Risky Medicine

American Cherry is one of our most beautiful and life giving forest trees.  In the primeval forest it was often 100 feet tall.  The ancient wood from those trees is found today in valuable antique furniture.  The tallest tree in my fence row is an American cherry.  I estimate it at 50' tall and today it is bearing an incredible amount of sweet cherries from within my grasp right up to its tallest branches.

 

  

You can actually see the red and ripening cherries in this photo.  They are a major food source for our songbirds.  For ourselves, the cherries are too small and too high up to pick for pies.  For me and for others who may be suffering from cancer they offer a subtle and risky treatment.  The cherries and their close relatives in the prunus family have cyanide compounds in their seeds.  This deadly poison can to a certain extent be resisted by healthy cells in our bodies.  Cancer cells however have no defenses against the cyanide.  This is the scientifically established basis for laetrile as a cancer treatment.  It is this treatment which has started and maintained cancer centers in Mexican border towns.  Our medical establishment has banned the treatment here and the government actually condemned and destroyed bitter almond groves which were the commercial source of laetrile.

              the distinctive bark of a young cherry tree

  

 

I researched the internet and found that the amount of cyanide in the different tree seeds was roughly the same and so I chose the cherries for my plant medicine.  The cyanide adds a second sweet taste to that of the fruit, but there is no mistaking its qualities.  I ate the ripe cherries and crunched the pits last year, but I re-experienced the power of this plant immediately and the first day I dared eat only two small fruits and felt my head swim from just this tiny effort.  Now four days later I am "confidently" consuming 20-25 each day.  I intend to stop when this year’s crop is gone.

 

 The greatest proponent of laetrile was the remarkable bio-chemist Dr. Dean Burk.  Burk earned his PhD from Stanford at age 19 in 1923.  He was a friend and colleague of Otto Warburg who twice won the Nobel prize for his cancer research.  Burk was a founding member of the National Cancer Institute and was the head of their cell chemistry division for about 30 years until his retirement.  I highly recommend his wiki biography to any and all interested in his life and beliefs.  I encountered him while doing research on water fluoridation which he not only opposed, but almost single handedly stopped in Europe, where he is greatly respected.  His name is rarely mentioned in today's cancer establishment, and I think that is near proof that cancer treatments which are not approved by the pharmaceutical companies and their investors will never be allowed by the AMA.