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For $9.50 what does the patient get? Dr. Durovic says he brought less than a —teaspoonful—two grams—of the whitish powder from Argentina. This would mean that" it" had been extracted from 2,000 horses (costly, because the horses are killed in the process), as Durovic says he gets only about one milligram per horse. And the human dose of Krebiozen is so fantastically minute—only 1/100 of a milligram—that two grams would be enough for 200,000 doses. Durovic has recently announced making his first U.S. batch of 200 mg. from 200 horses.
What Krebiozen is, or even whether exists, has been impossible to establish by impartial analysis because of another whodunit circumstance. In early 1951 Ivy and Durovic were worried about the stuff's keeping qualities. Somebody mentioned casually that perhaps it would keep better in oil. Straightway, Durovic dumped his whole supply into light (pharmaceutical grade, No. 9) mineral oil. The dilution is so great that the presence of the drug can no longer be proved. And of course its chemical composition was smothered under the gusher of oil.
Fungal Process. By all odds, a man of Ivy's standing should have wriggled out of the mess as soon as he found what he was in. But Andrew Ivy is as stubbornly devoted to any cause he espouses as he is to his vigorous Methodist faith. Difficult to deal with he certainly is.
Dr. Ivy has studied the secretive Dr. Durovic's method of injecting into horses a preparation of killed and sterilized fungi,* waiting for the horses' systems to react, then bleeding them and extracting Krebiozen from their blood serum by a highly involved process. He has duplicated the process and has a vial containing a few milligrams of an off-white powder which he believes is identical with Durovic's Krebiozen. Ivy has also worked on Krebiozen's chemistry. It is, he declares, a "tissue hormone" secreted by the RES cells. If Krebiozen is indeed a tissue hormone, he has a better chance of getting it licensed.
Finally, Dr. Ivy has continued to treat patients, usually in his laboratory or office. Through it all, Ivy has amassed data which, he asserts, prove Krebiozen's effectiveness against certain types of cancer. He also relies heavily on the practice of two Chicago physicians (with whom he co-authored a 1956 book): Dr. John F. Pick, a plastic surgeon, and Dr. William F. P. Phillips, a general practitioner.
A burly, down-to-earth pragmatist with an earthy vocabulary, Dr. Phillips, 48, has given Krebiozen to about 300 patients —more than any other physician. He keeps aloof from the charges and countercharges about Krebiozen. He is convinced that Krebiozen helps his patients. But he frankly admits that he cannot be sure. He has neither the training nor the time—, to become a research scientist, he says.
When Hope Is Gone. Medical orthodoxy requires that before a new drug gets a formal, elaborate, wide-scale test, there must be a prima-facie case in its favor from the records of patients already treated. Dr. Ivy's cases are too few for that. The Krebiozen Foundation's records are too sketchy. So, for the New York Post, two newsmen took turns sitting down with Dr. Phillips and going through his cases. From the first 67, it was clear that no conclusive findings as to the value of Krebiozen would emerge even if all 300 were analyzed.