Ernest T. Krebs, Jr. (Discoverer of B17)

Ernest T. Krebs, Jr. Biography

Ernest T. Krebs Jr., is a prominent biochemist from San Francisco. He is widely recognized as the co-discoverer with his father of Vitamin B-17, commonly known as Laetrile or Amygdalin, for the control of cancer. Also with his father, he discovered another of the B vitamins -- B-15 or pangamic acid. In the 1930’s and 1940’s he studied and expanded the use and knowledge of pancreatic enzymes, particularly Chymotrypsin, in the treatment of cancer as originated by Dr. John Beard at the University of Edinburgh, nearly 70 years ago.

In 1945 he was instrumental in founding the John Beard Memorial Foundation to develop and apply the Berdian thesis of cancer on which his work with both the pancreatic enzymes and Laetrile has been based.

In 1950 he perceived that the cyanide that was safely bound in the molecules of Laetrile should be released by enzymes present at the site of the malignant cells; the free cyanide should then destroy the cancer. Now he could understand why his father Ernest T. Krebs, Sr., M.D., had had some good results on cancer with an apricot kernel extract more than 20 years earlier because he knew that apricot kernels contained Laetrile.

Ernest krebs, Jr. was born in Carson City, Nevada. From 1938 to ‘41 he was a student of the Hahnemann Medical College in Philadelphia, Pa. He received his A.B. degree from the University of Illinois in 1942. He was a graduate student at the University of California in Berkeley from 1943 to 1945 and did research work in pharmacy from 1942 to 1945.

Among the works he has authored are the "Unitarian or Trophoblastic Thesis of Cancer" and "The Nitrilosides (Vitamin B-17) -- Their Nature, Occurrence and Metabolic Significance (Antineoplastic Vitamin B-17)".