977, Page 1
The New York Times Archives
president of the largest
organization seeking to legalize
laetrile, the Committee for Freedom
of Choice in Cancer Therapy Inc.,
which claims a membership of
35,000 persons.

Ernst T. Krebs Jr. of San Francisco, the committee's “science director”

who is considered by many to be the chief theoretician of the laetrile

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 movement.

Dr. John A. Richardson of Clear Lake, Calif., who was one of the first
physicians in the United States to openly espouse laetrile as a cancer
cure and whose arrest for doing so led to the committee's formation.

Andrew R. L. McNaughton, a Canadian citizen now living in Mexico,

who helped promote laetrile to prominence, and a fugitive from justice.

Ten states already have legalized the use of laetrile, a substance

extracted from the seeds of fruits such as apricots. Before the end of the
year other states probably will permit its use, although the interstate
manufacture and sale of laetrile in the United States has been banned
by the Federal Government and the substance has been condemned by
the scientific and medical community as being ineffective in treating
cancer.

The New York State Senate voted on Friday to permit terminal cancer
patients to receive laetrile under close medical supervision. But whether
New York will ultimately join other states in allowing use of the drug is
questionable, because Governor Carey has expressed the beleif that
laetrile is a “hoax.’

On the second floor of a small office building in this San Francisco

suburb is the headquarters of the largest organization devoted to
promoting the legalization and the use of the chemical, the Committee
for Freedom of Choice, as it is known.

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 Mr. Bradford, 45 years old, a poised spokesman for the group, has at
various times described himself as a scientist, an engineer who attended
Georgia Tech, and an electronics specialist who helped develop
guidance systems for missiles. Each point is open to question.

Asked in an interview last week if he had attended Georgia Tech, Mr.

Bradford answered: “Yes, for two years.”

Yet employees of the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta said a

search of their registration and aumni records failed to turn up the
name Robert W. Bradford.

Records on file with the United States Attorney's office in San Diego,
where Mr. Bradford was convicted earlier this year of conspiracy to
smuggle laetrile into the country and was fined $40,000, indicate that
in 1950 he attended San Jose Community College for one semester,
studying police administration.

John McLain, a spokesman for what is now San Jose State University,
confirmed that Mr. Bradford had attended the institution. He added
that the records indicated that “he wasn't a very good student.”

After leaving the college, Mr. Bradford enlisted in the Air Force. David
Rorvik, a freelance journalist, has said that Mr. Bradford described
himself as having “helped develop the guidance system for the first
United States tactical guided missile” in his service at Cape Kennedy

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 and as having directed “the Air Force electronics and guidance systems
program.”

Yet the records indicate that Mr. Bradford's highest rank was that of
staff sergeant, which would hardly have qualified him for such
important positions.

After leaving the Air Force, Mr. Bradford was employed by several
defense contractors in the San Francisco Bay area and in the early
1960's was hired by Stanford University, which was then developing
one of the world's largest linear accelerators for research into subatomic
physics.

Mr. Bradford described himself as an engineer and was listed on the

Stanford employment records as such. Yet his supervisor there, Carl
Olsen, said Mr. Bradford's duties would be more accurately described as
those of an “expert technician.”

Federal and state investigators have testified that Mr. Bradford had
taken part in laetrile sales transactions involving hundreds of
thousands and even millions of dollars; he said, however, that he had
only a modest income. He would not be specific.

Grant Leake, an agent of the California Food and Drug Bureau,

estimated that Mr. Bradford, who has openly conceded that he was a
distributor of laetrile, takes in $150,000 to $200,000 a month on
laetrile sales.

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 Attempts to reach Mr. Bradford for elaboration on some of these points
were unavailing. Employees at the committee office said he was out of
the state.

Mr. Krebs, 66, is the son of Dr. Ernst T. Krebs Sr., a physician who
patented laetrile in the 1940's tnd who in the ensuing years was
arrested several times for using the chemical in violation of state law.
Dr. Krebs was convicted in 1962 and 1966 of selling illegal medicines
including laetrile and fined $4,000. He died in 1970.

One recent day Mr. Krebs served luncheon guests tuna fish sandwiches,
coffee, and apricots in syrup dusted with a flour made of pulverized
apricot pits.

His polkadot tie sported the gold pin of the John Birch Society, whose
members include many in the laetrile movement including Mr.
Bradford and Dr. Richardson.

When an interviewer noted that the telephone directory listed him as

“Dr. , Krebs” and his staff referred to him as “Dr. Krebs,” Mr. Krebs said
he had received an honorary doctorate from American University,
which is a well known institution in Washington.

The degree actually Was awarded in 1973 not by American University

but by American Christian College, a small Bible school in Tulsa, Okla.
Yet Dr. Dan Hobbs, an official of the Oklahoma State Board of Regents,

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 said that the school is not empowered to award any degrees other than
the bachelor's.

Over the years Mr. Krebs has stated that he completed three years of
study at the Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia, but that he
did not finish the fourth and final year.

Asked by an interviewer this week why he had not completed his senior
year, Mr. Krebs replied that he had been hounded out of the school
because of his belief in unorthodox medical treatments.

But Dr. Joseph R. DiPalma, the dean of Hahnemann, said that Mr.
Krebs had failed his freshman year at the school in 1939, had been
allowed to repeat it, and had successfully finished the freshman course
on his second try.

Dr. DiPalma said Mr. Krebs then failed his sophomore year and was
expelled. “The letters in the file show that he pleaded and begged for
reinstatement but that the officials at the time refused,” Dr. DiPalma
said.

Mr. Krebs, who has at other times used the initials Ph.D. after his name
without further elaboration, has had a circuitous academic career. At
various times has has attended Memphis State Teachers College, the
University of Mississippi, San Mateo Junior College, the University of
California and the University of Illinois, which awarded him bachelor of
arts degree in 1942.

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 Transcripts of his college records indicate that he was a lackluster
student, having been awarded low or failing grades in some of his
scientific courses including chemistry. Yet Mr. Krebs has repeatedly
referred to himself as a biochemist and a nutritionist.

Regarding his finances, Mr. Krebs told an interviewer that “neither

myself nor any member of the Krebs family has ever made a cent from
laetrile.”

Yet records seized by state and Federal agents in 1972 indicated that
Mr. Krebs and his brother, Byron Krebs, a medical doctor, had an
income of $250,000 in 1970 and 1971, primarily from the sale of laetrile
and other substances not recognized as valid drugs.

In 1974, Mr. Krebs and Dr. Byron Krebs pleaded guilty to violations of
the state health and safety laws and were fined $500 each, were given
suspended sentences of six months and were placed on probation. Last
month Mr. Krebs was ordered by a San Francisco court to serve the
suspended sentence because of violations of the conditions of his
probation. His brother's license to practice medicine was revoked after
the original trial. He died later that year.

In recent years, one of Mr. Krebs's close associates has been Dr.
Richardson, CQ‐author of a hook dedicated to the Krebs brothers and
their father, to be published June 27. It is called, “Laetrile Case
Histories: The Richardson Cancer Clinic Experience.”

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 The 390‐page book contains dozens of detailed case histories of persons
who were supposedly aided by the use of laetrile, with the names of the
persons missing: and a few pictures of persons who were purportedly
aided by laetrile, with the names used.

Also missing from the book are the names of seven cancer patients
whose case studies were described last September in a hearing of the
California Board of Medical Quality Assurance, at which Dr.
Richardson's license to practice medicine was revoked.

Among the charges against Dr. Richardson was that he had “aided and
abetted the unlicensed practice of medicine by permitting unauthorized
persons, to wit: Angela Jenkins (a nurse), Steve Richardson (his son) or
Ralph Bowman (his business manager) to treat and care for” seven
patients.

According to the board's documents, Dr. Richardson “also permitted an

unlicensed person, to wit: Ernest (sic) T. Krebs Jr., to examine Helen D.
Schneck.”

The board also found that Dr. Richardson “personally and his agents,
advised and discouraged Helen D. Schneck, Kapitan P. Zema, Poul
Olsen and Margaret Baldock from seeking conventional cancer
therapy.”

The board noted that the treatment for cancer with the unrecognized
drugs had started even before Dr. Richardson had either diagnosed

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 cancer or been “privy to prior medical records reflecting such
diagnosis.”

Four of the seven patients either paid or were asked to pay $2,000 each
for a course of laetrile treatments, Data on the total amounts paid by
the others were unavailable.

Financial records indicated that until Dr. Richardson started

prescribing and administering laetrile in the early 1970‘ he was barely
making ends meet through his medical practice. After becoming
involved in the laetrile movement, the income from his practice rose
more than tenfold.

The records are on file in the San Diego Federal Court where Dr.
Richardson was convicted last month of conspiracy to smuggle laetrile
into the United States and fined $20,000. His codefendants were Mr.
Bradford, Mr, Bowman, who was fined $10,000, and Frank Salaman of
Redwood City, Calif., the vice president of the Freedom of Choice
committee, who also was fined $10,000.

For 1972, Dr. Richardson reported on his Federal income tax return
that he had netted $10,400 on a gross income from his medical practice
of $88,000. By 1974, however, he was reporting a net income of
$172,981 on a gross income of $783,000.

Herbert Hoffman, the assistant United States Attorney who prosecuted

the case, told the court that Dr. Richardson took in $2.8 million from

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 January 1973 to March 1976.

The size of the smuggling operation in recent years had been estimated
at $20 million by the Federal authorities.

Dr, Richardson is a graduate of Hamilton College, Clinton, N. Y., and

the University of Rochester School of Medicine. He is 54 and served as a
sergeant in the Marine Corps.

He began practicing medicine in the San Francisco Bay area in 1954,

first at Kaiser Hospital, then in a series of group practices. He said in an
interview this week that he was a general practitioner who also
performed surgery, obstetrics and eye, ear, nose and throat work.

Asked specifically if he had been the target of any malpractice suits, Dr.
Richardson said there had been only one and that it had “fizzled out a
few years ago.”

Court records indicate, however, that in 1964 and in 1968 the American
Mutual Insurance Company, which covered Dr. Richardson for
malpractice, had paid claims against him totaling $77,000. The cases
involved his treatment of two infants. One died, the other was
disfigured.

The arrest of Dr. Richardson in 1972 for espousing laetrile as a cancer

ture, together with the publicity surrounding the raid on his office,
helped trigger the formation of the Freedom of Choice committee. In
1974, the doctor was one of 16 persons indicted with three Mexican

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 corporations on charges of conspiring to smuggle laetrile into the
United States.

Also indicted was the fourth of the laetrile leaders, Andrew R. L.

McNaughton, a Canadian citizen now living in Mexico, who has yet to
be tried and probably will not be since the United States Immigration
and Naturalization Service has refused to allow him back into the
country.

Mr. McNaughton. who is 60, is a member of a distinguished Canadian

family. His father, the late Gen. A. G. L. McNaughton, was the
Commander in Chief of the Canadian Armed Forces in World War II,
and after the war was a delegate to the United Nations Security Council.

The son was a test pilot during the war. He turned to gun running in the
1950's, first to Israel, then to Cuba.

Mr. McNaughton has said that he first met Dr. Ernst T. Krebs Sr. in
1956 in a Miami Beach drugstore and listened to him espouse the
benefits of laetrile. Nine years later, the two men met again in San
Francisco and Mr. McNaughton set up the McNaughton Foundation. Its
purpose, he said, was to look into projects that were “on the outer limits
of scientific knowledge.”

Mr. McNaughton has told interviewers that the foundation once

received a donation of $130,000 from Joseph Zicarelli of Bayonne, N.

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 J., who has been characterized by the Federal authorities as the head of
organized crime in Hudson County, N. J.

Mr. McNaughton has been involved in stock swindle cases in the United
States, Canada and Italy. As a result of a suit brought by the Securities
and Exchange Commission in 1972, he was permanently enjoined by a
Federal court from selling stock in, a Montreal company, Biozymes
Internation Ltd., that he founded in 1961. The S.E.C. charged that Mr.
McNaughton and several associates had been “employing schemes to
defraud the public by making untrue statements about laetrile” in
connection with the sale of unregistered stock in Biozymes.

In 1973 he and some associates were named by the Italian police as

having taken part in an alleged swindle of $17 million from purchasers
in Biozymes stock who were under the impression that they had been
investing in a laetrile factory there.

In 1974 Mr. McNaughton waa found guilty in a Quebec court of stock

fraud charges involving a company named Pan American Mines from
which $5 million had disappeared. Mr. McNaughton was fined $10,000
and was sentenced to serve one day in jail. He has failed to pay the fine
or serve the sentence, so a warrant for his arrest was issued last fall.

While these cases were under way, Mr. McNaughton set up a laetrile
production factory in Sausalito, Calif. He was under the impression that
the state would legalize the use of the chemical. When it did not, he
transferred his operations to Tijuana, Mexico.

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 The McNaughton Foundation has sponsored two organizations in
Tijuana called the Clinica Cydel, where laetrile is administered to
Americans seeking treatment, and Cyto Pharma de Mexico, where the
chemical is manufactured. Cyto Pharma was named in the San Diego
indictment in 1974 under its current name as well as its former name,
Zell Laboratories. Three brothers named Del Rio, who are believed to
have a financial interest in Cyto Pharma, also were indicted but did not
show up for arraignment.

A version of this archives appears in print on June 26, 1977, on Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline:
INQUIRY CASTS DOUBT ON LAETRILE FIGURES. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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