On November 23, the Hofbauers returned from Jamaica. Because written and telephone correspondence had been ignored, on November 29, Richard Sheridan and Diana Fenton, from the Department of Social Services—accompanied by an armed sheriff’s deputy—visited the Hofbauers. Sheridan remembered what happened next: “[Mr. Hofbauer said] that we weren’t going to take his child away unless the Sheriff’s deputy drew his gun and arrested him.” Sheridan told Hofbauer that the state of New York was now in charge of Joey’s care. “I told him there was a [hearing],” recalled Sheridan, “and he said it was illegal because he wasn’t there. I said that this was not the place to be talking about this, and Mr. Hofbauer yelled very loudly that it was the place to be talking about this, and he wanted everybody to know that we were coming to take his son.” Hofbauer was convinced that cancer specialists would only harm Joey. “He said I wanted to take his son and poison [him],” said Sheridan. “He said ‘Do you know what chemotherapy is? It’s nitrogen mustard gas. It was declared illegal in the wars.’”
When the dust settled, the Hofbauers relented. Through their lawyer, they worked out a deal. Joey would be taken to St. Peter’s Hospital with an understanding that no diagnostic tests would be performed and no treatment would be administered—at least not until the case could be heard in family court. Joey stayed at St. Peter’s from November 29 to December 9. But John Hofbauer couldn’t watch silently while his son was denied what he believed was a lifesaving medicine. So he secretly gave Joey several doses of laetrile until “we were threatened with armed guards at the door, at which time we desisted.”
In December 1977, the case of Joey Hofbauer was referred to Saratoga Family Court judge Loren N. Brown, who, much to the dismay of child services, agreed to let the Hofbauers treat their son with laetrile for six months. On one condition: they had to find a licensed physician willing to do it. “I had a situation where I had to find a doctor in a hurry,” recalled Hofbauer, “because everybody was demanding to know who my doctor was.” First, Hofbauer asked Dr. Milton Roberts, in Westchester County. But Roberts worried the case had become “too hot to handle,” so he turned him down. Then Hofbauer asked Michael Schachter, a psychiatrist from Nyack, New York. Schachter agreed, but only if the Hofbauers signed a consent form releasing him of all responsibility: “I agree to undergo care with Michael B. Schachter, MD,” it began. “I understand [that] among the substances, medications, or drugs available [laetrile] may be advised for the purpose of metabolic support. The predominant medical view, including that of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the American Medical Association (AMA) is that this substance [has] no known value [for] the treatment of any disease … I understand that some alleged authorities associated with the FDA and AMA assert that the use of this substance constitutes quackery and amounts to a hoax on the American public. I further understand that American physicians have been indicted in California for the use of this substance. I understand that Dr. Michael Schachter [is] not a cancer specialist and [has] no direct experience with the orthodox cancer therapy modalities of chemotherapy, radiation or surgery [and is] not in a position to advise me as to the relative benefits and risks of those treatments for my condition.” On December 14, John and Mary Hofbauer signed Michael Schachter’s consent form.
Six months later, in June 1978, the court would reconvene to see whether laetrile was working and to determine who would care for Joey Hofbauer: his parents or the state.
Michael Schachter didn’t limit his therapy to laetrile. For the next six months, he also gave Joey raw milk, raw liver juice, cod liver oil, soft-boiled eggs, Staphylococcus phage lysate (staph bacteria infected with a virus), pancreatic enzyme enemas (which partially dissolve the lining of the colon), massive doses of vitamin A (which cause blurred vision, bone pain, and dizziness), a vaccine to prevent “Progenitor cryptocides” (a bacterium believed by a physician named Virginia Livingston to cause all cancers), a vegetarian diet, daily coffee enemas made by adding three heaping tablespoons of regular coffee to one quart of water (coffee enemas had already caused two deaths), seven injections of an “autogenous vaccine” (made from bacteria in Joey’s urine), and Wobe-Mugos enzymes (a combination of several pancreatic enzymes obtained from pigs). None of these therapies had been approved for use in people, and all were arguably in violation of New York State laws on human experimentation. A cancer specialist who later testified at Joey’s trial called it “a witch doctor’s diet.”
In June, six months into Joey’s unconventional treatments, the Saratoga County Department of Social Services, Dr. Michael Schachter, and several cancer specialists appeared before Judge Brown to determine whether Joey’s alternative cancer cures were working. Most damning was the testimony of John Horton, a professor of medicine at Albany Medical College and a board-certified cancer specialist, who had recently examined Joey. “On feeling the left side of the neck there was a [large] lymph node under the angle of the jaw,” he said, “and just below that another [large] lymph node [and] a string of lymph nodes coming down the neck as far as the clavicle [collarbone].” At the time of his diagnosis, Joey Hofbauer had had one swollen lymph gland; now he had seventeen. Dr. Anthony Tartaglia, a board-certified hematologist and chief of medicine at St. Peter’s Hospital, had also examined Joey. “There is no question in my mind that the extent of Hodgkin’s disease in [Joey] is much greater than when I examined him in December,” he said. Tartaglia added that the laetrile that Joey had received was the “equivalent of not getting any treatment.”
There were other worrisome signs. Tests showed that Joey had liver damage, most likely caused by dangerously high doses of vitamin A. Also, Schachter apparently didn’t realize that Joey’s “occasional nausea and abdominal cramps” were probably caused by cyanide poisoning from large doses of laetrile, having never obtained blood cyanide levels to check it out.
Unlike the cancer specialists who had examined Joey, Michael Schachter believed his program was working. “I think he is doing very, very well,” he said. “I’m just not as concerned about these lymph nodes in the neck as the other physicians. I feel that [laetrile and metabolic therapy] will be playing a major role in the way medicine is practiced over the next five to ten to fifteen years and consequently I would say that his treatment has been more than adequate, it has been superior.” The Hofbauers brought in their own experts—specifically, laetrile promoter Hans Hoefer-Janker; laetrile’s inventor, Ernest Krebs Jr.; and Marco Brown, who ran the Fairfield Medical Center, in Jamaica. On July 5, Judge Brown ruled in favor of the parents, stating that they were “concerned and loving” and that Dr. Schachter was “duly licensed.”
Although the cancer had spread into his neck, Joey was in the early stages of Hodgkin’s disease. And the Saratoga Department of Social Services wasn’t giving up. There was still time. Unfortunately, public sentiment was turning in favor of laetrile, making it harder and harder for Joey to get the medicines he needed to save his life.
By the end of the 1970s, laetrile wasn’t just a drug; it was a social movement.
Led by Robert Bradford, of Los Altos, California, the John Birch Society—an ultraconservative organization dedicated to eliminating government regulations—founded the Committee for Freedom of Choice in Cancer Therapy. By 1977 the committee claimed five hundred chapters and thirty-five thousand members. Committee members influenced popular television programs like 60 Minutes, magazines like Newsweek, and commentators like James Kilpatrick, all of whom promoted the wonders of laetrile. Almost singlehandedly, they successfully rallied public support for the drug. In 1976, Alaska became the first state to legalize both the manufacture and sale of laetrile; by 1978 fourteen states had followed; by