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Dr D. Burk was at one time the head of Cytochemistry at the National Cancer Institute. He wrote an open letter dated 22/3/74 to Dr S. Perry, Deputy Director of the Division of Cancer Treatment, NCI, in which he described experiments done on mice in whom a Lewis lung tumor had been implanted.

The letter was to correct reports that had were appearing in the media that there was no evidence that laetrile (amygdalin) had any beneficial effect against cancer.

The letter concluded that there was “…widespread evidence of Amygdalin MF efficacy in terms of both absolute and percent positively increased median life span, most uniformly and notably so in treatments with Amygdalin MF alone, but also in certain instances when beta-Glucosidase was additionally given.”

The experiments were carried out at the Southern Research Institute in Alabama. Mice were divided into groups of 10. Some were given amygdalin alone with doses of between 12.5 and 400 milligrams per kilogram weight while other groups were given both amygdalin (12.5 to 50 mg/kg) and beta-Glucosidase (5 to 10 mg/kg).

Every group showed an increased median life span when compared to the corresponding untreated control group. The highest increased median life span was 51% with the majority of groups falling between 17 and 30%.

The entire experiment is described in ‘Private papers pertaining to Laetrile’, compiled and edited by G. Edward Griffin, published by American Media, 1997.