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I have written several times on this topic and to nail it i feel the explanation below contains that most extensive news of vitamin B 17 and the farce associated with the subject. Wish it helps:The Truth about ´Vitamin´ B-17Separating B-17 Myth From RealityAmygdalin or laetrile? B-17 as a cancer ´cure´ is one of the most controversial subjects in ´Alternative cancer medicine´. Is there research to support it as an alternative cancer treatment? Is there research to support it as a complementary therapy? Is there research to support B-17 as a cure for cancer? Here we bring you one of the most comprehensive and accurate reviews on the Internet today (Written by Editor, Chris Woollams, M.A. Oxon, Biochemistry).The controversy was re-opened in October 2014 when researchers (Makarevic et al; PLOSone) showed that natural B-17 (amygdalin) dose-dependently reduced growth and proliferation of cancer cells in vitro(See Cancer Watch - Click Here).Controversy was furthered in May 2016, when the Food Standards Authority (FSA) in the UK talked about banning the sale of Apricot Kernels. So, a Government that puts a proven class A carcinogen (fluoride) in our water supplies is going to ban a food they don´t even correctly understand - they say, like many ignorants, that 30 of them ´contain cyanide´. Do they understand that for years people have eaten foods like marzipan in cakes. It was made from Apricot Kernels. UK nurses were even told to eat an apricot, then break the nut and eat the pip for health reasons, although I am going back 65 years to when my mother was a nurse.What you are about to read is the Truth, the whole truth and not the rubbish the skeptics, people with agendas and propaganda-pushers, and generally ill-informed people would have you believe.B-17: Laetrile is not the same as AmygdalinFirstly, let´s get one thing straight: Beware the articles that talk of eating pips and seeds and call the active ingredient Laetrile. The writers are making a simple, but fundamental error. How many more will they make?It is important to differentiate the use of natural amygdalin from Apricot Kernels, and Laetrile, which is a concentrated, synthetic drug.But, when it comes to B-17, confusion exists everywhere and absolute rubbish is often talked, even from supposedly ´top´ websites.B-17: Basic factsA typically ignorant exchange happened on February 14th 2006, when the UK´s Daily Mail ran a headline ´Cancer Cures or Quackery?´ under which six alternative practitioners recommended ´alternative´ cancer cures (their words not mine) to a reporter posing as a cancer patient. To quote, ´One therapy was ´B-17 metabolic therapy or laetrile´ (sic).Two UK cancer ´experts´, Professors Ernst and Baum, joined in the fray commenting that there was ´no research to support B-17´, and that B-17 was used ´by a few unscrupulous practitioners across the border in Mexico´.1. People who have looked into this subject in depth (like Ralph Moss and Phillip Day) will tell you that there are at least five studies (three on animals, two with humans) that show some effect on cancer with B-17. But the fact is that the evidence base is poor. Very poor. There is no accepted placebo-controlled, randomised clinical trial data whatsoever with humans, although Moss (who was a science writer working in the press office at Memorial Sloan Kettering when they did conduct serious research), will tell you that the results were good (B-17 was shown to stop help prevent cancer, stop metastases and clinical trials were recommended), but he watched as people suppressed them (Click Link for You Tube trailer)2. Treating people with Metabolic Therapy is not the same as giving them B-17. The world famous Oasis of Hope clinic in Mexico uses a variety of therapies including radiotherapy and chemotherapy. And it does use synthetic ´vitamin´ B-17 as a part of a package called Metabolic Therapy, which may also include pancreatic enzymes, ozone therapy, Intravenous Vitamin C and more. Does it work, and if so which bit? Although there is clearly a lot of anecdotal evidence, and I have talked at length with Contreras, himself, no overall report or rigorous data seems to exist for Metabolic Therapy either, sorry.3. The owners of the Oasis of Hope have not been chased out of America, nor are they ´unscrupulous´. Dr Francisco Contreras M.D., the son of the founder Dr Ernesto Contreras, and his hospital are in Mexico ... because they are Mexican. The Oasis of Hope advertises in America perfectly legally, and Americans travel to the clinic in Mexico, just as they might go to one in Chicago.By April 14th the UK Food Standards Agency was getting in on the act. UK newspapers published warnings issued by the FSA thus: ´Cancer patients should be aware that Apricot Kernels - a suggested cure for the disease - can kill them´. Apparently, ´Reports from overseas say eating 20-30 could result in very serious health effects´.Note: None of the articles specified the origin and the detail of these ´overseas reports´. There was absolutely no evidence for these claims.The FSA suggested that 1-2 pips per day was a safe intake. One article went on to add, ´Bitter apricot pips are thought to contain high levels of B-17, known as laetrile (sic) - described as an immune system booster and even as a cancer treatment´.4. Bitter apricot pips contain amygdalin, not laetrile. Few people seem to grasp the difference but it is important:(i) Apricot Kernels can contain up to 3 per cent of Amygdalin which is the natural form of B-17. If you chew a pip it tastes rather like old-fashioned marzipan. Eating apricot kernels does not require any medical approvals - nor should it any more than eating oranges or beetroot.(ii) Laetrile is something quite different - it is a synthetically prepared form of B-17 and is thus a drug and is subject to drug approval. Since there are no definitive phase III clinical trials on laetrile, quite correctly it has not received FDA approval. Full stop.(iii) B-17 is not a vitamin. Krebs (see below) described it as a vitamin, but there is little evidence of any vitamin properties.(iv) Contreras, the world´s expert on B-17, states unequivocally that he knows of no one who has ever died from eating apricot pips. He does not treat people with apricot pips and it matters not to him whether they help or hinder. He is providing an unbiased expert opinion.(v) Apricot pips alone are not a cure for cancer. I know of no one who says they are. In the world. They might well perform a role in an anti-cancer complementary treatment package. Eating a few each day may also have some preventative powers.(vi) I also know of no one who has been treated by laetrile alone and has cured their cancer - I cannot even provide an anecdote.5. The problem was that B-17 (synthetic laetrile, not amygdalin) became the focus of a mighty squabble between orthodox medicine and alternative medicine. ´Conspiracy theories´ abound in the world of alternative cancer treatments and views become entrenched. And this creates the mythology and the errors. Certain people close to the Pharmaceutical Industry then involved amygdalin, incorrectly, in the laetrile argument.Apricot Kernals and Integrative Cancer TreatmentThe fact is that I personally know of a very large number of people who take apricot kernels (6 with their breakfast), and hundreds more who have used up to 50 apricot kernels a day, within a no glucose, no cows´ dairy, and an alkalising diet, as part of their Complementary and Integrative Treatment ´package´ (along with exercise etc.) when they had cancer. And the package delivered for them. Geoffrey Boycott, the former English Cricketer, would be a good example, as would Sue Olifent, who will tell her story on ´Health Academy Live´, which we will be launching April 2016. Sue had liver and pancreatic cancer and the doctors sent her home because there was nothing they could do for her. 6 months later and the tumours are scars. She has set up a Support group, Active Cancer Support (Click Here), to help people find out more.Now, there are You Tube videos often along the lines of ´I beat cancer with vitamin B 17´. By all means watch them - e.g Sandi Rog. But you will find they almost all confuse what I have been saying above. That doesn´t detract from their belief that B-17 helped them beat cancer, of course.B-17: The basics6. You can crack open an apricot nut shell today in the UK - but it is against the law to treat someone with laetrile.a) Apricot Kernels, seeds, pips, whatever you want to call them, contain amygdalin and this is a nitriloside. A large number of bioactive compounds are provided by nature (e.g. carotenoids, phenols, anthocyanins, vitamin D, curcumin, resveratrol etc.) which can protect and correct illness; nitrilosides are one. Salvestrols (developed by Professors Potter and Burke) act similarly. Interestingly, Salvestrols (click link) and amygdalin should not be taken simultaneously as they can contra-indicate.b) Laetrile (the synthetic form of B-17) can be obtained in tablet form (500 mg units) for home consumption, but is more usually administered intravenously.c) Laetrile prescription is illegal in the UK. No practitioner in the UK has been allowed to prescribe or use synthetic B-17 since June 2004. It has been banned since 1963 in the USA by the FDA; however, some Naturopathic practitioners in the USA seem prepared to sell laetrile to patients; and you can even buy it on Amazon!I know of no-one who claims that either Apricot Kernels, or syntheticB-17 (laetrile) is a cancer ´cure´, on its own.d) A cure for cancer? The word ´cure´, in my experience, is only ever used by the press, or by dubious websites and ´experts´ who don´t really understand cancer. These may be staunch advocates of alternative therapies, or Skeptic twaddle sites. Neither is helpful to the cancer patient.Cancer is a multi-step process. There may be as many as 20 steps (according to John Boik of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas). In my book, ´The Rainbow Diet - and how it can help you beat cancer´, I have assigned bioactive foods and natural compounds to each of the steps, but only where there is scientific research that they have an anti-cancer step activity. I know of no single natural compound that is active against all 20 steps.No drug cures all cancers, all of the time. There is no drug known to man that kills cancer stem cells at the heart of cancers. Why expect it, or claim it for a vitamin, or B-17?e) All drugs have side-effects. Those of Tamoxifen are well documented. The lack of proper research on synthetic B-17 (laetrile) has meant no safety measurements really exist. Death claims are twaddle.Eating too many Apricot Kernels, or too much beetroot, or too much Asparagus, or drinking too much water will cause negative effects in the body. Amygdalin does cause problems if the liver is impaired; and according to the US Nutrition Almanac you should never eat more than 6 in a 90 minute period, and the maximum in 24 hours is 35. Some people I know use 50 a day as part of their anti-cancer diet package. See below for liver concerns.So from this point on, when reading this article, at least put synthetic B-17 (laetrile) and Apricot Kernels (amygdalin) into a proper and separate perspective.For more up-to-date information on Laetrile and Metabolic Therapy, you could contact the oracle, Dr Contreras at the Oasis of Hope.For more on the role of Nitrilosides in treating cases of Sickle Cell Anaemia (Click Here).Natural B-17: A group of compoundsEvery area of the world supporting vegetation has such plantsB-17, or amygdalin, is a naturally occurring compound. In fact it is slightly wrong to think of it as a single entity like, say, vitamin C. There is a group of approximately 14 compounds that are water-soluble and found naturally in over 1,200 species of plant in the world. Every area of the world supporting vegetation has such plants.The active ingredients are often described as nitrilosides or beta-cyanogenetic glucosides and there are at least 800 foods common in worldwide diets that are nitrilosidic.Nitrilosidic foods include:alfalfa sprouts, bamboo shoots, mung bean sproutsbarley, buckwheat, maize, millet, sorghumblackberries, currants, cassava, cranberries, gooseberries, chokeberriesloganberries, quince, raspberries, strawberries, yamsbrown rice, fava beans, lentils and many pulses like kidney beans, lima beans and field beansflaxseed/linseedpecans, macadamia nuts, cashews, walnuts, almondswatercress, sweet potatothe seeds/pips of lemons, limes, cherries, apples, apricots, prunes, plums and pears.In fact, all the foods we don´t eat too much of these days!!The consumption of barley, buckwheat and millet have given way to refined wheats, while pulses like lentils, which accounted for 30 per cent of our protein in 1900, now account for only 2 per cent.Primitive tribes around the world still base their diets around B-17-rich foods. Cassava, papaya, yam, sweet potato in the tropics; unrefined rice in the Far East; seeds and nuts in the Himalayas; the salmon-berry eaten by Eskimos, or the arrowgrass of the arctic tundra feeding the caribou.B-17: Its place in natureThis absence of cancer seemed to be due to the difference of nutritionNutritionist and scientists alike studied the various tribes. Sir Robert McCarrison in the 1920s and John Dark M.D. twenty years later failed to find a single case of cancer amongst the Hunzas, the tribes of West Pakistan. V Steffanson found the same with the Eskimos and wrote "Cancer: Disease of Civilisation" as a result. Dr. M Navarro of Santo Thomas, University of Manilla, noticed the same with the Philippine population who ate cassava, wild rice, wild beans, berries and fruits of all kinds. Dr. Albert Schweitzer noted the same in Gabon. ´This absence of cancer seemed to be due to the difference of nutrition in the natives compared to the Europeans. Their diet was centred around sorghum, cassava, millet and maize´.Studies of the consumption of B-17 varied from Dark´s finding that the Hunzas consumed at least 150-250mgs per day, to Dean Burke, head of the cytochemistry department of the National Cancer Institute in the USA in the seventies writing that the Modoc Indians in North America consumed over 8,000 mgs per day! (Dean Burke actually gave amygdalin the name B-17).We leave these foods aside at our peril. The World Health Organisation has, after all, confirmed that in their view a large percentage of all cancers could be prevented by simple changes in diet.B-17 as a cancer treatment?Amygdalin was first isolated in 1830 and used as an anti-cancer agent in Russia as early as 1845.But it was reborn by the father/son team Ernst Krebs senior and junior by 1955 had who isolated a purified form of the active ingredient (calling it laetrile) and, with others in the late fifties to seventies, sought to explain its action.B-17: A seek and destroy missile?Cancer cells differ in a number of ways from normal cells. One major difference is the way in which they produce their energy. In a healthy cell fuel is prepared in the cytoplasm of the cell, and then moved into the mitochondria or power stations to generate energy in the presence of oxygen. But cancer cells have lost their mitochondrial action and only the preparation process remains. This is modified and demands large quantities of glucose which burn in the cytoplasm in the absence of oxygen. Cancer cells have a whole different energy production system and different set of helper chemicals (enzymes).B-17 is a seek and destroy missileIn a cancer cell, one of these enzymes, glucosidase, is present at 3000 times the level found in normal, healthy cells. Glucosidase has a unique action with B-17, breaking it down into hydrogen cyanide (which kills it) and benzaldehyde, (an analgesic).However, in normal cells where glucosidase is virtually non-existent, a completely different enzyme, rhodenase which is involved in the normal oxygen burning process, actually renders the B-17 harmless, converting it to thiocyanate, a substance which helps the body regulate blood pressure, and vitamin B-12. So, the proponents argue, B-17 is a seek and destroy missile."I have read B-17 is dangerous - it contains cyanide"As we explained above - the B-17 molecule, if broken a certain way, can produce cyanide. But the main enzyme that can do this is really only found in a cancer cell.Also, frankly, it is rather a daft argument; rather like saying the glucose molecule contains carbon monoxide and that can kill you!Skepti-twaddle about B-17 often refers to people dying of B-17 and cyanide but Contreras, who treats more people with B-17 than probably all other doctors in the world added together, knows of no cases.Then there is the fact that ´containing cyanide´ could be claimed for many food groups (for example, isothiocyanates, or anthocyanins). These food groups actually play important roles in your health, including in cancer prevention.Next, doctors regularly inject vitamin B-12 to enhance energy levels; you can buy vitamin B-12 on the high street. This common form is cyano-cobalmine. A layman might tell you this ´contains´ cyanide in the same way, too.Vitamin B-12 is involved in over 300 enzymatic reactions in the healthy body, a deficiency is known to be linked to increased cancer risk. The more natural form of vitamin B-12 is methyl-cobalmine. If a compound containing cyanide is so bad, what is the medical profession doing it injecting it into lethargic pop stars and athletes?? If it contains cyanide and that is dangerous, why don´t doctors use the methyl version?Nobody in their right mind would tell you not to consume B-12. So, steer clear of anyone who uses this palpably ignorant argument against B-17.B-17: Why the controversy?The use of synthetic B-17 is controversial because of conspiracy theories. It is a Skeptic versus Skeptic argument. The Skeptics against B-17 scream ´quackery´; the skeptics for B-17 scream ´cover up´:The Federal Drug Administration (FDA) in the USA has not approved laetrile - the FDA state, correctly, that laetrile (not amygdalin or B-17) is a synthetic therapy and, as such, needs approval like any drug. There are no randomised, controlled phase III clinical trials on laetrile so it is definitely not going to be approved. Yet people around the world do prescribe and use it. QED, they must be quacks. That´s the official view. It was actually banned in 1963, although the FDA reported that it had harmed nobody and they also said it didn´t work!But a core question is why has the same US Government Health Authority, the FDA, moved to ban the interstate shipments of apricot kernels and the planting of bitter almond trees? Trying to control a natural bioactive compound that logically might have some preventative benefits fuels the conspiracy theories! I noticed that my mother´s Asda "iced log" (a cake) contained 11 per cent apricot kernel paste! Presumably this cannot be moved between California and Nevada!One skeptic argument runs ´If eating apricot pips could cure cancer, drug companies and major cancer charities would go out of business immediately´. Actually, these businesses need not panic.Let us look at the ´research´ issue ...B-17: Any specific research?Three quarters of 80 cancer test patients had seen their cancer tumours go or reduce in sizeWell yes, actually there has been some research - but not much. Ralph Moss and Phillip Day seem to be the experts here and they both record that there have been three animal studies and two human studies.Following the Krebs´ work in 1955 a Senate Committee (often accused of being biased presumably because of drug industry connections) seemed unimpressed by evidence presented that three quarters of 80 cancer test patients had seen their cancer tumours go or reduce in size.There was a stab at a clinical trial in the USA and this officially reported no effect with B-17. Moss was the Press officer in the team and showed his disgust at the public hearing, implying that the team had actually found a positive response and the powers that be were mis-representing the findings. He was fired.However, talk to the experts that use B-17 and they will tell you that researching B-17 in a clinical trial is not the issue anyway. None doubts its efficacy, but several felt it was not as potent as other ingredients such as Intravenous, high dose vitamin C. ´B-17 only ´helps´ and is not a ´cure´ per se´, seems to be the general view. The issue, they argue, is to research the whole ´metabolic therapy´ package. The authorities have never done this. The people who use and advocate it simply cannot afford to conduct a full scale clinical trial. Impasse.Why might it be more important to research the whole package? Cancers are clever and often form protective protein coats around the tumour to ward off the immune system. Various cancer clinics have thus developed their metabolic therapy packages to counter defences like these (metabolic therapy packages can contain bromelain, from pineapple and papain, from papaya, because they supposedly break down the protein coat). Other unique factors occur with cancer cells, so the metabolic therapy package may contain vitamins A, E and B complex, plus high dose intravenous vitamin C, high dose minerals, and pancreatic enzymes, each targeting a specific issue.The difficulty then becomes "which bit worked?"Having personally talked to leading B-17 practitioners in the USA and Europe, a few actually answer, ´who cares!´? Actually, I do.Frankly, this is quite important but the answers are unsatisfactory if you are a cancer patient. On different pages we have reviewed the use of intravenous vitamin C megadoses and pancreatic enzyme treatment as used by Dr Gonzalez in his clinic in New York. They do seem to have, albeit limited, effects on their own, so I suppose it is possible that using all of them could have a greater effect. But, be clear, there is NO FORMAL RESEARCH on the metabolic therapy package and in reality it doesn´t even exist as different clinics use different concoctions.Metabolic therapy packages could be working in several ways,but there´s no researchFinally, laetrile has shown effectiveness against cancer cells in vitro, and in rats and mice. Interestingly, even the National Cancer Institute in America (which is negative about laetrile´s abilities), reports that by the late seventies over 70,000 cancer patients had been treated with laetrile and that there are copious individual case histories on its effectiveness. (Notwithstanding this, modern medicine demands a phase III clinical trial and there is none).Krebs recommended eating ten apricot seeds per day for life (the seeds or kernels of apricots have the highest levels of B-17; up to 3 per cent); cancer treatments use four to six 500mg tablets of laetrile per day or intravenous injections.B-17: Can it kill me?While there may not actually have been deaths from synthetic B-17 use, there is definitely an issue with overdosing. If you take excess B-17 beware; cyanide by-products have been known to build up in the liver of cancer patients. Each of us has different capacities to deal with such by-products but a cancer patient has an already impaired liver. A healthy liver has an enzyme, glucorinide that can detox the by-products, but in a cancer patient, this enzyme may be depleted. So, cyanide poisoning can result if excess is consumed. 1gm is the maximum recommended to be taken at any one time.With the natural form of B-17, the US Nutrition Almanac recommends a maximum of 35 seeds per day; no more than five kernels at any one time in a 90 minute period. And they conclude that all cancer treatments using B-17 (synthetic, natural, or apricot kernels) should be properly supervised. Certainly, I have seen several prostate cancer patients who looked decidedly yellow all because they were trying to consume 50 kernels for breakfast!B-17: Subjectivity and objectivityAs readers know, I travel the world giving speeches on cancer. I have interviewed a number of the world´s experts who use B-17 and metabolic therapy, including ´The Mexicans´, although maybe I met the wrong ones as these certainly were not unscrupulous!I will say that on a totally subjective note:a) I have seen many people, especially men with prostate cancer, who claim Apricot Kernels are the single reason their PSA scores have reduced.b) Contreras himself claims that metabolic therapy can ´have a significant effect´ on some cancers - though not all. He is quite clear that there is no effect with Brain Tumours, Liver Cancer or Sarcomas.I have seen overdosing with my own eyes. Be very, very careful.c) As I said above, I have seen overdosing with my own eyes. Both men in their 60´s, both prostate cancer sufferers and both trying to eat 50 Apricot Kernels for breakfast. Both had gone a sort of yellowish-grey. Be very, very careful.To repeat:* Never take more than 5 in a 90 minute period.* Never take more than 35 per day.* Please tell your doctor, and have someone monitor your liver health.B-17: Does it work in cancer treatment?Having read the original research on synthetic B-17 laetrile treatments and spoken to doctors and patients first hand, I find the ´evidence´ both for and against laetrile almost non-existent. I am neither an advocate, nor a critic. I just don´t know, even though I have tried to find out more.The logic on B-17 seems reasonably sensible and certainly pharmaceutical companies are devoting significant resources to targeting exactly the same unique properties of a cancer cell. But, as I repeatedly say, I don´t think any single entity is a ´cure´ for cancer - and that goes for B-17 too. Could it play some or other role in the total package? Experts like Contreras are adamant it can. There are people of You Tube who swear it worked for them. I´m not at all as sure. Would I pin my hopes on it alone? No. But then many of the subjects were past the point of no return - orthodox medicine had failed them.B-17 - even eating too many apricot kernels - can be dangerousif your liver is impairedWith Apricot Kernels, and amygdalin, for me there is a different issue. I believe everybody should include nitriloside foods in their daily diet. I put five - six kernels with my home-made breakfast each morning, but then I eat copious amounts of food off the B-17 list above anyway. Personally, I believe there is a good prevention argument, and eating half a dozen ´apricot pips´ a day is hardly a dangerous medical issue.So, B-17 "Cancer cure or quackery?" The Bottom LineThere is a good argument for including apricot kernels in your anti-cancer programme as a preventative bioactive compound.However, no one has ever approached me and told me that eating 50 apricotkernelsa dayalone´cured´their cancer. In fourteen years not one person has so much as come up to me on my worldwide travels with even an anecdote.However, many, many people I know have used them (35-50) as part of their anti-cancer treatment package (most often diet-based) and the package worked. Also there are You Tubes of people who beat cancer this way.And what of Laetrile - synthetic B-17 - as an out and out cancer ´cure´? I don´t think so. Those that use it don´t rely on it on its own. And do I have reports of Laetrile ´curing´ cancer in the last ten years? Is there any new research? No, none. Even the You Tube videos are often confusing as to whether the laetrile was taken on its own or with other compounds that could also have helped. Again, with this in mind, go and watch the videos.Original Source:https://www.canceractive.com/cancer-active-page-link.aspx?n=512

America has had a long list of celebrity doctors that have made a great deal of money dispensing questionable advice while selling books, seminars, and supplements.Drs. Oz, Weil, Chopra and the like.These doctors typically present themselves as knowing far more than anyone else. In essence, they are proselytizing their own brand of religion, recommendations based on belief rather than science.From The Cut:In recent months, the media has become increasingly impatient with high-profile health advocates who dispense unsubstantiated medical advice. Among the highlights have been John Oliver’s continued humiliation of Dr. Oz, who repeatedly touted the power of energy healing and “miracle” weight-loss solutions, and a viral Gawker takedown of Vani Hari, aka “the Food Babe,” a blogger and food activist who once advised her followers that “there is just no acceptable level of any chemical to ingest, ever.” Even the American Medical Association has had enough, and just announced that it would draft guidelines for disciplining physicians who dispense pseudo-scientific advice.Yet despite this heightened concern about the accuracy of health information, best-selling celebrity neurologist Dr. David Perlmutter seems to have escaped much scrutiny, even though he has a decades-long history of offering — and profiting from — suspect medical advice.In fact, he remains one of the most influential physicians in the U.S. His 2013 book Grain Brain reached No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list, and after nearly two years, sales remain so strong that it has still not come out in paperback. This extraordinary success led to a long profile in The Atlantic and won him a 90-minute TV special: Perlmutter’s “BRAINCHANGE” aired on over 110 PBS affiliates, and has continued to air on a regular basis since it was first released in late 2013. In April, he released his newest book, Brain Maker, and within a month it, too, became a New York Times bestseller.Despite Perlmutter’s popularity, most mainstream medical authorities do not endorse the advice he dispenses. In Grain Brain, Perlmutter revealed “the surprising truth”: Gluten is a “silent germ,” and declining brain health can be blamed in large part on gluten-containing grains. Brain Maker, for its part, promises to help readers harness “the power of gut microbes to heal and protect your brain — for life” — it even purports to offer groundbreaking preventative measures and treatments for allergies, autism, Alzheimer’s, ALS, dementia, Parkinson’s, and cancer.Perlmutter has always been unorthodox in his approach to medicine. For well over a decade, and long before he was a household name, he has claimed to offer his readers “miraculous” — his word — treatments capable of preventing or reversing all sorts of devastating medical problems. He has also claimed that supplements and “detoxification” regimens — available for purchase on his various websites — are crucial to optimizing brain health. Earlier this year, he stated that the conversation about childhood vaccines and autism is “ill-defined,” and that parents should ask their pediatricians about spacing out their children’s vaccinations — an approach the CDCdisagrees with, and which 90 percent of doctors surveyed by the journal Pediatrics in 2013 said would put children and communities at greater risk of contracting preventable diseases.As Perlmutter’s megaphone has grown, so, too, has his brand empire — he has sold everything from “Empowering Coconut Oil” to supplement blends tailored for specific demographics, like the $90 “Scholar’s Advantage Pack” for “young adults seeking to optimize cognitive function,” and the $160 “Senior Empowerment Pack,” a “combination of formulas designed to help keep you cognitively sharp as you age.” One book pointed readers to an $8,500 brain detoxification retreat run by Perlmutter, which included shamanic healing ceremonies. (He even has his own organic foaming hand soap.)In light of all this, it’s worth asking: Should Dr. Perlmutter’s millions of fans really trust him?***Since Perlmutter presents himself as a distinguished medical expert, a natural place to start is with his credentials. “[Dr. Perlmutter] contributed extensively to the world medical literature,” reads his website, “with publications appearing in The Journal of Neurosurgery, The Southern Medical Journal, Journal of Applied Nutrition, and Archives of Neurology.” Earlier bios also list the Journal of the American Medical Association.Yet a closer look at his publications reveals that Perlmutter hasn’t actually conducted much research. In the scientific community, full-length peer-reviewed articles, especially widely cited ones, are the gold-standard of significant research. But his contribution to JAMA — an extremely prestigious medical journal — is actually just a letter to the editor. The Southern Medical Journal? A case report and a clinical brief, both co-authored with his father when the younger Perlmutter was still a medical student. Archives of Neurology? Another case report. (Case reports and clinical briefs are short discussions around 1-4 pages long.)As for the prestigious-sounding Journal of Applied Nutrition, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a legitimate nutrition scientist who’s even heard of it — and Quackwatch cites it as a “fundamentally flawed” publication that has carried ads for “questionable potions, services, books, and/or publications.” (As far as I can tell, Perlmutter’s article in it is unavailable on any reputable scholarly database.)Perlmutter does have two legitimate peer-reviewed articles in The Journal of Neurosurgery, co-authored nearly four decades ago with his mentor, the decorated neurosurgeon Dr. Albert Rhoton. Neither has anything to do withPerlmutter’s current theories about nutrition or the gut microbiome.I spoke with Dr. Rhoton at the University of Florida, who fondly recalled the young lab partner who wrote a total of four articles on microsurgical anatomy under his tutelage. “David did a nice job in our lab,” Rhoton told me. “He did good research and wrote up those studies. I wanted him to be a neurosurgeon, but he became a neurologist instead.”Rhoton was unfamiliar with Perlmutter’s recent work. “Something about grains?” he asked. “Grain … Brain? I’m so focused in on neurosurgery I don’t know anything about it.” (Perlmutter declined to comment for this article.)The basic premise of Grain Brain doesn’t fit with the current neurological literature: The latest reviews of evidence-based dietary approaches to preventing Alzheimer’s support a Mediterranean-style diet, complete with whole grains. Nevertheless, Perlmutter describes the science of Grain Brainas “undeniably conclusive.” He is similarly confident about the treatment regimens proposed in Brain Maker, telling his readers about astonishing transformations accomplished through simple dietary changes such as going gluten-free, eating fermented foods, and taking probiotics. “I can’t wait to share with you the countless stories of individuals with myriad, enfeebling health challenges … who experienced a complete vanishing of symptoms following treatment,” he writes. “These stories are not outlier cases for me, but by standard measure of what might typically be expected, they seem almost miraculous.”He’s right. The stories do seem miraculous: dramatic improvements in autistic symptoms after probiotics and DIY fecal transplants; Tourette’s symptoms gone after a regimen of probiotic enemas; multiple sclerosis successfully treated with nutritional supplements, probiotic enemas, and fecal transplants. (At this time, fecal transplants are only indicated for a bacterial infection called Clostridium difficile.)But for medical researchers, claims of dramatic improvements as a result of unproven treatments generally raise red flags. A 2014 commentary on Grain Brain, published in the American Journal of Cardiology, puts it bluntly: “The declaration that a single, simple ‘cure’ can successfully treat numerous diverse diseases and symptoms is reminiscent of the oratory of the ‘snake oil’ merchants of generations ago.” Yale physician and nutrition researcher David Katz, no friend of the food industry, is equally dismissive, describing Grain Brain’s arguments as “the raw power of pop culture repetition, not the staying power of truth,” he said. “Whole wheat does not make us fat; whole grains do not make us stupid.”I asked Jonathan Eisen, a microbiome expert at the University of California, Davis, about Brain Maker. “To think we can magically heal diseases by changing to a gluten-free diet and taking some probiotics is idiotic, quite frankly,” he told me. After Eisen read the case study of an autistic boy that Perlmutter highlights in Brain Maker and on his website — “from a scientific perspective, [fecal transplantation for autism] makes absolute sense” — his words were even harsher. “It resembles more the presentation of a snake-oil salesman than that of a person interested in actually figuring out how to help people,” said Eisen.Perlmutter has a stock answer for skeptics like Katz and Eisen. “Each progressive spirit,” he tweeted in October of 2014, “is opposed by a thousand mediocre minds appointed to guard the past.” The problem, in other words, isn’t with Perlmutter — it’s with all the so-called experts hamstrung by traditional thinking. In one book Perlmutter even parallels his situation to Galileo’s, a genius initially persecuted for his scientific theories only to be triumphantly vindicated by history.Setting aside the response to his two most recent books, does Perlmutter’s broader body of work lend credibility to his self-understanding as a path-breaking genius?To answer this question we’ll start with his second book, the self-published BrainRecovery.com is for sale (2000). Named after Perlmutter’s personal website at the time, it promises powerful techniques for preventing or reversing Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, stroke, Parkinson’s, post-polio syndrome, ALS, and much more. (His first book, LifeGuide: Your Guide to a Longer and Healthier Life, was self-published in 1993.)Like Perlmutter’s latest best sellers, BrainRecovery.com is for sale includes dietary recommendations. But it is strikingly devoid of any discussion of gluten, grains, or probiotics. Gut bacteria are only mentioned once, in passing. Instead of emphasizing the importance of cholesterol and saturated fat for promoting brain health — as he does in Grain Brain, Brain Maker, and on his blog — Perlmutter cautions against them. “Meat and eggs are rich inflammation producing fatty acids [sic],” he declares. “It is this inflammation that leads to the enhanced production of brain damaging free radicals. The best diet is vegetarian with added fish.” There’s no doubt, Perlmutter writes, about “the direct relationship between multiple sclerosis mortality and dietary fat, especially saturated fats and animal fats.”Given Perlmutter’s current alarmism about grains, it’s hard to make sense of the numerous recovery stories in BrainRecovery.com is for sale. If one is to believe the “undeniably conclusive” science of Grain Brain, then the early Perlmutter was somehow healing his patient’s intractable neurological conditions despite putting them on a diet that was full of poisonous whole grains and dangerously low in saturated fat and cholesterol.It’s not just that Perlmutter is remarkably sure of himself, even when presenting an opinion that’s precisely the opposite of what he’s been advising for years. It’s that his confidence in unproven treatments often appears to profit him directly. During the BrainRecovery.com is for sale stage of Perlmutter’s career, for example, dietary changes were secondary. At that time, his main weapons in the battle for brain health were hyperbaric oxygen chambers, special nutritional supplements (BrainRecovery.com encouraged customers to purchase Perlmutter’s proprietary BrainSustainTM for $49.50 per 600 grams), and intravenous glutathione — an antioxidant naturally produced by the liver that is covered in a section of the book entitled “The Glutathione Miracle.” Glutathione’s effectiveness in Parkinson’s patients, writes Perlmutter, “is nothing short of miraculous.”What does science say about these cutting-edge treatments, which Perlmutter prescribed regularly through the end of 2014? Let’s start with hyperbaric oxygen chamber treatment. Perlmutter sings its praises as “powerful therapy” for stroke, Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis, Bell’s palsy, and Lyme disease, and until very recently he directed the Perlmutter Hyperbaric Center. (Though Perlmutter’s website doesn’t list prices, off-label HBOT therapy usually starts at around $200 per one-hour session, and it’s generally only covered by insurance in a very limited number of instances.) But a 2015 Cochrane review — the most comprehensive research review currently available — is skeptical of HBOT’s ability to improve stroke outcomes: “The evidence is insufficient to confirm that HBOT significantly affects outcomes after acute ischemic stroke. Use of HBOT as routine therapy for people with stroke cannot be justified by this review.”The science on HBOT for other neurological ailments is even worse. In fact, it’s so bad that in 2013 the FDA had to issue a consumer warning about unapproved HBOT therapy for precisely the conditions that Perlmutter claimed to treat.What about the “incredible effectiveness” of the “glutathione miracle”? Perlmutter has been an enthusiastic proponent of this substance for over a decade. In one 2010 online video posted by “Protandim Anti Aging” — more on that product soon — Perlmutter treats an elderly Parkinson’s sufferer with glutathione, effecting a remarkable recovery. BrainRecovery.com is for saledescribes similar successes, multiple patients reversing Parkinson’s and getting off of medication after following Perlmutter’s “Parkinson’s protocol,” a combination of intravenous glutathione and supplements (available for purchase on his website).These case studies raise an obvious question: If glutathione injection is such a miracle procedure, why hasn’t the protocol been more widely adopted? Perlmutter’s answer points to the profit-driven influence of Big Pharma: “Glutathione … cannot be owned exclusively by any particular pharmaceutical company and therefore won’t find its way to the highly influential advertising sections of the medical journals.”Sure, maybe. Or it could be that doctors don’t prescribe intravenous glutathione for Parkinson’s because it doesn’t work. And they know it doesn’t work thanks, in part, to work done by a man named … David Perlmutter. In 2009, he collaborated on a randomized, double-blind studyof intravenous glutathione for Parkinson’s. The results are clearly stated in the study’s conclusion: “We did not observe a significant improvement in parkinsonian signs and symptoms in the glutathione group when compared with the placebo group.” Based on these results, the National Parkinson Foundation put out a strongly worded statement about intravenous glutathione: “First, there is a lack of evidence it actually works; second, the therapy requires an intravenous line which has both short and long term risks; and finally, insurance does not cover the costs of this therapy. .. Patients should beware of any medical practices offering a fee for glutathione treatment of Parkinson’s disease.”Once the glutathione study was finished, Perlmutter had various opportunities to disclose its results. Yet in 2009, shortly before the study was published, he told fellow celebrity doctor Andrew Weil that the treatment was “quite effective.”It’s possible that Perlmutter just didn’t understand the results of the study, or perhaps he disagreed with the statistical analysis of his co-authors. The responsible thing to do, then, would be to acknowledge the study’s conclusion, state his dissent, and admit that it did not replicate the miraculous 80-90 percent effectiveness he claimed to have achieved in his clinic.But he does no such thing. Instead, in his 2011 book Power Up Your Brain, Perlmutter doubles down on glutathione — “we shout the praises of glutathione,” he writes — not just as a treatment for Parkinson’s, but also for fibromyalgia, cancer, and the common cold. As evidence, Perlmutter cites a series of outdated studies but never once mentions the double-blinded study in which he himself participated (and no, there’s no solid evidence of glutathione’s efficacy in treating those other conditions, either).Perlmutter co-wrote Power Up Your Brain with a “medical anthropologist and shaman” named Alberto Villoldo. The book opens with the tale of a woman suffering from chronic progressive multiple sclerosis, who, one afternoon, suddenly recovers and begins walking unassisted. “We are putting you on our miracle list,” Perlmutter tells her, a list that is apparently quite long:Over the coming months, I began to notice that we were putting more and more people on the miracle list. And it was becoming clear to me that, overwhelmingly, the patients who achieved the most profound recoveries were those engaged in some form of meditative or spiritual practice … Virtually all of these patients were somehow connecting with what the shaman had referred to as the Great Spirit.According to Perlmutter, open-minded healers like himself and the shaman are capable of achieving miraculous results that traditional doctors cannot. And the reason these miracles go unacknowledged is due, at least in part, to the effects of industry corruption (the Food Babe uses the same strategy to tarnish her critics.) Perlmutter regularly stresses how food and pharmaceutical companies cover up the effects of poisonous foods and deny the efficacy of life-changing “alternative” approaches to chronic illness. Companies profit, doctors and scientists line their pockets with kickbacks, and it’s all at the expense of public health.Perlmutter is right, in a broad sense, to bring up the pernicious influence of money on medicine. Indeed, “mainstream” doctors — like Marcia Angell, the former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine, and epidemiologist Ben Goldacre, the author of Bad Pharma — have dedicated substantial parts of their careers to exposing corruption and financial conflict of interest in medical science. (Their efforts have met with near-universal acclaim from the scientific Establishment.)But Perlmutter might not be the ideal whistle-blower when it comes to the issue of profiting from questionable medical treatments. Starting with BrainRecovery.com is for sale through Brain Maker, his books have pointed readers to ever-slicker websites where he has sold his “scientifically proven” supplements, often developed by him and manufactured by companies in which he had a direct financial interest as an employee. There was brainrecovery.com for BrainRecovery.com is for sale; kidsbrainsustain.com for Raise a Smarter Child By Kindergarten; powerupyourbrain.com for Power Up Your Brain; and finally, slickest of all, drperlmutter.com for Grain Brain and Brain Maker. (The store section of his website came down in March of 2015.)Perlmutter has also had a long-standing involvement with shadysupplement companies. One of those companies, LifeVantage, fraudulently said one of its best-selling substances, Protandim, was developed by a biochemist, when it was really cooked up by a business executive. In various videos and interviews, Perlmutter has testified to the undeniable efficacy of Protandim for treating and preventing many brain disorders.It’s not just supplements. Up until late last year, Perlmutter offered a “6-day Power Up Your Brain Personal Intensive Program” on Powerupyourbrain.com. The most expensive package cost $8,500 (that is, a touch under $1,500 per day), and it was designed to “cleanse your body” and “detox your brain” using “neuro-nutrients, hyperbaric oxygen treatments under medical supervision, and ancient energy medicine practices.” In addition to being granted access to “shamanic sessions” — the administration of which was taken over from Albert Villoldo by Perlmutter’s wife, Leize — participants received the following:. 90-minute intake evaluation with Dr. David Perlmutter. One 30-minute follow-up 3 weeks after program completion with Dr. David Perlmutter. 90-minute evaluation with nutritionist. Five 60-minute Hyperbaric Chamber Oxygen TreatmentsAnd naturally, no course of treatment with Dr. Perlmutter would be complete without his go-to miracle substance: “Five intravenous Glutathione treatments.”***Taken as a whole, Perlmutter’s career — his support for unproven treatments, his profiting from those treatments, his endless “miracle”-talk — suggests he probably isn’t a misunderstood genius who will be vindicated by time. Rather, his work places him squarely in the medical arm of the self-help industry, which stars figures like Dr. Oz (who has hosted Perlmutter and blurbs his books) and the notorious anti-vaccine quack Dr. Joseph Mercola (Perlmutter wrote the foreward to Mercola’s latest best seller, Effortless Healing).The industry has clear rules: Endorse fellow gurus, even if they make extravagant, untested claims. Cherry-pick studies performed by Establishment scientists, but deflect Establishment criticism by accusing it of industry corruption. Take promising medical research that’s in its infancy, on subjects ranging from gluten sensitivity to the microbiome, and repackage it as settled science. If you do all this, then your unproven message will reach a giant audience of eager believers that’s far larger than the one reached by doctors like Marcia Angell and Ben Goldacre, whose criticisms of industry malfeasance do not serve as prelude to the promise of miracles.Perlmutter’s pitch is nothing new. Here’s food historian Harvey Levenstein comparing early-20th-century diet gurus to faith healers, in a passage that still rings true today: “[They] would tell of their own devastating health problems, miraculously cured by the proposed diet — mysterious or common physical or psychological ailments that had defied the greatest of modern medical minds had disappeared once certain foods were added or deleted from the diet.”There’s no problem with exploring the gut microbiome and the potential of dietary changes for treating neurological conditions. These are areas of ongoing study among genuine microbiome experts and nutrition scientists. After all, it’s their promising research that gets appropriated in Grain Brain and Brain Maker. But there’s a crucial difference between them and Perlmutter: legitimate researchers are humble about what they know and wait on proof before claiming to have discovered a cure, while Perlmutter forges ahead with marketing BrainSustainTM, intravenous glutathione, and other completely unproven products.Grain Brain ends with a warning that, in the context of Perlmutter’s full dossier, is a bit surreal. The epilogue tells the story of Dr. Mesmer, an 18th-century physician and charlatan who duped the public into believing he could “cure nervous system problems using magnetism,” which happens to be the origin of the word “mesmerized.”According to Perlmutter, “the medical and scientific community feared Mesmer,” and eventually they exposed him as a fraud. Perlmutter writes of this exposure approvingly, warning readers to stay alert for other like-minded crooks.It’s now generally accepted that Mesmer was actually treating psychosomatic illness, and he profited mightily from people’s gullibility. In retrospect, his theories and practices sound ridiculous, but in truth, the story of Mesmer parallels many stories of today. It’s not so ridiculous to imagine people falling prey to products, procedures, and health claims that are brilliantly marketed. Every day we hear of some news item related to health. We are bombarded by messages about our health — good, bad, and confusingly contradictory. And we are literally mesmerized by these messages. Even the smart, educated, cautious, and skeptical consumer is mesmerized. It’s hard to separate truth from fiction, and to know the difference between what’s healthful and harmful when the information and endorsements come from “experts.”It may be tempting to ignore all of Dr. Perlmutter’s advice, but this paragraph, at least, deserves everyone’s attention.Alan Levinovitz is an assistant professor of religion at James Madison University. He is the author of The Gluten Lie. Follow him on Twitter: @top_philosopher.The Problem With David Perlmutter, the Grain Brain Doctor

Q. The notorious​ Unit 731 members​ from Japan went totally scot-free, I understand​, even though they were probably worse than the Nazis. Do you agree?A. Unit 731 was an Auschwitz equivalent. The perpetrators should all have been tried for war crimes. Particularly evil was Surgeon General Shirō Ishii, commander of the unit.Most of the victims were Chinese and a few Koreans. 30% were Russians. Those that the Soviet forces managed to arrest were tried at the Khabarovsk War Crime Trials in 1949. The rest were secretly given immunity by the U.S. in exchange for the data gathered, to be co-opted into the U.S. biological warfare program, as had happened with Nazi researchers in Operation Paperclip.On 6 May 1947, Douglas MacArthur, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, wrote to Washington that "additional data, possibly some statements from Ishii probably can be obtained by informing Japanese involved that information will be retained in intelligence channels and will not be employed as 'War Crimes' evidence."Victim accounts were then largely ignored or dismissed in the West as communist propaganda.Gen. Ishii lived on the outskirts of Tokyo until his death in 1959. Other "graduates" of Unit 731 include the former governor of Tokyo, the former president of the Japan Medical Association, the former director of the health ministry's preventive health research center, the former chairman and president of Green Cross Corp. and the past heads of a number of Japanese medical schools. The man in charge of vivisections, Yoshisuke Murata, became director of the respected Kyoto Medical School, and later medical director at Kinki University.Perpetrators:Surgeon General Shirō IshiiLt. General Masaji KitanoEpidemic Prevention and Water Purification DepartmentUnmasking Horror -- A special report.; Japan Confronting Gruesome War Atrocity New York Times10 Atrocious Experiments Conducted By Unit 731 - ListverseJapanese World War II veterans recall horrors of Unit 731 (Youtube)Unmasking Horror -- A special report.; Japan Confronting Gruesome War AtrocityMORIOKA, Japan— He is a cheerful old farmer who jokes as he serves rice cakes made by his wife, and then he switches easily to explaining what it is like to cut open a 30-year-old man who is tied naked to a bed and dissect him alive, without anesthetic."The fellow knew that it was over for him, and so he didn't struggle when they led him into the room and tied him down," recalled the 72-year-old farmer, then a medical assistant in a Japanese Army unit in China in World War II. "But when I picked up the scalpel, that's when he began screaming."I cut him open from the chest to the stomach, and he screamed terribly, and his face was all twisted in agony. He made this unimaginable sound, he was screaming so horribly. But then finally he stopped. This was all in a day's work for the surgeons, but it really left an impression on me because it was my first time."Finally the old man, who insisted on anonymity, explained the reason for the vivisection. The Chinese prisoner had been deliberately infected with the plague as part of a research project -- the full horror of which is only now emerging -- to develop plague bombs for use in World War II. After infecting him, the researchers decided to cut him open to see what the disease does to a man's inside. No anesthetic was used, he said, out of concern that it might have an effect on the results.That research program was one of the great secrets of Japan during and after World War II: a vast project to develop weapons of biological warfare, including plague, anthrax, cholera and a dozen other pathogens. Unit 731 of the Japanese Imperial Army conducted research by experimenting on humans and by "field testing" plague bombs by dropping them on Chinese cities to see whether they could start plague outbreaks. They could.A trickle of information about the program has turned into a stream and now a torrent. Half a century after the end of the war, a rush of books, documentaries and exhibitions are unlocking the past and helping arouse interest in Japan in the atrocities committed by some of Japan's most distinguished doctors.Scholars and former members of the unit say that at least 3,000 people -- by some accounts several times as many -- were killed in the medical experiments; none survived.The Unit 731 complex Pingfang, ChinaNo one knows how many died in the "field testing." It is becoming evident that the Japanese officers in charge of the program hoped to use their weapons against the United States. They proposed using balloon bombs to carry disease to America, and they had a plan in the summer of 1945 to use Kamikaze pilots to dump plague-infected fleas on San Diego.The research was kept secret after the end of the war in part because the United States Army granted immunity from war crimes prosecution to the doctors in exchange for their data. Japanese and American documents show that the United States helped cover up the human experimentation. Instead of putting the ringleaders on trial, it gave them stipends.The accounts are wrenching to read even after so much time has passed: a Russian mother and daughter left in a gas chamber, for example, as doctors peered through thick glass and timed their convulsions, watching as the woman sprawled over her child in a futile effort to save her from the gas. The Origins Ban on Weapon Entices MilitaryJapan's biological weapons program was born in the 1930's, in part because Japanese officials were impressed that germ warfare had been banned by the Geneva Protocol of 1925. If it was so awful that it had to be banned under international law, the officers reasoned, it must make a great weapon.The Japanese Army, which then occupied a large chunk of China, evicted the residents of eight villages near Harbin, in Manchuria, to make way for the headquarters of Unit 731. One advantage of China, from the Japanese point of view, was the availability of research subjects on whom germs could be tested. The subjects were called marutas, or logs, and most were Communist sympathizers or ordinary criminals. The majority were Chinese, but many were Russians, expatriates living in China.Takeo Wano, a 71-year-old former medical worker in Unit 731 who now lives here in the northern Japanese city of Morioka, said he once saw a six-foot-high glass jar in which a Western man was pickled in formaldehyde. The man had been cut into two pieces, vertically, and Mr. Wano guesses that he was Russian because there were many Russians then living in the area.Gen. Shiro Ishii, head of Unit 731The Unit 731 headquarters contained many other such jars with specimens. They contained feet, heads, internal organs, all neatly labeled. "I saw samples with labels saying 'American,' 'English' and 'Frenchman,' but most were Chinese, Koreans and Mongolians," said a Unit 731 veteran who insisted on anonymity. "Those labeled as American were just body parts, like hands or feet, and some were sent in by other military units."US POWs shot down in Japan 70 years ago dissected ALIVETerrible fate: Captain Marvin Watkins, top left, and his crew were downed over Japan. Six of them and two others not pictured were dissected alive or subjected to other terrible medical experiments at Kyushu Medical School. Pictured in the back row (l to r) are: Marvin S. Watkins (interrogated and released at the end of war) William R. Fredericks (died in medical experiment), Howard T. Shingledecker, (fate unknown), Charles M. Kearns (died at crash site), Dale E. Plambeck (died in medical experiment) Front row: Robert C. Johnson (died at crash site), Teddy J. Ponczka (died in medical experiment), Robert B. Williams (died in medical experiment), Leon E. Czarnecki (died in medical experiment), Leo C. Oeinck (died at crash site), John C. Colehower (died in medical experiment)The soldiers were flying a B-29 bomber, pictured, when it was shot down over the skies of Japan. Eight of the men on board were taken to the Kyushu Medical School and experimented on. None survived the vivisection.Medical researchers also locked up diseased prisoners with healthy ones, to see how readily various ailments would spread. The doctors locked others inside a pressure chamber to see how much the body can withstand before the eyes pop from their sockets.Victims were often taken to a proving ground called Anda, where they were tied to stakes and bombarded with test weapons to see how effective the new technologies were. Planes sprayed the zone with a plague culture or dropped bombs with plague-infested fleas to see how many people would die.The Japanese armed forces were using poison gas in their battles against Chinese troops, and so some of the prisoners were used in developing more lethal gases. One former member of Unit 731 who insisted on anonymity said he was taken on a "field trip" to the proving ground to watch a poison gas experiment.A group of prisoners were tied to stakes, and then a tank-like contraption that spewed out gas was rolled toward them, he said. But at just that moment, the wind changed and the Japanese observers had to run for their lives without seeing what happened to the victims.The Japanese Army regularly conducted field tests to see whether biological warfare would work outside the laboratory. Planes dropped plague-infected fleas over Ningbo in eastern China and over Changde in north-central China, and plague outbreaks were later reported.Japanese troops also dropped cholera and typhoid cultures in wells and ponds, but the results were often counterproductive. In 1942 germ warfare specialists distributed dysentery, cholera and typhoid in Zhejiang Province in China, but Japanese soldiers became ill and 1,700 died of the diseases, scholars say.Sheldon H. Harris, a historian at California State University in Northridge, estimates that more than 200,000 Chinese were killed in germ warfare field experiments. Professor Harris -- author of a book on Unit 731,”Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932-45 and the American Cover-Up" (Routledge, 1994) -- also says plague-infected animals were released as the war was ending and caused outbreaks of the plague that killed at least 30,000 people in the Harbin area from 1946 through 1948.The leading scholar of Unit 731 in Japan Tsuneishi Keiichi, is skeptical of such numbers. Professor Tsuneishi, who has led the efforts in Japan to uncover atrocities by Unit 731, says that the attack on Ningbo killed about 100 people and that there is no evidence of huge outbreaks of disease set off by field trials. The Tradeoff Knowledge Gained At Terrible Cost.Many of the human experiments were intended to develop new treatments for medical problems that the Japanese Army faced. Many of the experiments remain secret, but an 18-page report prepared in 1945 -- and kept by a senior Japanese military officer until now -- includes a summary of the unit's research. The report was prepared in English for American intelligence officials, and it shows the extraordinary range of the unit's work.Scholars say that the research was not contrived by mad scientists, and that it was intelligently designed and carried out. The medical findings saved many Japanese lives.For example, Unit 731 proved scientifically that the best treatment for frostbite was not rubbing the limb, which had been the traditional method, but rather immersion in water a bit warmer than 100 degrees -- but never more than 122 degrees.The cost of this scientific breakthrough was borne by those seized for medical experiments. They were taken outside in freezing weather and left with exposed arms, periodically drenched with water, until a guard decided that frostbite had set in. Testimony from a Japanese officer said this was determined after the "frozen arms, when struck with a short stick, emitted a sound resembling that which a board gives when it is struck."Museum visitors Harbin, Helongjaing ProvinceA booklet just published in Japan after a major exhibition about Unit 731 shows how doctors even experimented on a three-day-old baby, measuring the temperature with a needle stuck inside the infant's middle finger."Usually a hand of a three-day-old infant is clenched into a fist," the booklet says, "but by sticking the needle in, the middle finger could be kept straight to make the experiment easier." The Scope Other Experiments On Humans.The human experimentation did not take place just in Unit 731, nor was it a rogue unit acting on its own. While it is unclear whether Emperor Hirohito knew of the atrocities, his younger brother, Prince Mikasa, toured the Unit 731 headquarters in China and wrote in his memoirs that he was shown films showing how Chinese prisoners were "made to march on the plains of Manchuria for poison gas experiments on humans."In addition, the recollections of Dr. Ken Yuasa, 78, who still practices in a clinic in Tokyo, suggest that human experimentation may have been routine even outside Unit 731. Dr. Yuasa was an army medic in China, but he says he was never in Unit 731 and never had contact with it.Nevertheless, Dr. Yuasa says that when he was still in medical school in Japan, the students heard that ordinary doctors who went to China were allowed to vivisect patients. And sure enough, when Dr. Yuasa arrived in Shanxi Province in north-central China in 1942, he was soon asked to attend a "practice surgery."Two Chinese men were brought in, stripped naked and given general anesthetic. Then Dr. Yuasa and the others began practicing various kinds of surgery: first an appendectomy, then an amputation of an arm and finally a tracheotomy. After 90 minutes, they were finished, so they killed the patient with an injection.When Dr. Yuasa was put in charge of a clinic, he said, he periodically asked the police for a Communist to dissect, and they sent one over. The vivisection was all for practice rather than for research, and Dr. Yuasa says they were routine among Japanese doctors working in China in the war.In addition, Dr. Yuasa -- who is now deeply apologetic about what he did -- said he cultivated typhoid germs in test tubes and passed them on, as he had been instructed to do, to another army unit. Someone from that unit, which also had no connection with Unit 731, later told him that the troops would use the test tubes to infect the wells of villages in Communist-held territory. The Plans Taking the War To U.S. Homeland.In 1944, when Japan was nearing defeat, Tokyo's military planners seized on a remarkable way to hit back at the American heartland: they launched huge balloons that rode the prevailing winds to the continental United States. Although the American Government censored reports at the time, some 200 balloons landed in Western states, and bombs carried by the balloons killed a woman in Montana and six people in Oregon.Half a century later, there is evidence that it could have been far worse; some Japanese generals proposed loading the balloons with weapons of biological warfare, to create epidemics of plague or anthrax in the United States. Other army units wanted to send cattle-plague virus to wipe out the American livestock industry or grain smut to wipe out the crops.There was a fierce debate in Tokyo, and a document discovered recently suggests that at a crucial meeting in late July 1944 it was Hideki Tojo -- whom the United States later hanged for war crimes -- who rejected the proposal to use germ warfare against the United States.At the time of the meeting, Tojo had just been ousted as Prime Minister and chief of the General Staff, but he retained enough authority to veto the proposal. He knew by then that Japan was likely to lose the war, and he feared that biological assaults on the United States would invite retaliation with germ or chemical weapons being developed by America.Yet the Japanese Army was apparently willing to use biological weapons against the Allies in some circumstances. When the United States prepared to attack the Pacific island of Saipan in the late spring of 1944, a submarine was sent from Japan to carry biological weapons -- it is unclear what kind -- to the defenders.The submarine was sunk, Professor Tsuneishi says, and the Japanese troops had to rely on conventional weapons alone.As the end of the war approached in 1945, Unit 731 embarked on its wildest scheme of all. Codename Cherry Blossoms at Night, the plan was to use Kamikaze pilots to infest California with the plague.Toshimi Mizobuchi, who was an instructor for new recruits in Unit 731, said the idea was to use 20 of the 500 new troops who arrived in Harbin in July 1945. A submarine was to take a few of them to the seas off Southern California, and then they were to fly in a plane carried on board the submarine and contaminate San Diego with plague-infected fleas. The target date was to be Sept. 22, 1945.Ishio Obata, 73, who now lives in Ehime prefecture, acknowledged that he had been a chief of the Cherry Blossoms at Night attack force against San Diego, but he declined to discuss details. "It is such a terrible memory that I don't want to recall it," he said.Tadao Ishimaru, also 73, said he had learned only after returning to Japan that he had been a candidate for the strike force against San Diego. "I don't want to think about Unit 731," he said in a brief telephone interview. "Fifty years have passed since the war. Please let me remain silent."It is unclear whether Cherry Blossoms at Night ever had a chance of being carried out. Japan did indeed have at least five submarines that carried two or three planes each, their wings folded against the fuselage like a bird.But a Japanese Navy specialist said the navy would have never allowed its finest equipment to be used for an army plan like Cherry Blossoms at Night, partly because the highest priority in the summer of 1945 was to defend the main Japanese islands, not to launch attacks on the United States mainland.If the Cherry Blossoms at Night plan was ever serious, it became irrelevant as Japan prepared to surrender in early August 1945. In the last days of the war, beginning on Aug. 9, Unit 731 used dynamite to try to destroy all evidence of its germ warfare program, scholars say. The Aftermath No Punishment, Little Remorse.Partly because the Americans helped cover up the biological warfare program in exchange for its data, Gen. Shiro Ishii, the head of Unit 731, was allowed to live peacefully until his death from throat cancer in 1959. Those around him in Unit 731 saw their careers flourish in the postwar period, rising to positions that included Governor of Tokyo, president of the Japan Medical Association and head of the Japanese Olympic Committee.By conventional standards, few people were more cruel than the farmer who as a Unit 731 medic carved up a Chinese prisoner without anesthetic, and who also acknowledged that he had helped poison rivers and wells. Yet his main intention in agreeing to an interview seemed to be to explain that Unit 731 was not really so brutal after all.Asked why he had not anesthetized the prisoner before dissecting him, the farmer explained: "Vivisection should be done under normal circumstances. If we'd used anesthesia, that might have affected the body organs and blood vessels that we were examining. So we couldn't have used anesthetic."When the topic of children came up, the farmer offered another justification: "Of course there were experiments on children. But probably their fathers were spies.""There's a possibility this could happen again," the old man said, smiling genially. "Because in a war, you have to win."Rape of Nanking10 Atrocious Experiments Conducted By Unit 731 - ListverseTHATCHER BOYDThe events of World War II may show humanity at its lowest point. Clashing political ideologies and the ensuing worldwide combat produced a nearly unprecedented level of bloodshed and destruction.Although The Holocaust showed the extreme nature of the war and the horrifying extent to which a nation could be driven, Japan’s Unit 731 facilities, an Auschwitz equivalent, held their own horrors in human experimentation. These are just some of the experiments that were performed during the unit’s existence from 1936 to 1945.10. DismembermentPhoto credit: maywespeak.comLike experiments at Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps, Unit 731 doctors and researchers studied the potential survival of soldiers on the battlefield. But instead of using Japanese soldiers for these experiments, Unit 731 used Allied POWs as well as Chinese and Russian civilians.One such war-influenced experiment was in various dismemberments, particularly limb amputations, to study the effects of blood loss. Other forms of dismemberment were purely experimental and not combat-related. For example, some amputated limbs were reattached to other sides of the body. Other times, limbs were frozen and amputated until only the victim’s head and torso remained.Often, this was done without anesthetic for fear of negatively affecting the experiments. Test subjects were degradingly called marutas (“logs”), a reference to the phrase, “How many logs fell?”9. Nanking AtrocitiesPhoto credit: TimeUnit 731 was one of the two most infamous, large-scale war crimes committed by Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War. The second war crime was the Nanjing Massacre.Besides the atrocities committed, the correlation between the two war crimes was that many POWs and civilians captured during the campaign were used in the Unit 731 experiments. By and large, the anti-Chinese sentiment was still in place between the two events. As soon as Japanese soldiers entered China’s capital in December 1937, the city was host to mass murder and rape.After the orders to eliminate all captives eventually arrived, no one was spared. The atrocities included beatings, drownings, decapitations, mass theft, forced incestuous rape, live burials, addictive drug distribution, and numerous unrecorded crimes.There was even a contest between two Japanese officers to see who would kill 100 people with a sword first. Unlike many of the participants in Unit 731, however, these officers were tried and executed.8. VivisectionPhoto credit: unit731.orgOne of the most common and brutal experiments performed was vivisection. This was done on live subjects without anesthesia as it was believed that the symptoms of decay after death would skew results.One purpose of these vivisections was to practice surgery. In fact, multiple different surgeries were often performed on a subject. Once the victim was of no more use, he was killed and dissected before being burned or placed in a large burial pit.Other times, vivisections were performed to see the internal effects of diseases. Vivisections were also part of crude experiments, like the removal of the stomach and the attachment of the esophagus to the intestines. Images of and testimonies about these surgeries are available online. But view them with discretion as they are extremely graphic.7. Lethal InjectionsInitially, many of Unit 731’s disease experiments were performed as preventative measures. The Japanese had found that 89 percent of battlefield deaths from the First Sino-Japanese War were from diseases. But these experiments into preventative medicines and vaccines evolved into offensive use as the war progressed.Unit 731 was split into eight divisions. The first focused on experimenting with bacteriological diseases, including the bubonic plague, cholera, anthrax, typhoid, and tuberculosis. These bacteria were injected into subjects regularly, and the resulting infections were studied. The outcomes became increasingly deadly because many people lived in communal cells.The Japanese also studied the effects of injecting humans with animal blood, air bubbles that caused embolisms, and seawater. These seawater injections were similar to the seawater ingestion experiments at Auschwitz.6. Venereal DiseasesPhoto credit: CDC/Robert SumpterChildren were not exempt from the unit’s atrocities as vertical transmission from mother to fetus was studied. This included diseases like syphilis. The researchers studied how syphilis would affect the resulting baby’s health and how it would harm the mother’s reproductive system. Although we don’t know the number of children born in captivity, it is known that none had survived when the unit dissolved in 1945.While diseases like tuberculosis and smallpox could be injected, syphilis and gonorrhea required a different method of infection. This was done using a male and a female, one of whom was infected. The couple was forced to have sexual intercourse under threat of being shot. The infected bodies were later vivisected to see the internal results.5. FrostbiteOne of the more horrifying series of experiments revolved around extreme temperatures. While extreme heat was also used on test subjects, extreme cold was used more often as it was suited to certain facility climates in Japan.After the test subjects were taken outside in the cold, water was intermittently poured on their arms until frostbite set into the affected areas. Other times, limbs were frozen and subsequently thawed to study gangrene.One might wonder how the researchers could tell that the arms were frostbitten. According to one officer’s testimony, frostbite had occurred if the “frozen arms, when struck with a short stick, emitted a sound resembling that which a board gives when struck.”However, these experiments did yield scientific findings. The unit determined that rubbing a frostbitten area was not the most effective treatment. Instead, it was better to treat frostbite by immersing the affected area in water warmer than 37.8 degrees Celsius (100 °F) but cooler than 50 degrees Celsius (122 °F). A scene depicting this experiment is featured in the 1988 filmMen Behind the Sun with some artistic license.4. Sexual assaultThe rape and sexual assault of women occurred with tragic frequency in Unit 731. Like the mass rapes and sex slavery exhibited during the Nanjing Massacre (aka “The Rape of Nanjin”), sex crimes committed by Japanese soldiers and researchers were rampant. Although these unlawful acts were committed for pleasure, they were sometimes justified by the researchers as experiments about venereal diseases.However, one guard’s account of a researcher shows the disturbing and casual nature of these crimes. According to the guard, the researcher “told me that one day he had a human experiment scheduled, but there was still time to kill. So he and another member took the keys to the cells and opened one that housed a Chinese woman. One of the unit members raped her.”3. Special Chamber ExperimentsPhoto credit: firsttoknow.comAlthough Unit 731 did plenty of testing in the field, the 6-square-kilometer (2.3 mi) facility was host to numerous buildings for specific experiments. Many of these buildings were used to raise fleas and culture pathogens, but some were specially built for testing.A centrifuge was built to examine how much force it would take to cause death. High-pressure chambers pushed victims’ eyes out of their heads. Forced abortions and sterilizations were conducted, and subjects were treated to lethal doses of X-rays.In an experiment to observe the innate bond between mother and offspring, a Russian mother and her child were monitored in a glass chamber while poisonous gas was pumped in. The mother covered her child in an attempt to save her, but both ultimately succumbed.2. Weapons TestingPhoto credit: china-underground.com, escapeartistes.comIn Unit 731, human subjects were also used in weapons testing at many facilities. The victims were typically taken to an experimental field like Anda and tied to wooden posts for testing. Then the victims had plague-spreading bombs dropped on them en masse, were used for target practice, had grenades lobbed at them, or were burned with flamethrowers.This was very similar to the Imperial Japanese Army’s protocol to use captured Chinese soldiers for bayonet practice. It’s an example of unnecessary cruelty. (baby above)Biological warfarePhoto credit: firsttoknow.comWorld War I brought technological advances in warfare, particularly biological warfare. Inspired by the success produced by these bioweapons (particularly the chlorine gas used during the Second Battle of Ypres), General Shiro Ishii experimented extensively in this area.In addition to dropping bombs filled with diseases like anthrax, cholera, typhoid, and bubonic plague on prisoners, Ishii designed a special porcelain-shelled bomb that allowed infected fleas to disperse and infect a wider area. Again, subjects were often tied to stakes and bombed. Scientists in protective suits examined the bodies afterward.Other times—such as on October 4 and 29, 1940—low-flying airplanes sprayed plague bacteria in the Chechiang province in China, killing 21 and 99 people, respectively. However, estimates for the total number of Chinese killed in this manner vary from 200,000–580,000 people.The Japanese regarded the Chinese as inferior. As a result, the Chinese were considered viable test subjects for these attacks. We can only speculate as to what the unit would have done on a larger scale with these biological weapons.Thatcher Boyd is a writer, actor, film lover, and drinker of a LOT of black coffee. You can reach him here to collaborate, communicate, or just shoot the breeze.Unit 731 General FactsUnit 731 - WikipediaUnit 731: OverviewPure Evil: Wartime Japanese Doctor Had No Regard for Human SufferingUnit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army's Biological Warfare ProgramJapan revisits its darkest moments where American POWs became human experimentsJapanese World War II veterans recall horrors of Unit 731Published on Aug 14, 2014Former members of Unit 731, a Japanese military unit that conducted illegal human experiments during World War II, can be seen discussing the atrocities they committed in a video that was recently released. Coming just before the 69th anniversary of Japan's surrender on Aug. 15, the video has shed new light on the unit's past activities in northeast China's city of Harbin. They are telling history to a Chinese man who has been researching the unit for 16 years.South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho Tai Young on May 16, 2013, criticized Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for posing for a photo in the cockpit of a plane with the number 731 written on its body, during his visit to an Air Self-Defense Force base in Higashimatsushima, Miyagi Prefecture as the figure reminds South Koreans of Unit 731, a former Japanese military unit believed to have conducted human experiments. (Photo: AAP).