How to Crank your Congressperson (according to “The Skeptics”: USA TODAY vs. Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski)

Let’s say you’re one of “The Skeptics,” (“The Burzynski Skeptics,”) don’t have a life (but doesn’t that go without saying ?), enjoy associating yourself with known liars, cowards, ethically and intellectually challenged individuals, so you grab a newspaper (It’s doubtful that USA TODAY would qualify), and if you do NOT know what a “Newsie” is, go online and select an article which has a plethora of innuendo and allegations, compose a missive to your member in Congress assembled about the nothingness you just reviewed, just don’t piss yourself silly when you shoot that zinger off, because you’ve just sent something to your Congressperson, exhibiting what a whacky weed tobacco day tripper you are, and a prime example of what “Rocky Mountain High” really will mean, starting January 1st, 2014

Congratulations, Colorado

My only suggestion is that you add something like:

“Dear Congressperson Y,

I know your time is valuable, but please allow me to waste some of you and your staff’s, as well as provide you with “fodder” you can hang up on the bathroom wall and laugh about for days!

In the next weeks I will be contacting you about all of the “conspiracy theories” in Jesse Ventura’s book, including; but not limited to:

Area 51
Aliens
The Denver International Airport
…

Smoke ’em if ya got ’em !
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Letter to Congress

Dear CONGRESSPERSON’S NAME:

My name is _______ and I am one of your constituents

I am writing to you to request your urgent attention to a matter that involves the abuse of cancer patients, their families, and their communities

A few weeks ago, I wrote to you concerning the Houston cancer doctor Stanislaw Burzynski, and requested that you take action and look into how he was able to continue treating cancer patients for decades under the auspices of clinical trials with an unproven treatment he claims to have discovered, patented, manufactures, prescribes, and sells (at his in house pharmacy) at exorbitant prices

On Friday November 15, Dr. Burzynski was the subject of a front-page exposé in the USA Today

Additionally, since I last contacted your office, the FDA has released site inspection notes into the electronic FOIA reading room about Stanislaw Burzynski in his role as Principal Investigator (also included)

The findings were horrifying

Burzynski (as investigator, the subject of the inspection) “failed to comply with protocol requirements related to the primary outcome, therapeutic response […] for 67% of study subjects reviewed during the inspection.”

This means that several patients who were reported as “complete responses” did not meet the criteria defined in the investigational plan, as were patients who were reported as having a “partial response” and “stable disease.”

This means that his outcomes figures for these studies are inaccurate

Some patients admitted failed to meet the inclusion criteria for the study

Even though patients needed to have a physician back home to monitor their progress prior to enrolling in a trial, the FDA found a patient who began receiving treatment before a doctor had been found

The FDA told Burzynski:

“You failed to protect the rights, safety, and welfare of subjects under your care

Forty-eight (48) subjects experienced 102 investigational overdoses between January 1, 2005 and February 22, 2013, according to the [trial number redacted] List of Hospitalizations/SAE (serious adverse events) [redacted] Overdose [redacted]/Catheter Infection report

Overdose incidents have been reported to you [….]

There is no documentation to show that you have implemented corrective actions during this time period to ensure the safety and welfare of subjects.” [emphasis added]

It seems that these overdoses are related to the protocol, which requires family members to administer the drugs via programmable pump on their own

Further, patient records show that there were many more overdoses that were not included in the Hospitalization/SAE/Overdose list

The FDA reported:

“Your […] tumor measurements initially recorded on worksheets at baseline and on-study treatment […] studies for all study subjects were destroyed and are not available for FDA inspectional review.”

This is one of the most damning statements, as without any…not a single baseline measurement…there is no way to determine any actual effect of the antineoplaston treatment

This means that Burzynski’s studies–which by last account cost $30,000 to begin and $7000 a month to maintain–are unpublishable

It will be stunning if this finding alone were not investigated by legal authorities

Patients who had Grade 3 or 4 toxic effects were supposed to be removed from treatment

One patient had 3 Grade 3 events followed by 3 Grade 4 events

Another patient had 7 disqualifying toxic events before he was removed from the study

Burzynski did not report all adverse events as required by his study protocols

One patient had 12 events of hypernatremia (high sodium), none of which was reported

There are several similar patients

Some adverse events were not reported to the Burzynski Clinic IRB for years

For instance one patient had an adverse event in 1998 and the oversight board did not hear about it until 2005.)

The FDA observed that the informed consent document did not include a statement of extra costs that might be incurred

Specifically, some informed consent documents were signed days to weeks before billing agreements, and in a couple of cases no consent form could be found

The clinic was unable to account for its stock of the investigational drug, an act that would get any other research lab shut down

Sadly, a child, Josia Cotto, had to die from apparent sodium overload before this investigation could be carried out

Despite these findings, when interviewed by USA Today, Burzynski actually said of his former cancer patients:

“As for criticism from former patients, Burzynski says, ‘We see patients from various walks of life

We see great people

We see crooks

We have prostitutes

We have thieves

We have mafia bosses

We have Secret Service agents

Many people are coming to us, OK?

Not all of them are the greatest people in the world

And many of them would like to get money from us

They pretend they got sick and they would like to extort money from us.’”

I am asking you to help me understand what happened at the FDA to allow this man to conduct clinical trials and bankrupt patients in the process despite 10 years of alarming reviews by the FDA

I also ask you to support an investigation into this betrayal of over 8,000 patients and to push for legislation to prevent the most desperate patients from such unthinkable exploitation

I will be calling your office next week to touch base with you and I look forward to your response

Sincerely,
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REFERENCE:
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Letter to Congress:
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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Hx3KJ6mmCd8MTdlbdXb2r2qrN9l3JjrzdJrHh0VIJXo/mobilebasic?pli=1
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Burzynski: court cases
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http://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/burzynski-court-cases/
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Main Page – Stanislawrajmundburzynski
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http://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wiki-site.com/index.php/Main_Page
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Critiquing: Eric Merola and Stanislaw Burzynski respond to the FDA findings and the USA TODAY story. Hilarity ensues

GorskiGeek starts off his soapbox stump speech:
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“I was very pleased last Friday, very pleased indeed”
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Of course he was

After all, it was as if USA TODAY was quoting directly from “The Skeptics™” fave Fahrvergnügen pharyngula and GorskGeeks’s jacked July jabberwocky at “The Amazing Meeting” 2013 (TAM 2013 #TAM2013) Twitter Twaddle-fest

Given the normal subject matter of this blog, in which I face a seemingly unrelenting infiltration of pseudononsense pseudononscience and hackery into even the most hallowed halls of hacademic medicine, against which I seem to be fighting a mostly uphill battle, having an opportunity to see such an excellent non-deconstruction of science and medicine in a large bad mainstream news outlet like USA TODAY, GONE TOMORROW is rare and ungratifying

GorskGeek gambits:
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“As you might recall, USA TODAY reporter Liz Szabo capped off a months-long investigation of Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski and his Burzynski Clinic with an excellent (and surprisingly long and detailed) report, complete with sidebars explaining why cancer experts don’t think that Burzysnki’s anecdotes are compelling evidence that his treatment, antineoplastons, has significant anticancer activity and a human interest story about patients whom Burzynski took to the cleaners”
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My question ?

GorskGeek, how do you know it was a:

“months-long investigation” ?

The article does NOT indicate HOW LONG the USA TODAY “investigation” took

From this, I can only conclude, as I did after 1st reading the article, that based on the comments of Dr. David H. Gorski “Orac”, that there must have been collusion between “The Skeptics™” and USA TODAY

Most of this, of course, is no news to my readers, as I’ve been writing about Dr. Burzynski on a fairly regular basis for over 8 months now
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GorskGeek goofs:
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“It’s just amazing to see it all boiled down into three articles and ten short videos in the way that Szabo and USA TODAY did, to be read by millions, instead of the thousands who read this blog“
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Thousands read his blog ?

Does he mean over the 2 year period he’s been writing about Burzynski ?

GorskGeek Inspector Gadgets:
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“Szabo also found out who the child was who died of hypernatremia due to antineoplastons in June 2012, a death that precipitated the partial clinical hold on Burzynski’s bogus clinical trials, about which both Liz Szabo and I have quoted Burzynski’s own lawyer, Richard Jaffe, from his memoir, first about Burzynski’s “wastebasket” trial, CAN-1“
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GorskGeek and USA TODAY both hashtag Failed to point out that a boy, the same age as Josia Cotto, survived a serum sodium (Na+) level of 234 mEq/L

If GorskGeek actually knew how to do real “science-based medicine” research, and if Liz Szabo and Jerry Mosemak had really actually done a “months-long investigation”, maybe USA TODAY and “Orac” could have had enough time to have figured the above out, as well as the clinical trial Burzynski’s attorney, Rick Jaffe, was referring to, was the CAN-1, which even you did NOT display any knowledge of in the July
TAMmany Twaddle [3], and your 11/15/2013 article [4]
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Naturally, upon reading Liz Szabo’s “ story,” I wondered how long it would be before there would be a response from GorskGeek or his minions

Both responses contain the same sorts of tropes, misinformation, and pseudononscience that I’ve come to expect from GorskGeek [1-2+4]

USA TODAY is biased and in the pocket of “The Skeptics™”

It was a “Shite Muslim Militia” piece
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GorskGeek dreamsicles:
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“I’ve deconstructed these, and many more, of Merola’s nonsense over the last two years”

“Odd how @BurzynskiMovie pretends I haven’t deconstructed his “evidence” in depth before”?

Really ?

GorskGeek is so much a monumental myopic Mythomaniac

GorskGeek all you did was “cherry-pick” what you wanted to blather about, and selectively ignored everything else
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What actually surprised me was the viscousness of the counterhackattack

For example, in counterhackattacking Eric Merola’s letter to Liz Szabo, GorskGeek tries unsuccessfully to claim that Merola actually hopes that her child will get cancer, so that Burzynski supporters can gloat about it and Szabo will have to apologize to her children for her “perfidy” (in GorskGeek’s eyes, at least):
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GorskGeek gesticulates:
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“He denies that he hopes Szabo’s children will develop brain cancer, but then gloats gleefully over the possibility that she would have to face them after having—again in his mind—”helped to destroy the only thing that could have helped” them”
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In the dictionary, under the definition of “spin bowel movement (SBM),” there should be a picture of “Dr.” (and I use that term very “loosely”) David Gorski

GorskGeek would have fit in holistically as the propagandist for Hitler, Lenin, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Stalin, etc.

Then, just when I thought GorskGeek couldn’t go any lower, he does, this time in his longer response on his blog
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“Eric Merola and Stanislaw Burzynski respond to the FDA findings and the USA TODAY story. Hilarity ensues”
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Obviously, to “Orac” asking GorskGeek to follow normal rules regulating medical ethics and human subject protections in critical trolls’ blog trials is exactly like murdering millions of people’s brain cells, carrying out horrible medical experimentation on common sense and sensibility, making untold numbers of Africans, slaves to his stupendousmess, and harassing, gratuitously, families of soldiers “killed” by his word salad battle

Didn’t anyone ever teach GorskGeek that you need to build up to that sort of climax ?

Of course, the big difference between Hitler’s propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels, unfortunately, is that compared to “Orac,” he had talent, and David GorskGeek does NOT

GorskGeek is a hack and is only funny by accident because he has no filters that tell him when he’s going way under the top

To him, Burzynski is an infidel

I do not share his belief, but, even worse, I have the temerity to criticize his god “Orac,” or, to mix metaphors shamelessly, to point out that GorskGeek has no clothes

Since I’ve dealt with so many of the tropes included in GorskGeek’s not-so-little rant, I hardly see the need to repeat myself

However, as a breast cancer surgeon’s skeptic, I find one of GorskGeek’s lies to be as despicable, or perhaps more so, than his ad hominem comparisons
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GorskGeek, the Hitler of hipocracy, came up with this hit parade of paranoia and “conspiracy theory”:
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“I don’t know what sort of attacks on the UK bloggers who produce the bulk of the skeptical blog posts about Burzynski are coming in Burzynski II, but when it comes to me no doubt Merola is referring to this bit of yellow journalism in 2010 from an antivaccine propagandist named Jake Crosby, entitled David Gorski’s Financial Pharma Ties: What He Didn’t Tell You” [5]
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GorskGeek then ad hocs ad nauseum about ad hominem fallacy

“In this fallacy, rather than addressing the actual evidence and science that demonstrate their favorite brand of woo to be nothing more than fairy dust, the idea is to preemptively attack and discredit the person“

“The ad hominem is not just insults or concluding that someone is ignorant because, well, they say ignorant things and make stupid arguments (in which case calling someone stupid or ignorant might just be drawing a valid, albeit impolitic, conclusion from observations of that person’s behavior), but rather arguing or insinuating that you shouldn’t accept someone’s arguments not because their arguments are weak but because they have this personal characteristic or that or belong to this group or that“ [6]
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GorskGeek, the huckster of hackery laments that “The Skeptics™” are subject to character assassination, NOT because of their “science-based medicine”, but, alas, for being biased, lying, cowards

So, he must justify that as to why he then ad hominems those who he harangues:
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“In Burzynski The Movie, Dr. Whitaker has his nose embedded so far up Dr. Burzynski’s rectum that Dr. Burzynski wouldn’t need a colonoscopy if Merola just strapped a light to Dr. Whitaker’s face“ [7]
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“In the meantime, I realized that seeing Josh Duhamel stick his proboscis firmly up Burzynski’s posterior was not enough to explain the disturbance that I was feeling“ [8]
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GorskiGeek seems to have an unhealthy infatuation with ASS

My suppositorsition is that GorskiGeek, the highfalutin’ He-Man of hypocrisy, does wax on, wax off, waxes phonetic about ASS, because he is the apex of ASSmuchness
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In essence, he denies the toxicity of water in terms I’ve never seen anyone try to downplay before:

Water… is toxic?

This was perhaps the most stunningly malicious use of emotion to manipulate the reader in any of the propaganda pieces against H2O in history
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GorskGeek claims:
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“Josia, as readers of Liz Szabo’s report will know, was the six year old boy with an inoperable brain tumor who died of hypernatremia (elevated sodium levels in the blood) as a result of Burzynski’s therapy“
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GorskGeek gassticulates:
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“As I pointed out last Friday and Szabo reported in her story, before his death Josia’s serum sodium was measured at 205 mEq/L, way above the normal range of 136-145 mEq/L and well into the lethal range”

“As I pointed out then, I’ve never seen a sodium level anywhere near that high“

“During my residency, the highest I recall ever seeing was maybe around 180 mEq/L”
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As I already pointed out previously in this article:

GorskGeek and USA TODAY both hashtag Failed to point out that a boy, the same age as Josia Cotto, survived a serum sodium (Na+) level of 234 mEq/L

GorskGeek claims that Josia died of hypernatremia (elevated sodium levels in the blood) as a result of Burzynski’s therapy

GorskGeek does NOT provide ANY citation(s), reference(s), and / or link(s) in support of his claim, and does NOT provide a copy of the autopsy

GorskGeek’s brain cells must be “sleeping in excess”, hence the symptoms of lethargy progressing ignorance of adverse events which approach critical black hole levels

Of course, none of this is new information
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GorskGeek hacks:
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“I also note that one of Burzynski’s most famous patients, Hannah Bradley, who with her partner Pete Cohen proclaims herself cured of her brain cancer, thanks to Burzynski, suffered some pretty serious toxicities from antineoplastons herself, including high fevers to 103.9° F, shaking chills, and severe rashes“

“Pete even documented how badly Hannah reacted to antineoplastons in his YouTube documentary Hannah’s Anecdote”
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GorskGeek flummoxes in that he erred to elucidate that the “rash” which Hannah
experienced, even entailed epilepsy anti-seizure medication [4]

GorskGeek gambols the gabroni gambit by giving nothing but glib reasons for his genetically challenged gestation of Hannah’s vlogs after gears up for Great Britain

Yes, GorskGeek is gabless about Hannah’s progress in the G.B. as a germinating gerbil, as far as flu or fever, perhaps fearing his failure to feature any fact-checking facilitation a fanboy of Fanectdotes should fittingly fictionalize
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The rest of GorskGeek’s rant reads like a greatest hits compilation from cancer hacks

You get the picture

That’s the whack-n-hack counterhackfensive trying to shore up Liz Szabo’s sorry article
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GorskGeek blowshard and long about the FDA Form 483′s findings, but does NOT heed his massive failure to be persuaded that:

“In Burzynski’s defense, Jaffe notes that inspection reports represent preliminary findings“

“The FDA has not yet issued final conclusions”
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Who would doubt that if GorskGeek were to blog about Burzynski’s 1997 criminal trial, that he would NOT list each and every one of the 34 counts of mail fraud, 40 counts of violating Food and Drug Administration regulations, and the 1 contempt-of-court charge; all “allegations”, which netted the U.S. Gubment absolutely NOTHING ? [9]
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GorskGeek idolizes the Burzynski Research Institute (BRI) IRB, because of Burzynski’s scientific publications, which indicate:
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2003 – Membership of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) was in agreement with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [10]
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3/2004 – Membership of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) was in agreement with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [10]
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9/2004 – Membership of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) was in agreement with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [10]
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2004 – Membership of Institutional Review Board (IRB) was in compliance with FDA guidelines [10]
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6/2005 – Membership of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) was in agreement with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [10]
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GorskGeek then does a piss-poor “slight of hand job”, jerking the reader off about Pseudoprogression, pseudoresponse, so-called pseudoprogression, and “One phenomena, termed Pseudo-Progression (psPD)”

GorskGeek falls flat face first for failing to show this phenomenon has factually happened [11]

GorskiGeek, looks like back to the drawerin’ board for you !
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REFERENCES:
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[1] – 11/18/2013 – Eric Merola and Stanislaw Burzynski respond to the FDA findings and the USA TODAY story. Hilarity ensues:
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http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/11/18/eric-merola-and-stanislaw-burzynski-respond-to-the-fda-findings-and-the-usa-today-story-hilarity-ensues/
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[2] – 11/18/2013 – The Burzynski Empire strikes
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http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-burzynski-empire-strikes-back/
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[3] – 11/11/2013 – “The Amazing Meeting” (I don’t think it means, what you think it says it means): 2 Intellectually and Ethically Challenged Individuals, Twaddle at TAM 2013:
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http://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/11/11/www-amazingmeeting-com-www-randi-org-lanyrd-com2013tam-forums-randi-orgforumdisplay-php/
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[4] – 11/19/2013 – Critiquing: Stanislaw Burzynski in USA Today: Abuse of clinical trials and patients versus the ineffectiveness of the FDA and Texas Medical Board (Hyperactivity versus Hypernatremia, and Hannah Bradley):
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http://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/httpscienceblogs-cominsolence20131115stanislaw-burzynski-in-usa-today-abuse-of-clinical-trials-and-patients-versus-the-ineffectiveness-of-the-fda-and-texas-medical-board-2/
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[5] – 2/18/2013 – Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski’s cancer “success” stories:
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http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/stanislaw-burzynskis-cancer-success-stories/
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[6] – 6/14/2010 – In which Dr. Gorski once again finds himself a target of the “pharma shill” gambit
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http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/in-which-i-am-once-again-in-the-crosshairs-of-age-of-autisms-pharma-shill-machine-gun/
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[7] – 11/29/2011 – Burzynski The Movie: Is Stanislaw Burzynski a pioneering cancer researcher or a quack?:
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http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/11/29/burzynski-the-movie-subtle-its-not/
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[8] – 2/18/2013 – As Josh Duhamel shills for the Burzynski Clinic, Eric Merola prepares to carpet bomb the blogosphere with nonsense:
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http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/02/18/as-josh-duhamel-shills-for-the-burzynski-clinic-eric-merola-prepares-to-carpet-bomb-the-blogosphere-with-nonsense/
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[9] – 9/25/2013 – Critiquing: National Council Against Health Fraud, Inc. – NCAHF News: JURY NULLIFICATION THWARTS BURZYNSKI CONVICTION:
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http://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/critiquing-national-council-against-health-fraud-inc-ncahf-news-jury-nullification-thwarts-burzynski-conviction/
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[10] – 7/2/2013 – Burzynski: Institutional Review Board (IRB):
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http://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/burzynski-institutional-review-board-irb/
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[11] – 11/20/2013 – Critiquing: Stanislaw Burzynski in USA Today: Abuse of clinical trials and patients versus the ineffectiveness of the FDA and Texas Medical Board (swell inflammation phenomenon):
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http://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/11/20/httpscienceblogs-cominsolence20131115stanislaw-burzynski-in-usa-today-abuse-of-clinical-trials-and-patients-versus-the-ineffectiveness-of-the-fda-and-texas-medical-board-3/
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