10/23/24, 9:08 AM “Deceit, delusion, and a classic medical fraud”: An excerpt from a new book about a cancer treatment

ncer treatment hoax – Retraction Watch

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“Deceit, delusion, and a classic medical fraud”: An excerpt from a

new book about a cancer treatment hoax

There once was a drug named Krebiozen;

It came from below the horizon.

It used to be said, by patients now dead,

Now what do we put our reliance on?

–Limerick attributed to University of Illinois president George Stoddard and

University of Illinois provost Coleman Griffith, both of whom would lose their
jobs over Krebiozen

It is a story that resonates with the present: A 1950s cancer treatment hoax that
showed “charges of conspiracy, elitism, and un-Americanism directed against the
educational, scientific, and medical establishment are nothing new; neither is un-
critical news coverage of what turns out to be quackery.” We’re pleased to share an
adapted excerpt from Matthew Ehrlich’s The Krebiozen Hoax: How a Mysterious
Cancer Drug Shook Organized Medicine, out today.

O
n March 26, 1951, one of America’s most respected scientists called a meeting at Chicago’s Drake Hotel to make a
dramatic announcement: he and a Yugoslavian refugee doctor had found a drug that showed great promise in treat-
ing cancer. The scientist was Andrew Ivy, vice president of the University of Illinois (U of I) and designated spokes-
person for medical ethics at the Nazi war crimes trials in Nuremberg. Time magazine had gone as far as to pronounce him
“the conscience of U.S. science.” Ivy’s Yugoslavian collaborator was Stevan Durovic, said to have discovered the new drug in
Argentina after the Nazis forced him to flee his homeland. The drug itself was called Krebiozen, a name that was supposed to
connote “cancer suppressor” or “regulator of growth.”

Krebiozen’s unveiling electrified people around the world. Cancer sufferers and their loved ones deluged the U of I with
thousands of calls and messages begging for the drug. One doctor opined that “Krebiozen may be one of the greatest, if not
the greatest” discoveries in medical history. But other representatives of organized medicine were immediately suspicious.
Virtually none of them had ever heard of Stevan Durovic or his brother Marko, who had followed Stevan to Chicago to pro-
mote Krebiozen. Stevan had never published in a scientific journal. The Durovics refused to reveal even to Andrew Ivy pre-
cisely how the drug was made, other than that it involved stimulating the immune systems of horses and extracting their
blood. Rather than using the conventional means of announcing a new scientific discovery–through academic venues subject
to rigorous peer review–Ivy had staged the equivalent of a product launch, inviting prominent politicians from Chicago and
downstate Illinois along with wealthy benefactors and members of the press. Moreover, although Ivy denied any advance
knowledge of it, that meeting had been promoted through a sensational news release: “The battle of medical science to find a
cure for cancer achieved its realization today.” Within months, the American Medical Association (AMA) announced that its
review of patient case histories had shown Krebiozen to be worthless; later, U of I president George Stoddard asserted that
there was no such thing as Krebiozen.

Ivy and the Durovics fought back. They accused the AMA of conspiring with powerful business interests to kill Krebiozen af-
ter failing to seize control of it. Illinois lawmakers, some of whom despised Stoddard because of his liberalism and seeming

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highhandedness, began a lengthy set of hearings on the conspiracy charges and the state university’s possible complicity in
suppressing the drug. Stoddard and U of I provost Coleman Griffith were ousted from their administrative posts. In the fol-
lowing years, the controversy spread beyond Illinois as groups formed across the country championing Krebiozen. Movie
star Gloria Swanson raised money for the drug; environmentalist Rachel Carson took the medicine to try to fight her cancer.
Pro-Krebiozen demonstrators (some wearing badges saying, “I need Krebiozen to live!”) were arrested outside the White
House and bodily hauled out of federal offices. Along with members of Congress, they lobbied fiercely for what they called a
“fair test” of the drug. Nevertheless, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which had just been granted expanded powers,
declared that Krebiozen did nothing to stop cancer. Ivy and the Durovics were indicted on charges of defrauding people who
had paid nearly ten dollars per ampule of the drug. After a nine-month trial in Chicago that ended in early 1966, the defen-
dants were acquitted, with the verdicts tainted by accusations of jury tampering. Then Krebiozen sank back below the hori-
zon, to be replaced by other unproven remedies purported to treat cancer and other medical ills.

T
he Krebiozen saga shows that charges of conspiracy, elitism, and un-
Americanism directed against the educational, scientific, and medical es-
tablishment are nothing new; neither is uncritical news coverage of what
turns out to be quackery. And Krebiozen was in fact quackery: it displayed all the
characteristics that historian James Harvey Young identified as being typical of
medical fraud. Krebiozen’s sponsors exploited the fear of painful surgery and ra-
diation to promote a nontoxic wonder remedy that they maintained was the sci-
entific key to treating cancer. They insisted that the full details of the drug’s com-
position and production were a business secret. Proponents of the drug fre-
quently compared Andrew Ivy to Louis Pasteur and other visionaries whose sci-
entific breakthroughs were initially scorned by mainstream medicine.
Krebiozen’s backers also charged that the AMA had conspired to crush the drug,
charges similar to those previously leveled by such cancer quacks as Norman
Baker and Harry Hoxsey. Evidence suggested that after Stevan Durovic was un-
able to win support for a hypertension medicine that he called “Kositerin,” he re-
branded the exact same concoction as a cancer medicine called “Krebiozen”–a
rebranding to adjust to circumstances. The medicine was advertised via such
means as a pulp magazine trumpeting the miraculous results that cancer pa-
tients had experienced: “Doomed to die–they still live!” The drug’s supporters de-
clared that they stood for health-care freedom, continually vexing the AMA, the
Matthew Ehrlich
FDA, and the National Cancer Institute (NCI). In time, according to bank records
introduced at the fraud trial, Krebiozen became a multi-million-dollar enterprise.

The Krebiozen story was not bereft of good intentions or good ideas. Before his involvement with the drug, Andrew Ivy was
the last person whom anyone would have compared with the likes of Baker or Hoxsey. Instead, he was much more like Linus
Pauling, the later proponent of vitamin C as a cancer therapy. Ivy was widely acknowledged as a distinguished scientist with
impeccable academic credentials. Few people suggested that he promoted Krebiozen just to get rich, in contrast with Stevan
Durovic, who would be accused by the US government of extracting a vast sum of money out of the country and depositing it
into overseas accounts. Ivy always would insist that he wanted only to get an impartial test of the hypothesis that he said he
had developed out of the existing scientific literature: that people carried within them a natural cancer inhibitor, most likely
a hormone produced by the reticuloendothelial system. (Krebiozen’s supporters said that cancer patients needed the drug to
manage their conditions just as diabetics needed insulin to manage glucose levels.) Subsequent cancer research has sug-
gested that in some ways, at least, Ivy was on the right track. Scientists have discovered the existence of tumor-suppressor
genes. Studies have linked insulin and other hormones to the metabolism of cancer. And one of the most promising new ar-
eas of research and treatment–immunotherapy–harnesses the body’s natural defenses against cancer.

What is more, Krebiozen users were not all hapless dupes. Many of them had felt abandoned by mainstream medicine or, as
in the case of Rachel Carson, had been misled by their doctors about the gravity of their conditions. For them, Krebiozen
seemed a rational choice. “I’m not expecting miracles,” said Carson of Krebiozen. “As far as I’ve been able to learn it will do
no harm, so what do I have to lose?” If people subsequently decided that the drug did not work for them (as turned out to be
the case with Carson), they simply could stop taking it. Other cancer patients and their loved ones were convinced that
Krebiozen was the one thing keeping them alive.

I
n the end, though, Krebiozen turned out to be a hoax, regardless of whether it was planned as such. The medicine al-
ways would remain a secret remedy that was never scientifically shown to be effective. Stevan Durovic blocked efforts
by federal agencies to witness the drug’s manufacture from start to finish. Patient records intended to demonstrate

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10/23/24, 9:08 AM “Deceit, delusion, and a classic medical fraud”: An excerpt from a new book about a cancer treatment hoax – Retraction Watch
Krebiozen’s efficacy never met the standards set by the NCI to justify a clinical test of the drug. Eventually, Durovic and Ivy
would alienate some of their most steadfast allies after they repeatedly failed to uphold their promises for Krebiozen. Still,
the hoax persisted for years–so many people wanted so fervently to believe that the drug worked.

From The Krebiozen Hoax: How a Mysterious Cancer Drug Shook Organized Medicine. Copyright 2024 by the Board of
Trustees of the University of Illinois. Used with permission of the University of Illinois Press.

Matthew C. Ehrlich is professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He has previously pub-
lished five books including Dangerous Ideas on Campus: Sex, Conspiracy, and Academic Freedom in the Age of JFK and Kansas
City vs. Oakland: The Bitter Sports Rivalry That Defined an Era.

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 August 20, 2024  Matthew Ehrlich  history

3 thoughts on ““Deceit, delusion, and a classic medical fraud”: An excerpt from a new book about
a cancer treatment hoax”

kismet
August 20, 2024 at 1:54 pm

I would wager, however, that Krebiozen is a senolytic.

Wzrd1
August 21, 2024 at 7:39 am

Fair enough, given oxygen is also senolytic. As is everything other than anti-time, which alas, does not exist.
Especially given that the “treatment” was repeatedly verified as mineral oil. Might as well be administered by a chap that
dances around with a bone through his nose, which of course would explain the dancing.
I’d dance about too and spout nonsense if I managed to get a bone through my nose.

Chadwick
August 21, 2024 at 8:00 am

You ommited the Creatine Monohydrate in the mineral oil (medium).

These days the jury goes back and forth- some think it encourages metastasis of colorectal and breast cancer. Others, like
the researchers who conducted this study provided by NIH, believe it’s effects on the ATP cycle have salutatory anti-tumor
effect. (To my knowledge, no one is taking creatine monohydrate in a non-polar or oil delivery medium. As such, KRBZN
may have nerfed those effects, or lengthened residency in the system, or even amplified one effect and hindered the
other.

But your pontificating about bones in noses is… something.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10471797/

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