Annabelle Potts was a girl with the deadly brain cancer known as diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG) whose family was victimized by quacks. Unfortunately, that's not how the media is reporting it. As is frequently the case, Annabelle's story is being presented as one of triumph, and the quacks who treated her as legitimate experimental therapy.
Tag: DIPG
Roxli Doss: A deadly brain tumor shrinks to undetectable without quackery
Roxli Doss is an 11-year-old girl from Texas diagnosed with the deadly brain cancer DIPG. After radiation therapy, her deadly cancer is undetectable, no alternative cancer cures sought or used. What happened?
How online crowdfunding supports cancer quacks
Patients with cancer frequently use online crowdfunding to pay for trips to quack clinics. The Good Thinking has undertaken an investigation that is the first to suggest the extent of the problem. The question is: What to do about it?
Clínica 0-19 and IDOI: Not making DIPG history in Monterrey (part 4 of 4)
Orac has finally located the abstract published by Dr. Alberto Siller and Alberto Garcia, who are selling intra-arterial chemotherapy for the deadly brain tumor DIPG. Let's just say that he's...less than impressed by the results. Shades of Burzynski!
Clínica 0-19 and IDOI: Not making DIPG history in Monterrey (part 3 of 4)
This is the conclusion of my series on Clínica 0-19, the cancer clinic where Drs. Alberto Siller and Alberto Garcia see patients with DIPG, a deadly brain tumor, whom they treat at Hospital Angeles in Monterrey Mexico with an unproven combination of intra-arterial chemotherapy with up to 11 drugs and a poorly defined dendritic cell immunotherapy. Some people have asked me: What’s the harm? In this concluding post, I attempt to answer that question.
Clínica 0-19 and IDOI: Not making DIPG history in Monterrey (part 2 of 4)
Earlier this week, I discussed Clínica 0-19, a clinic "making DIPG history in Monterrey" whose doctors claim to be able to successfully treat the deadly brainstem cancer DIPG using intra-arterial chemotherapy and immunotherapy. This week, I discuss what I’ve learned since last week, specifically a lot more about just what it is that these doctors do, why it is scientifically dubious and unproven, and why I am becoming even more harsh in my assessment of this clinic, which shows every indication of being a predatory clinic selling an unproven treatment for a very high price.
Clínica 0-19 and IDOI: Not making DIPG history in Monterrey (part 1 of 4)
Drs. Alberto Siller and Alberto Garcia run Clínica 0-19 in Monterrey, Mexico, which has become a magnet for patients with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma (DIPG), a deadly brain cancer. Unfortunately, their treatment is an unproven combination of 11 chemotherapy drugs injected into an artery feeding the brainstem, plus an unknown and unproven "immunotherapy." Of course it all costs $300,000 or more for a complete course of treatment, and the good doctors are "too busy to do clinical trials" or even publish their survival and recurrence statistics, despite having used this protocol for 20 years. I say: If it quacks like …
It’s full steam ahead for cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski
Since being given a slap on the wrist by the Texas Medical Board for his many years of peddling his antineoplastons, a treatment that's never been shown to have significant anticancer activity, Stanislaw Burzynski is back in action again, preying on desperate cancer patients like it's 1999.
False "balance" about Stanislaw Burzynski's cancer quackery rears its ugly head again
One common theme that has been revisited time and time again on this blog since its very founding is the problem of how science and medicine are reported. For example, back when I first started blogging, one thing that used to drive me absolutely bonkers was the tendency of the press to include in any story about vaccines an antivaccine activist to “tell the other side” or for “balance” to the story. So in a story on vaccines, on the one side you would have Paul Offit, a bona fide, legitimate vaccine expert, and on the other side you would …
Help the Skeptics for the Protection of Cancer Patients educate legislators about Stanislaw Burzynski
I don’t normally ask you, my readers for much, if anything, other than to read and for the subset of you who like to be active in the comments to have at it and, if so inclined, to cover my back by swatting down the trolls, quacks, and antivaccinationists who occasionally show up to infest the comments, so that I don’t have to. However, given the story of Stanislaw Burzysnki, which I’ve been covering with frequent blog posts for over two years now, how could I not listen to the appeal of my friend and co-conspirator (note to Burzysnki fans: …