While the substance has been marketed as a cure for cancer, originally sold for thousands of dollars per dose in the 1950s and early '60s, Krebiozen is not known to possess any therapeutic value.
[4] Krebiozen was initially promoted by Stevan Durovic, a Yugoslavian physician who claimed that the substance came from horse serum inoculated with Actinomyces bovis.
His claims were backed by Andrew Conway Ivy, a prominent physiologist, and by several politicians including Senator Paul Douglas (D-IL).
However, the FDA spectrophotometry team, led by Alma Levant Hayden, proved the samples consisted only of creatine monohydrate, a simple amino acid, sometimes dissolved in mineral oil.
[1][2][5][7][9] When the FDA went back to test previously acquired samples of Krebiozen, they found that many lacked even creatine, and consisted solely of mineral oil with no discernible active ingredients.