I have watched Myrl Jeffcoat do 180 degree twirls since early 2002 ...
so when I read her "pus or poison" comments about laetrile
(coincidentally one of the targets of the Quackwatch / Anti-alt Med
Brigade) ... I was reminded of her earlier comments on the same
subject.

On August 1, 2001, Myrl discussed fondly how her Mother had lived for
more than 20 years after her uterine cancer diagnosis ... without
chemo, radiation, nor surgery ... and was a devotee of apricot pits,
aka laetrile. She was justifiably very grateful that she had died pain
free.

EXCERPT:" Here's what I know about the 20+ years that my mother lived
with cancer.  She was active, strong (very strong), and she was
without pain."  

(see full text below.)

http://groups.google.com/group/misc.kids.health/browse_frm/thread/5345a73520604e
8f/63c92e96f327ee35?lnk=st&q=laetrile+myrl#63c92e96f327ee35

Later ... in a venomous email using the Quackwatch / Snake-oil Model
of attack ... she now  seems to blame laetrile for her mother's death
... and never mentions that her mother died pain free. In fact, in
this "after Quackwatch / Probert" thread ... her story is twisted and
she seems to have been coached to change her story and attack laetrile
now instead of the gratitude she had shown pre-Quackwatch.

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.support.breast-implant/msg/8ae029c3bce6a1a6?d
mode=source

It is my belief ... after watching Myrl's attacks on me for 6 years
... that when she joined with my 3 losing plaintiffs to attack and
stalk me ... she also joined in their various, pharma backed hate
attacks on various alternatives. Myrl now screams at alt healers as
QUACKS ... and promotes non board certified, vaccination promoter,
Barrett. She too, has become a veritable fountain of propaganda about
Gardasil.

Here is Myrl BEFORE being quackwatched.

http://groups.google.com/group/misc.kids.health/browse_frm/thread/5345a73520604e
8f/63c92e96f327ee35?lnk=st&q=laetrile+myrl#63c92e96f327ee35

I know a little about laetrile from my mother's experiences form the
1950s until 1975.  My mother happened to be one of the first health
food devotees that shuffled across this planet, when Adele Davis'
book, "Let's Get Well," hit the shelves in the mid 1960s.  My mother
already had been trying certain remedies that she'd been taking since
about 1954 or so, when she was first diagnosed with uterine cancer.
My mother was totally against invasive treatments, and never had a
hysterectomy, chemo or radiation.  I was only about eleven when she
was originally diagnosed, and I remember being traumatized as a kid,
because no one treated cancer lightly back then, and they especially
didn't try to "eat" their way out of it with food. . .nutritious or
not.

We had two apricot trees in the back yard, and my mother would harvest
the seeds/pits from the apricots and eat the inner parts of the seed
(laetrile), she also made teas out of things that would choke a horse
to drink.

Here's what I know about the 20+ years that my mother lived with
cancer.  She was active, strong (very strong), and she was without
pain.

She buried two husbands after she was diagnosed. . .My father, and
then after re-marriage my step father.  She led a happy and productive
life, with much joy, and saw many grandchildren born (including my own
children).  She died in 1975 at the age of 65 years of age.  When I
had put her on a plane to visit my sister in Alaska, 3 weeks prior to
her death, she seemed in good health, but was complaining a little of
a burning pain in her back.  She had developed the pain earlier that
summer.  My sister called about 10 days into the visit with her, and
said my mother had been hospitalized in Anchorage.  Mom had collapsed
in her home.  At first they thought she had the flu and vertigo,
because she was so dizzy.  But closer scrutiny, showed that my
mother's cancer had metastasized, and was in her spine, brain, and
liver now too.  But she was still remarkably with out much pain or
discomfort.

The doctors could not believe that my mother had boarded a plane just
10 days prior. . .But what really blew them away was the fact my
mother owned two (two story) appartment houses, and had painted the
exterior of them herself using a brush.  Yup, that's no sprayer, and
no rollers.  She told me the hardest part was moving the ladder.  Even
though she was just 5'2" and weighed 105 lbs throughout her life (and
until her death), she had managed the painting in the month preceding
her trip.

We brought mom home to Sacramento, because she begged to come back to
where her friends and the majority of her family were.  She lasted
just one week after she returned.  We had immediately placed her in
Sutter Hospital here, and an oncologist immediately started putting
mom through endless batteries of tests, spinal taps, etc.  We begged
him not to. . .The doctors in Anchorage, had told us there would
likely only be 3 weeks or so of life left anyway.  At that point, we
couldn't seem to get the doctor to stop, and allow her to just be
comfortable. . .and I feel I really let my mother down by not being
able to do so.  The only pain that she ever really felt was from the
endless spinal taps, and what ever testing she was being put through.

After she passed, my sister and I were sitting in the funeral home,
when the the oncologist (pompous a.s) called.  He was desperately
trying to find us because he wanted to do an autopsy.  "What is it
your trying to find out?" I asked. "We want to know why your mother
experienced no pain, when she was so riddled with cancer." He said.

"Well, I believe it was because my mother ate apricot pits," I said.
But pompous a.s already had his mind made up, and said, "Oh, it
couldn't possibly be that." I then knew, there was no way this jerk
was going to perform an autopsy on my mother with an open mind to
findings. . .and my sister and I both declined his request.  He wrote
on her death certificate that the initial uterine cancer was of
relatively short duration (about 18 months or so), and that distresses
me, because all of our family and friends know otherwise.

In the end, I feel if my mother had had the surgery (hysterectomy)
back in the 1950s, and maybe forgone the chemo and the radiation, but
tried a few things that she was into of the alternative methods, she
may have been with us a lot longer than she was.  Again, it's about
using all the medical tools at your disposal, both traditional and
non-traditional.  I find it difficult thinking of non-traditional in
that light, because herbal remedies have been with mankind a whole lot
longer, and are more traditional than the invasive "traditional"
methods we practice predominantly in this country.  Herbs/plants
actually make up more than 1/3 of the ingredients that are in our
pharmaseudicals that we pay the big bucks to our drug companies for.

I do have concerns that the laetrile may have gotten to my mother's
liver, because of the arsenic content. . .but she did have 20+ good
years after her original diagnosis, and I think that chemo and
radiation back then would not have left her unscathed either.  The
bottom line is my mother's way left her in control of her life.
Medicine in this society is patriarical, and it also makes a lot of
undeserving people and corporations very very wealthy.  I wouldn't
mind so much, but I see much medicine that isn't serving any of us
well. . .and yes, it's the year 2001, a full 26 years since my
mother's death, and we don't have a cure yet!

Myrl