In the 1950s, many were loath to say the word “cancer.” A diagnosis left patients searching for a cure, any cure. Matthew Erlich’s “The Kreboizen Hoax” discusses the degree to which people will search for a miracle cure to what has been called “the emperor of all maladies.”

The book features the generalized mistrust people have toward the medical community and how quacks can gain a foothold. It traces the long history of quackery in the United States and how easy misinformation (and disinformation) can gain a foothold. This isn’t just a story about cancer treatment hoaxes, but a more generalized story about how people react when facing an illness they believe is a death sentence.

I love a good medical or medicine-related history and have several in my classroom. This one is particularly dense, but students would find the introduction interesting as it is a thorough outline of the story.

This book is great for people who enjoy medical histories or stories about the 1950s and 1960s.

I received an advance review copy for free from NetGalley and University of Illinois Press, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

This was a WILD ride. I always enjoy non-fiction medical books about interesting cases that have happened or diseases that have been discovered or accidents that have occurred in labs. This was slightly different than anything I’ve ever read b/c this whole book is based on a medication that truly never existed, but had a doctor literally putting his career and intellect on the line.

Dr. Ivy seems to be a brilliant doctor, and he seems to genuinely care about finding a cure for cancer which is what got him obsessed with krebozian. The problem is, Dr. Ivy was not a cancer researcher, so he really wasn’t qualified to be testing this medicine on patients. He didn’t seem to cause any harm as the medicine didn’t seem to be anything dangerous, but the fact that he was willing to keep using a drug that he had absolutely no idea what was in it, seems extremely reckless.

The creators of krebiozan definitely seemed to be con artists looking for a mark and found one in Dr. Ivy. The only thing I found frustrating about this book is that I felt like we never truly found out what krebozian was. The FDA never got a large enough sample to do multiple tests. But that didn’t ruin the book for me, it still provided a lot of detailed information to keep it quite interesting.

This book is a history about Krebiozen, an alleged cure for cancer that was famous in the '50s, the subject of protest and litigation in the '60s, and faded to nothing in the '70s as the grifters cashed out and got out. Central to the story is Doctor Andrew Ivy, a physiologist with polymath-like accomplishments, who was…well, what exactly was Ivy doing is a question that the author tries to get at.

Ivy was an advocate of Krebiozen and fought for its acceptance. (He was not its inventor.) Many of his contemporaries saw through it, including George Stoddard, the president of University of Illinois, where Ivy worked. Ivy would draw flack from organizations, including the AMA and FDA, over Krebiozen. He would draw support from a much wider base of individuals. And that is what makes this book so good.

The author explains this story in the context of a broader history, elevating the book to something other than an (admittedly fun) story of a con job over a failed nostrum. Unlike some hoaxes, the science is never there. Instead, Krebiozen gets tied into what we would now recognize as the culture wars, as well as the Chicago Machine, with a plotline driven by the rise of the administrative state and its successes, particularly the FDA, but also the distrust in the administrative state that inspired, by people in desperate health situations but also by politicians willing to use any fracture for votes.

And unlike many hoaxes, there is the frustrating figure of Ivy, a skeptic for other snake oil who bought into this one, who would often profess restraint while going along with the hype, and who, like Krebiozen itself, fades as opposed to blows up.

The book is great, in contention for best of the year for me. The writing is no-nonsense. The author has a good sense for how to level and layer detail, what to focus on, when, and how much, to make the reading both easy and comprehensive. The underlying research is detailed. The story has resonances in all manner of medical hoaxes - Theranos, the vaccine theory of autism, Ivermectin- while being distinct. The author draws useful comparisons to other scams and hoaxes enough to make the point and without overstating any argument. The book is light on conclusions, but that is due to the intractability of the problems, and the competing values of elites, anti-elites, the democratic process, and human suffering.

More than a book about a hoax, it is a book investigating the reasons hoaxes exist. With surprise appearances from Rachel Carlson, Gloria Swanson, and Vito Marzullo.

My thanks to the author, Matthew C. Ehrlich, for writing the book, and to the publisher, 3 Fields Books, for making the ARC available to me.