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When your public relations guy starts describing you as diabolical, there’s a problem. Ralph W. Moss, the center of Eric Merola’s documentary“Second Opinion: Laetrile at Sloan-Kettering,”was that guy, working in Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center’s public affairs department in the 1970s. He loved the job until the men at the top did something odd: They traveled to Washington to seek research funding for a promising new treatment, then changed their minds — collectively, unequivocally and overnight.
Kanematsu Sugiura in a documentary about a cover-up involving what seemed to be a promising new cancer treatment in the 1970s. CreditMerola Productions
The drug was laetrile (a form of amygdalin), and the center’s own distinguished senior scientist,Kanematsu Sugiura, was doing study after study that showed its helpfulness. Having a mild-mannered writer tell this story by sitting in a chair in front of some pretty art in a house museum and just talking seems lackadaisical, but Mr. Moss’s message is clear, shrewdly edited and peculiarly interesting. Dr. Sugiura’s handwritten notes and footage of a 1977 Sloan-Kettering news conference are like legal-case exhibits.
Although a Google search for laetrile yields descriptions like “clinically ineffective,” “dangerously toxic” and “quackery,” the film suggests that the drug’s only problem was the bottom line: It was dirt-cheap, compared with other cancer medications, which annoyed the pharmaceutical industry. Mr. Moss, a family man, needed his salary but couldn’t believe that “refusing to lie on behalf of my employer” and spreading the truth would be grounds for firing. He was wrong, and laetrile was never approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
As for the men at Sloan-Kettering who made sure of that, Mr. Moss says quietly, “They all died of cancer.”
The drug was laetrile (a form of amygdalin), and the center’s own distinguished senior scientist,Kanematsu Sugiura, was doing study after study that showed its helpfulness. Having a mild-mannered writer tell this story by sitting in a chair in front of some pretty art in a house museum and just talking seems lackadaisical, but Mr. Moss’s message is clear, shrewdly edited and peculiarly interesting. Dr. Sugiura’s handwritten notes and footage of a 1977 Sloan-Kettering news conference are like legal-case exhibits.
Although a Google search for laetrile yields descriptions like “clinically ineffective,” “dangerously toxic” and “quackery,” the film suggests that the drug’s only problem was the bottom line: It was dirt-cheap, compared with other cancer medications, which annoyed the pharmaceutical industry. Mr. Moss, a family man, needed his salary but couldn’t believe that “refusing to lie on behalf of my employer” and spreading the truth would be grounds for firing. He was wrong, and laetrile was never approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
As for the men at Sloan-Kettering who made sure of that, Mr. Moss says quietly, “They all died of cancer.”
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