Why a Potential New Cancer Treatment Was Covered Up

The War On Cancer, launched in the early 1970s, led to an influx of new ideas in fighting the disease. Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, America's leading cancer research center at the time, was assigned the task of testing an unconventional therapy called “Laetrile”  to determine if it was a legitimate therapy. Ralph W. Moss was hired as a science writer at Sloan-Kettering in 1974, and one of his first assignments was to write a biography about Dr. Kanematsu Sugiura, one of the Center’s leading research scientists and the original co-inventor of chemotherapy. Moss discovered that Dr. Sugiura had been studying “Laetrile” in laboratory mice, with unexpectedly positive results. Moss tells how he worked as a loyal employee at Sloan-Kettering while at the same time helping to anonymously leak information about “Laetrile” to the American public. Moss is the subject of the documentary “Second Opinion,” which opens August 29 at the Cinema Village.