A couple of days ago, I wondered how on earth cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski could still be operating as usual, luring the families of desperate cancer patients like an 11-year-old girl with medulloblastoma named Demi Knight. She is from Louth in Lincolnshire in the UK, and the false hope peddled by Burzynski led her family to launch a fundraising campaign to come up with £150,000 to pay for Burzynski’s “miracle cure” that isn’t known as antineoplastons (ANPs).
The family’s effort was aided and abetted by the UK press, specifically Rebecca Curley from The Sun, who did a story entitled RACE AGAINST TIME: Demi Knight’s desperate bid to raise £150k for US treatment after being struck down with brain cancer at 11 , Phoebe Southworth of The Daily Mail, whose story was entitled Devastated mother has race against time to raise £150,000 to take her 11-year-old daughter with cancer to America for potentially life-saving treatment, and James Silcocks of the Louth Leader, whose story is entitled ‘I will never give up on my daughter’: Louth family’s plea for £150,000 life-saving treatment. The stories are virtually indistinguishable from each other. All three portray the plight of Demi and the efforts of her mother Mel Knight to save her life as a human interest story in which the family is fighting against all odds to raise enough money to travel to Houston and be treated by Stanislaw Burzynski. In all three stories, the Burzynski Clinic is portrayed as Demi’s last hope for survival, rather than the quack cancer clinic that it is. In all three stories, an unnamed child with brain cancer who supposedly went to the Burzynski Clinic and survived is credulously repeated. In all three stories, link to the Knights’ GoFundMe page and Facebook page are included.
Apparently, these efforts have borne fruit. From a story by Jamie Waller in the Grimsby-Telegraph:
Young cancer patient Demi Knight may soon be able to begin treatment for her life-threatening cancer thanks to a huge wave of online donations.
Her GoFundMe page now stands at nearly £25,000 thanks to more than 1000 generous supporters.
Since the NHS is unable to do anything for her aggressive brain tumour, 11-year-old Demi’s only hope is an experimental treatment at a Texas clinic – and her family have been begging for help from readers.
Her mum Mel says that while the donations won’t cover all of the costs, it should be enough for Demi to start treatment.
“It was so overwhelming to see so much money come in. There are lots of really generous people who have made donations, and we can’t thank them enough,” she said.
“We are waiting for our visas for America to come through which should be today or tomorrow, and then the clinic will help us arrange our trip. We could be over there by next week.”
So here we go again. As I said before, I really do feel as though it were 2012, a year when I wrote about a number of these stories, in which the families of patients with terminal cancer, usually brain cancer, were enticed into carrying out similar fundraisers to raise similarly huge amounts of money in order to bring their loved ones to Houston to be treated with Burzynski’s toxic witches’ brew of antineoplastons. These stories rarely ended well.
I get it. I really do. I understand, as much as anyone, the desperation that takes hold of a family of a terminally ill cancer patient. Nine years ago, my wife and I watched my mother-in-law’s decline and death from metastatic breast cancer. So I understand how a family would be willing to do anything to save their loved one. True, the bond between parent and child is even stronger, but nonetheless I have a pretty good idea
And if that isn’t enough, there are the patients I’ve written about. There have been so many patients. I know I just listed them two days ago, but I feel obligated to list them again, in order to emphasize just how long Burzynski has been peddling false hope to patients: Rene Louis, Shana Pulkinen, Jessica Marie Hahn, Kelli Richmond, Olivia Bianco, Billie Bainbridge, Rachael Mackey, Amelia Saunders (whose father actually wrote to me), Seán Ó’Laighin, Hannah Bradley, Laura Hymas, Sheila Herron, Christina Lanzoni (Fabio’s sister), Neil Fachon, Stephanie O’Halloran, Liza Cozad (wife of Sammy Hagar’s drummer David Lauser), and McKenzie Lowe.
And if that’s still not enough, Bob Blaskiewicz has chronicled many, many more stories of Burzynski’s preying on cancer patients. Through it all, I keep seeing horrible news stories about Burzynski, chock full of false balance.
I also get how a reporter could find a story like this irresistible. I mean, look at Demi. She’s a sweet, adorable kid with a horrible disease. Who wouldn’t want to do everything he or she could to save her life? It’s also an irresistible human interest story, a story of humans fighting against all odds to save the life of a child. Here’s the problem, though. Burzynski won’t help these children (and adults). His antineoplastons have never been shown to have significant anticancer activity in humans, no matter how much Burzynski tries to spin negative clinical trials as positive and publishes incredibly unimpressive results, but they do produce significant toxicity in the form of hypernatremia (too much sodium in the blood), including at least one death. Stories that do not put Burzysnki’s true results into context are a crime against cancer patients, and the editors who commission them and make sure that they are spun as optimistic human interest stories about families overcoming all odds), and the reporters who write them are complicit in Burzynski’s scam. I know they mean well, at least most of them, but that is no excuse.
Indeed, Burzynski’s whole business model relies on the kindness of strangers. Most people can’t come up with hundreds of thousands of dollars or pounds to pay for Burzynski to administer his antineoplastons. Even after draining their bank accounts and even selling their houses, most people just don’t have that kind of money. Enter fundraising, which has become a lot easier with the dawn of social media and websites like GoFundMe. The kindness of strangers does the rest, and it all benefits Burzynski, while the donors feel that they’re doing something good for a desperately sick child. (They aren’t.) This isn’t a problem just with Burzynski. As I’ve pointed out before, quack German cancer clinics like Hallwang Clinic do the very same thing, as do Mexican quack clinics, and all too frequently the press publishes stories just like the ones for Burzynski to assist in the fundraising.
If there’s one thing about cancer quackery that infuriates me besides how it leads dying patients to waste the last months of their lives desperately begging for money is how it harnesses the goodness of human beings, who only want to help a dying patient, and uses it to enrich people like Stanislaw Burzynski.
74 replies on “How is it that in 2018 cancer Stanislaw Burzynski is still preying on desperate cancer patients? (Update)”
is there any positive things that this bloke has been seen to be proven correct on over all these years …how many of his clients have passed over the years???how do we know whats really going on ????
Exactly. He’s never reported on a single one of his clinical trials. You have to report the results of trials, whether they worked or not. But Burzynski didn’t even bother to keep good enough records for someone else to report the results of his “trials”. So that tells me that the results are negative and he can’t admit it doesn’t work.
He’s a maverick doctor who’s cash strapped because Big Pharma took all his money and redistributed it to the evil skeptics. Big Pharma also stole all his trial reports too, which strangely look like treatment bills. So that’s why he’s stuck in a limbo and can’t release the wonderful cancer-crushing techniques to the world.
Why don’t you look at this and then decide. If I had brain cancer and was going to die or have chemo,radiation, and all the other poisons… I’d rather spend the money and go to Texas.
That’s your choice, Rose. But how do you decide which doctor to drain your life savings and give it away to so they can experiment on you?
Personally, I would pick someone who at least is publishing results so others can benefit from my contribution.
Someone posted this appeal to a truck drivers’ forum I belong to and I responded that Burzynski is a charlatan and his ‘therapy’ is known not to work. The OP responded by calling me a “wank stain” and a pathetic excuse for a man and saying he hoped nobody in my family were ever in that situation. Clearly the false hope and ignorance are widespread. Any money raised would be better spent on a trip to Disneyland. At least she could have some fun rather than suffering in a Texas quack’s clinic and die anyway, thousands of miles from home.
I suspect most people would say that if Burzynski were such an atrocious physician then he wouldn’t be doing the “cancer treatments” he does because the medical authorities would have stopped him. Therein is the problem. Those responsible for protecting the public have failed.
Yeah, that’s the problem with these family fundraising drives to send cancer patients to be treated by quacks. If you tell the truth and point out to the people supporting them that the treatment they’re raising money to help a patient pay for is quackery, they don’t want to hear it and react very negatively. It matters little how politely you do it or how hard you try not to be critical or in any way imply that the people raising the money have been duped. They will react…badly. You will be the villain. Journalists who are criticized for uncritically promoting these sorts of fundraisers are even more hostile to criticism. Hell, one journalist whom I criticized for just being too “balanced” in her treatment of Burzynski and framing the story of one of these patients (this time an American) as a desperate teen battling the FDA to save his life, reacted very badly, blocked me on Twitter, and wrote me a scathing e-mail.
When it comes to journalists, at least, I’m tired of pussyfooting around, though, which is why I was rather…Insolent…in this post.
Answer a fool, guess what happens.
Zero credit for good intentions.
We’ve got to try another approach because simply pointing out how predatory this guy is won’t work. What is this guy’s success rate? Can we talk about the multitudes of anecdotes of those who suffered horribly through the clinic’s utter malpractice?
I see that the story has been picked up by another bastion of truth and responsible reporting in the form of The Sun, a paper whose main claim to fame is that for many years it featured a topless lady on page 3.
As depressing as the latest development is I have to say I’m not surprised in the least. Tales of woe featuring suffering children with appeals for money tend to be rather effective (and not without good reason – being charitable to our fellow humans and tiny humans is no bad thing at all) it’s just a shame that in this case the money is being unwittingly used to further the bank balance and ego of a borderline unhinged and dangerous quack. It would be nice to see a follow up piece pointing out that Stan is a dangerous fraud but it will never happen – neither of the “news”papers that have published this story would dare backpedal on it now as they would likely risk their readership getting angry and blaming them for encouraging them to donate money that would be given to a charlatan. So instead they will continue to ride that bronco for the duration.
Here’s one concrete thing that can be done to combat credulous reporting on quackery.
Every time one of these bogus stories appear (or before they are written/posted, on a preemptive basis), have one of the science-based medicine/skeptic organizations contact the offending publication/website/TV/radio station to point out the harm done by such stories, and to offer their services in consultation, to point out the problems with such therapies and to guide reporters to experts in the field. It couldn’t hurt for editors to know they have a go-to source every time a dubious therapy/scam artist “makes news”.
This service would eliminate the excuse that news organizations don’t have the money to keep science/health reporters on staff.
Yesterday I contacted the sports editor of our local paper to advise him that a completely credulous story about Jack Nicklaus and his supposedly successful stem cell injections for back and shoulder pain needed some balance, to point out that such injections are still highly experimental and aren’t backed by solid evidence. Since Nicklaus is such an icon, I suspect reporters don’t want to be seen as challenging him, but polite skepticism is highly warranted here (I provided links to several online articles about the hazards and unproven aspects of stem cell treatments, including an SBM article by Dr. G.).
Has no British newspaper picked up the dark side of this? They really should have learned. Or, they need more people like Brian Deer.
The British tabloid press and facts seldom mix. Typically they, also, have the ethics of a rabid weasel.
At times they make Fox News look like a bastion of truth and fair reporting.
Here is one list of the Daily Mail’s “things that cause cancer” articles. http://www.anorak.co.uk/288298/tabloids/the-daily-mails-list-of-things-that-give-you-cancer-from-a-to-z.html.
Wow. I stopped at B after air travel and bar-b-q.
You can play ‘Joe Jackson – Cancer’ with that list.
Daily Fail struck such a chord with Wikipedia editors, remember?
I’ll give you three guesses who owns The Sun
You need to appreciate that tabloids like the Daily Fail and the Sun market to people who are the most uninformed in society, the kind of people who post things on their facebook like “white van seen driving slowly in my neighborhood today, watch your kids!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” .
Their entire business model preys on these peoples uninformed status, they know they are doing it too.
Burzynki’s arrogance can be summed up by the fact that he’s still presenting ANPs as an “experimental” treatment after FORTY years of experiments.
That’s his racket. The only way he can legally offer ANP therapy is to bill it as experimental. And he (probably with the help of his lawyers) has found loophole after loophole that allow him to do this after so many decades of experiments.
I think that by now he knows it’s a scam. He operates in ways I would expect a scammer to operate, and not in ways I would expect a true believer to operate.
And no verifiable results. No results at all other than death and poverty for his victims.
AND those forty years of experiments with several K of cash per pop. How can they still be an experimental treatment at this point if Burzynski is sitting on so much cash? People who hoard money like this infuriate me, but not as much a the action of hoarding money after bankrupting and/or killing people. And the death isn’t swift either.
Cali, SB is rather sitting IN his millions rather than on it. He has an estate worth many millions. The Tanoro Blog covers some of the details:
http://www.tanoro.com/blog/05132012-stanislaw-burzynski-millionaire
Christ this man is filthy rich. How is he able to make so much money directly killing people???
It makes it less and less satisfying to cling to one’s amateur status.
I think part of the problem lies in the fact that it’s in America . We Canadians are accustomed to thinking that the Americans are protected by the FDA and we understand that the Mexican clinics that you hear about often suspect. We have this touching faith that if it wasn’t legit it wouldn’t be allowed when it’s in the USA.
For a long time, Canada had what sounds like a Burzynski equivalent (or worse) – the Canadian Cancer Research Group. From Quackwatch:
“For several years, CCRG’s online “interview” form asked whether the prospective client had”general interest” in chemotherapy, radiotherapy, surgery, immunotherapy, vaccine therapy and/or homeopathy and/or “specific interest” in antineoplaston therapy, Livingston therapy, Evers therapy, 714x, Issels’ whole body therapy, Hoxsey therapy, hydrazine sulfate, Revici therapy, tumour vaccines, shark cartilage, Di Bella therapy, Kelly therapy, Laetrile, Gerson therapy, Essiac, Immuno-Augmentative Therapy (IAT), American Biologics therapy, Iscador, Macrobiotics, oxygen therapy, hyperthermia, chelation therapy, DMSO therapy, live-cell therapy, Aboriginal therapies, vitamin therapy, laser resonance, bio-electric therapies, herbal therapy, and Nieper therapy. No method in the “specific interest” list has been proven effective.”
https://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/ccrg.html
It sounds like the organization (or at least its website) became inactive in 2014.
Trivia true fact: William O’Neill, the late founder and president of CCRG, was the first quack to “out” Orac. He sent e-mails to my then cancer center director, department chair, and division chief threatening legal action. This was less than six months after I had started the Blogspot version of Respectful Insolence. I admit, I was terrified. Then I discovered that no one really cared. At a department function, my department chair even characterized O’Neill as a “bully.” The next time O’Neill wrote threatening me, I cc’ed my response to—you guessed it—my then cancer center director, department chair, and division chief to make the point that they knew and didn’t care.
Well, were I was a clinic director, I would have promptly Promoted whoever that Orac guy is, because he’s obviously so devoted to his work that he keeps working at it in his spare time. I’d also let the harasser know that they inspired me to do said the promotion.
I’d see if the harasser it has any assets or incime, and wait for the enraged response so that my in-house legal team could could get some practice and collect some cash for the hospital.
Dear Orac,
How many long term survivors have you treated? How many of them have had no side effects? How much money does it cost to go through chemotherapy? Radiation? Surgery? Have you ever seen the people suffering that are going through chemo? Radiation? Surgery? Have you ever had a patient not make it? Do you still get paid if they die? What about the clinic/hospital, do they still get paid if the patient dies? Do you return the money if they die? Do only alternative treatments fail? How many people a year die in the US after going through chemo, radiation, or surgery?
The next thing Canadian Cancer Research Group needs a giant goddamn mansion too.
Looks like I spoke too soon.
The company that absorbed CCRG in Canada, Immune System Management is apparently still in business, urging potential customers to “balance your life through Aminomics”.
Near as I can tell, the company analyzes various amino acid levels in its marks, excuse me, customers, and advises them on how this information can be individualized to treat cancer, diabetes etc. There are of course testimonials.
http://www.aminomics.com/aminomics/
My touching faith that Canada wouldn’t allow this sort of thing has withered. 🙁
If a publication were to try to present a fair summary of the treatment the potential victim was seeking, they’d be lambasted as shitting on the hopes of a desperately ill patient and their desperate family. It would be seen as cruel, even though it would be fair. Any individuals trying to speak against it just get told to bug off, and that they don’t have to donate, so why are they bothered etc.
I think at best, the papers could try to follow up this one case and if/when things go poorly, try to publish stories about that too, as a deterrent to any that may follow.
But then I would imagine the family doesn’t want to be involved because they don’t want to be slammed for having fleeced the public, and they’ve just lost a family member, so it wouldn’t be right to put them in that position blah blah. It would be seen as cruel to “persecute” the family who has already suffered so much, even if your story tried really hard to put the blame where it’s most deserved.
Between a rock and a hard place. Easier to sell the human interest story and move on. Disgusting business model for the clinic, but a successful one.
The closest way to hold the to truth is to present it as “We need to be doing more to fund research into real treatments” angle. Something like “This so-called experimental treatment has an abysmal track record, unproven after decades of trials, but for a family with no options, even a fraction of a percent of a chance is better than nothing.”
No no we can’t whitewash with that “but”, that’s being too fair and undermines the strength of the truth. We need to say “they’re under impression that there is some chance. No matter what happens, however, Stanislaw is bankrupting people while he is living in an estate worth millions while his drugs have been experimental after decades”. Anything that’ll question his conduct and conflict of interest.
Credulous pro athlete/enabling media woo update:
LeBron James had a good game for the Cleveland Cavaliers last night, due in part to his between-games rehab regimen that includes cupping. ESPN describes cupping as something of a fad among NBA players (including James Harden), but nary a mention that it’s nonsense.
Well, even if a raft of amateur players follow in their footsteps, it’s probably not as bad as buying sooper-supplements from the NN or Gary Null stores.
[…] Meanwhile, the Health Complaints Commissioner is investigating Jensen and has issued an interim order not to say he can cure cancer and not to provide any health service as the matter is investigated. If Jensen violates the order, he could face a large fine or up to two years in prison. He could also face a permanent ban. Of course, what I can’t figure out is how Jensen could get away with what he’s been doing for so long. Of course, I ask the same question about Stanislaw Burzynski, who’s been plying his quackery for forty years now. […]
Stanislaw Burzynski is a pioneer. READ his story and how are Government fought him all the way to the Supreme Court. He won !!! The Government took his formula and even planted a spy in his Lab.
Do some Research you Idiots. This is a Globalists site. FAKE NEWS site.
Alex Jones? Is that you?
Your mind must be a scary place as it cooks up all of those conspiracies.
[…] When last I wrote about the cruel sham and scam known as “right-to-try” concocted by the quackery-friendly for-profit hospital chain the Cancer Treatment Centers of America and foisted on gullible legislators by the libertarian propaganda group disguised as a think tank, the Goldwater Institute, it had just passed Congress thanks to a last minute push by Vice President Mike Pence, President Donald Trump, and, of course, the Koch brothers, I warned about how the unscrupulous could use it to profit off of desperate terminally ill patients. Basically, it legalized at the federal level the practice model of cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski, whose antineoplastons had passed phase I testing (which, as incredibly low a bar as it is, is required by right-to-try) and is still in phase 2 clinical trials (also a requirement of right-to-try). Also, as you recall, Burzynski built his fortune charging enormous “management fees” for treatment that could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. It’s a scam he’s been doing for forty years now, and, unbelievably, is still getting away with. […]
Dr Burzynski is the complete opposite of what you portray him to be. You are so committed to find fault that all you do is look for fault. How about if you decided to look at this from the complete opposite perspective. Of course this will never happen as you have buried yourself on a particular side of the fence and are committed to doing what ever you can to ruin his reputation and get as many others as you can to do the same.
Look at what is working, what he has done and the difference he has made to people lives. For example my wife, Hannah Bradley and Jodi Fenton? Both HAD brain tumours and are both alive and well years after being treated by Dr Burzynski. There are so many others people who I met and interviewed.
I would love to meet you and talk to you and try and understand more about why you are totally convinced that you are right. You have never met him, visited his clinic or spoken to the patients who are alive and well.
For the many skeptics here watch the film I made about our journey. http://www.teamhannah.com
PS I wonder if this post will appear on this page??????????
I regard Burzynski as one of the lowest of the low.
If indeed he has go a cure that actually works, then by all of the abundant evidence he is keeping it to himself for his own personal profit – he is callous and greedy. If he does not have anything that works, then he is bilking desperate people. Ether way you look at it, and I can see no other way, he comes out of it very badly. If he doesn’t like being viewed as scum, it is totally within his power to set the record straight. He doesn’t. The available conclusion is that he can’t.
First off, as I’ve always said, I’m happy to hear that Hannah is doing well. I’ve never said anything different, and I wish her (and you) only the best.
I did get your email but hadn’t gotten around to answering it. Since you decided to post it in the comments publicly, I’ll respond publicly.
As for the rest, Bob is right. You’re experiencing survivor bias. Hannah, whether you realize it or not, is an outlier. She is not a typical patient of Burzynski’s, the vast majority of whom with brain cancer’s like Hannah’s have died. Basically, here’s the issue. Dr. Burzynski has never demonstrated in a clinical trial that his antineoplastons improve overall survival, much less cure brain cancers. Yet he still charges hundreds of thousands of dollars in “fees” to administer them. That was incredibly unethical five years ago. It remains incredibly unethical in 2018, and in those five years nothing has happened to change my opinion of Dr. Burzynski.
How many of the dead patients you talk to, Pete? Ah, survivorship bias strikes again. I am delighted to hear that Hannah is doing well, by the way. Full stop.
Dear Orac,
How many of them have side effects after treatment? How many of your patients have died? How much money are you/your hospital/clinic paid each time you treat a patient? How many brain cancer survivors have you successfully treated with long term success without any lasting side effects? I know you specialize in breast cancer… so zero, right? Have you ever seen a person die while going through chemotherapy? Have you ever seen the suffering and torment? How about radiation…ever seen that? Ever have anyone not make it through surgery? Ever seen a brain cancer or any cancer patient die using chemo or radiation or surgery for treatment? How many people die each year that have gone through chemo/radiation/surgery? Do only alternative medicines fail? Do you still get paid as a medical doctor if your patient dies after undergoing chemo/radiation/surgery? Does the hospital/clinic get paid too if they die? Ever gone against the grain? Answer if you can…
Dear Orac,
How many long term survivors have you treated? How many of them have had no side effects? How much money does it cost to go through chemotherapy? Radiation? Surgery? Have you ever seen the people suffering that are going through chemo? Radiation? Surgery? Have you ever had a patient not make it? Do you still get paid if they die? What about the clinic/hospital, do they still get paid if the patient dies? Do you return the money if they die? Do only alternative treatments fail? How many people a year die in the US after going through chemo, radiation, or surgery?
You can call me Ray, you can call me Jay, but you doesn’t have to call me Johnson.
Jason,
Can I ask you a question, mostly to be sure you understand both contexts (Orac’s context and Burzynski’s context)?
have you ever saw in your life any medical doctor guaranteeing 100% survival rate after any medical procedure?
Alain
Alain,
The reason I asked these questions are because I was a brain cancer patient who went to or consulted with multiple clinics including Johns Hopkins, MD Anderson, University of Michigan, Detroit Harper, and the Mayo Clinic and non of them could produce living proof that their recommendations worked…all recommended chemo/radiation in different types. Dr. Burzynski was the only one to have any living proof! He did not ever guarantee 100% I would be cured…no one will do that! But he had living proof without detrimental results! NOW I am cancer free and alive for 17 years after being diagnosed and most places only gave me a few months to live…but not Dr. Burzynski. I am living proof his medicine works. On top of that…all the other clinics said I would never have children and my wife is pregnant with our 4th! Priceless! I am ALIVE!!!!!! Does that answer your question? My good friend growing up just died of brain cancer and he did chemo and surgery!
Once again, Dr. Burzysnki never guaranteed I would be cured. But his medicine was non-toxic and effective!
Jason,
Here’s the context: Burzynski is not bound by HIPPA. All the others medical doctors you met are bound by HIPPA and thus, that answer your question as to why any of these other medical doctor could not produce any living proof.
It absolutely does not implicate any lack of effectiveness from regular treatment.
Now, again, why look into the financial aspect of regular SBM treatment when the issue you had with all the other cancer centers is with the law and you were unaware of it?
Alain
HIPAA. And yes, of course he is. How seriously this is taken is anybody’s guess.
Alain,
He is bound by HIPPA. He is regulated by the FDA. He is in a clinical trial that the FDA does not want him to succeed in. Most chemotherapy drugs are passed much quicker because they are not drugs approved to cure cancer…they are passed as drugs that prolong life. All the other doctors told me if I did their treatments at best I would live one year. They had no survivors. It was not a matter of HIPPA.
Oh, for fuck’s sake, do you think everybody here just fell off the turnip truck? And again: HIPAA.
Narad,
Do you think the FDA wants Burzynski to succeed? What does HIPPA have to do with proving you have success? If you had cancer and were cured by a doctor wouldn’t you gladly tell your story? Research Burzynski’s long battle with the FDA. These doctors told me they had no survivors…some told me to make a bucket list because my days were very limited.
He already has succeeded: The piss-magic has made him a fortune while leaving a trail of bodies behind.
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blockquote>What does HIPPA have to do with proving you have success?
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blockquote>
Nothing, but it would aggravate me less if you could fucking spell it properly.
Narad,
It appears you are angry over spelling errors….HIPAA. Does it really change the content? The truth is that every cancer clinic in America has made millions! This is a big business! Why does it bother you so bad that any doctor makes a lot of money if they are helping people? Are you upset about the amount of money made each year in America by the pharmaceutical companies making chemo that cost literally billions of dollars? Upset by the amount of people that die each year taking chemo? A LOT LARGER TRAIL OF BODIES! AND Yes, Dr. Burzynski did succeed because I am alive as well as a lot of other people! Most people that don’t succeed at his clinic have already failed chemo and/or radiation. The FDA requires most people who are treated by him to have had chemo or radiation first without success.
Bursynski has failed for a great many years to do anything remotely resembling a proper clinical trial and has failed for a great many years to publish anything meaningful about what he has done. The lack of approval of his elixir is entirely on him. The only things conspiring against him are his arrogance, his greed and his ineptitude.
Oh, bog off. Is Burzynski still paying shills in stock options?
Ah, blame the victim. Whouda thunk?
The fact that standard medical treatments are not 100% effect does not say anything about the efficacy of alternative treatments. And, as recent studies have shown, people who use alternate cancer therapies are less likely to have a positive outcome.
Hi Meg,
Can you show me that study? Who and how was that research conducted?
Here it is, JJ
https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2018/07/30/complementary-medicine-use-cancer-survival/
Hi Squirrelelite,
This is not a study stating that alternative medicines are less likely to have a positive outcome. This study is clearly sought after and done to find negative results when using complementary medicine…in compliance with conventional therapy. There is no doubt that conventional therapy has certain supplements that can have a negative effect when taken with the medicine. Adverse reactions when mixing the wrong chemicals together… that is all this study really shows…it does not even state what the “complementary medicine” is and this is done by a biased doctor seeking to find bad results…not by an unbiased observational study group. It clearly does not state that alternative cancer therapies are less likely to have a positive outcome. There really should be a study showing the same amount of people who do one therapy without the other and compare the results. The number of drugs and alternative options are so vast it would be very hard to do…because this is cancer… too many variables.
Here’s the problem with what you’re asking for JJ:
It would be unethical.
Medical researchers cannot with hold treatments with evidence of efficacy in favor of an experimental therapy with no such evidence (and in SB’s case, much evidence of harm with no evidence of efficacy at all).
As you said: cancer therapies are hard due to all the variables in cancer: type, location, stage, genetics, on and on it goes.
The FDA I’m sure would love it if SB provided verifiable data that his treatments work. He doesn’t and never has.
His antineoplastons have been in clinical trials for how long now? Decades? And no data on safety and efficacy, while he opens ever ore studies?
You say his therapy works. I need more than an anonymous claim of life from one or two people to know that. A) because they could be lying, and B) even if they’re not, it doesn’t mean that SB’s treatment is what prolonged their life so long. It could just as easily be previous chemo/radiation or some other factor.
If SB’s treatment worked, he’d patent it and sell to everyone, because the FDA would give it approval. It doesn’t, so they haven’t, and thus he relies on sham clinical trials to sell his scam cures.
Who runs this suspension-points lottery? There seem to be a lot of… winners.
Would someone do me the favor of finding the Jaffe quote about how they rigged this? I overslept and am in a rush.
Jj,
The government has a special agency (I think it’s currently the NCCIH) that has spent 100’s of millions of dollars for over 20 years studying various complementary and alternative treatments. It has failed to find a single one that is useful for anything.
So despite those negative results, advocates of these therapies say they are worthwhile because they help patients tolerate and complete their treatments and thus get better results. This study tried to see if that was true.
But when they looked at the numbers, they found the opposite. People using complementary methods had worse results overall.
If the researchers were just seeking negative results, they could have stopped there. But they looked closer to see why and found that more people using complementary medicine delayed or skipped some of their therapies. And when they adjusted for that confounders, they found the results were the same. Complementary medicine didn’t really help either.
My alma mater recently celebrated a major event in the war against cancer.
https://msutoday.msu.edu/feature/2018/discovering-the-gold-standard-of-cancer-drugs/?utm_medium=display&utm_source=Facebook&utm_campaign=FY18_CABS_MSU
If Burzynski’s treatment is so great, why hasn’t he published a similar accomplishment?
Dear Doctor. I say again….Hello! I came to Burzynski clinic March 2017 with stage 4 prostate cancer and kidney carcinoma. I responded well to treatment and returned to work at the office in December. This week my CT PET scan results are good and we are concluding treatment. I find several of the comments above blatantly false based on my experiences in being treated meeting with Dr. Burzynski about once a week for over a year. And, I have met in our IV room several who have recovered when standard of care was to go home and die, too. That includes one gentleman from Canada that go over pancreatic cancer as I observed week to week as a co-patient. I have spent the monthly cost for investment and am happy with the results noted. Request: Would you please increase the respectful part of your dialogue? Including complying with your own guidelines for comments and eliminating some of the abusive vocabulary, please. Respectfully, Douglas Kruse Jr. Houston, TX.
My son was a patient of Dr. Burzynski. We were told by everyone else (Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Children’s Hospital of Detroit, Royal Oak Beaumont Hospital) that my son would die of the brain tumor which he was diagnosed with at the age of 4. Paul received no conventional treatment for his brain tumor as there was no conventional treatment for my son. But, Paul was cured by Dr. Burzynski. He has been off treatment for 18 years and the all the doctors who told us Paul would die of his cancer before reaching age 10 were wrong, as is the uninformed author of this article. Antineoplastons cure cancers that conventional medicine cannot cure. It is shameful that Orac perpetrates lies like the ones in this article. I thank God everyday for Dr. Burzynski and his non-toxic treatment that saved my son! The real crime here is that Antineoplastons have not received FDA approval yet and that Dr. Burzynski has not received the recognition he so deserves.
reposting as forgot to post my name
My son was a patient of Dr. Burzynski. We were told by everyone else (Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, Children’s Hospital of Detroit, Royal Oak Beaumont Hospital) that my son would die of the brain tumor which he was diagnosed with at the age of 4. Paul received no conventional treatment for his brain tumor as there was no conventional treatment for my son. But, Paul was cured by Dr. Burzynski. He has been off treatment for 18 years and the all the doctors who told us Paul would die of his cancer before reaching age 10 were wrong, as is the uninformed author of this article. Antineoplastons cure cancers that conventional medicine cannot cure. It is shameful that Orac perpetrates lies like the ones in this article. I thank God everyday for Dr. Burzynski and his non-toxic treatment that saved my son! The real crime here is that Antineoplastons have not received FDA approval yet and that Dr. Burzynski has not received the recognition he so deserves.
Sincerely,
Mary Michaels
Mary, last month was full of tough memories because it is the month my sister-in-law died of cancer. Next month I am participating in a local event to raise money in her memory to fight cancer.
So I am very glad that your son is still alive and well.
Do you know when Dr Burzynski plans to publish the results for the trial your son was in so others can benefit?
Unfortunately his treatment hasn’t been effective for a lot of people like these.
https://theotherburzynskipatientgroup.wordpress.com
Also, ethical researchers don’t charge patients huge sums up front to experiment on them.
As a former patient of Dr. Burzynski, I feel compelled to respond to this article. I was diagnosed at age 4 with a large (according to Dr. Kelly of the Mayo Clinic it was “the largest brain tumor I have seen in anyone of any age”–I was 4!) optic hypothatamic glioma astrocytoma brain tumor. There was no conventional treatment for me. My parents were told radiation could be used but that it would not cure me or lengthen my life and it promised a long list of horrible side effects which I am so grateful I was able to avoid. My parents took me to Houston to see Dr. Burzynski and I was treated with antineoplastons. I have been off treatment since 1999. I suffer no ill effects of the treatment I received and didn’t have side effects as I was receiving the treatment either. I am an RN, BSN in a busy, urban emergency room. I am also an avid rock climber, mountain biker, and a gym enthusiast. I owe my life to Dr. Burzynski and I am incensed when I read articles such as this one, which perpetrate lies that will ultimately cost people their lives if they are influenced NOT to go to Dr. Burzynski. Dr. Burzynski saves lives. I am living proof!
Paul Michaels