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My name is Doug Olson
I’m from Nebraska
Western Nebraska
And, uh, my mother has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer
So, we, uh, middle of November, now this is first of, first of the year, eh, but in the middle of November her weight, she was losing weight, you know
She was suffering from indigestion and, and stomach pain, and so we started to have her checked, uh, for problems with her stomach for ulcers and that kind of thing, and all that proved negative, and they put her on an ulcer medicine anyway, thinking that maybe that would solve the inflammation in her stomach, and, uh, then we decided that we (?) better see another physician, and so we did that, and they then ultra sounded and then CAT scanned and found that she had tumors in her pancreas and in her liver
Uh, many years ago, back in, in the late 70’s, my parents had been involved with, with the cancer, uh, subject in regards to my father’s sister, and then his cousin
He started researching cancer and cancer treatments when his sister passed away, and then, uh, they got in contact with a doctor in Orden, Nebraska, that treated cancer patients with Laetrile, and he also did other, not so ordinary things
He did duculation therapy
Uh, a number of things that were really treatments for the disease rather than just treatments for the symptoms, and, uh, during that time, dad testified at the state legislature; they were trying to work against Dr. Miller’s license
This was the Dr. Miller in Orden, and, uh, so dad testified on, on his behalf
Uh, dad’s cousin was, uh, a patient of his, and she had a brain tumor the size of a lemon, and Dr. Miller put her on, uh, Laetrile treatments on a, on a special diet and some things, uh
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And this was what, in the 70’s ?
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This was back in the, probably the late 70’s, and, so, when they
Well they cured her
She had been sent home from the Mayo Clinic
Given 3 to 6 months to live, and, uh, they had, uh, burned with radiation and cobalt I believe is what they were treating her with at that time
Uh, they burned the, uh, nerves in her eyes so that her eyes crossed
Uh, they sent her home to die
They, uh
She was in a wheelchair
She was a young woman and she had a young child
Wasn’t able to hold that child, and so when my dad saw her, met her, she was in that condition
She was it, in the last 6 months of her life
Gave her a book about, uh, the subject, and told her about Dr. Miller, and her family
She then went to Dr. Miller to see if there was any help for her, and he, and he immediately put her on Laetrile treatment then and, and, uh, the interesting thing about it, looking at his doctor’s protocol; because I’ve come across his protocol, uh, Dr. Miller was also giving his patients antineoplastons, and
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Yeah, because we’ve got this thing here that you gave me
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Mhmm
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Just explain to me what this is
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This was his physician’s protocol, to list, uh, the different medicines a person should, should be on
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If they had cancer
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Uh, if they had cancer, and so, uh, this was given to another friend of ours, a friend of the family, uh, the folks that rented one of our properties, uh, the woman got a, a tumor as well, and this was given to her as part of the regimen she should follow, and she was given Laetrile injections, and then as soon as the injections, uh, were over they went then to pills as the size of the dosage went down, and when you got to pills you got to go home
So, uh, I remember speaking to her at the time
I had a
I was in high school, and I had a summer job with her husband, who was the county engineer
So, uh, we saw them all the time, and she told us, uh, the circumstances when, when she was allowed to come home
She was feeling strong
She said: “I haven’t felt better”
As a part of the diet and the things that, that they had her doing
She said she felt better than she had in many years
So she and her daughter, started a business in town in order to pay for the treatments, and, uh, she recovered
The tumor continued to shrink and shrink until it was nothing
Uh, what had been listed as inoperable, uh, after it shrunk halfway they decided, well maybe we can operate on you
Uh, we think it’s operable now
She said: “Why would I let you operate when what I’m doing is working” ?
But, uh, she is alive yet today and in her mid-80’s and, uh, so, uh, when it came to my mother’s illness, we contacted her, and asked her how she’s doing, and she’s sent this protocol she’s been keeping all these years
Uh, as a result of my parents knowing Dr. Miller back when he was alive
He is, he has passed away, uh, 7 maybe years ago, and, uh, many years ago when they were taking chelation therapy from him, he had given my mother, uh, a flyer on Dr. Burzynski, and, uh, said if anything ever happens to you after I’m gone, this is the man to contact, and so we’ve had that flyer in a file for many years at my parents house, and so when mom got sick she immediately began digging that out and found
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So your mom immediately started thinking, well I need to find that leaflet
That’s what we were told to do
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Yes
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And did, and did she go and speak to an oncologist ?
Did she say that she wanted to come here, or ?
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We had a local physician, who was not an oncologist, that had, that was the 2nd physician we, we consulted, that did the ultrasound and the CAT scan for her and, and they knew that she had tumors, and no we did not go to an on, oncologist from there
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Why ?
——————————————————————
because we knew that we did not want to take their treatments, uh, so we immediately contacted the clinic here in, in Houston, Texas, and, uh, we had to wait on, uh, certain things to be completed
CAT scans
Different things had to be done, and, and information had to be sent down here and examined, and then, uh, after a period of maybe 2 weeks, hassling with information, we were told that, yes, uh, we, they would accept her as a patient, and we were getting in towards the holidays at that time
Would we like to wait until the holidays were over, because Christmas
You know, there would be 5 days off for Christmas, uh, over a weekend and 5 days off for New Years over a weekend, and we would be down here in Houston over those times, but we elected to come anyway because we could get the treatment started right away
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Mhmm
——————————————————————
rather than to wait another month before starting treatments, and, uh, so they, uh, immediately put, put her on antineoplastons and, uh, they sent away the tissue samples to Arizona to have a CARIS test done, and determine what medications would be
——————————————————————
So did you have those results come back ?
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Yes, those results came back quicker than what we expected
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And wh, what did they show ?
——————————————————————
Well they, they show a, a list of treatments that are effective, and against it, and then a list of treatments actually that encourage it’s growth
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Yeah
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So you end up with a list of, uh, approximately 7 on each side
7 good
7 bad
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And these are all different cancer drugs
So what they’re looking at is all
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Yes
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is all the different cancer drugs, and which ones
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And whether we’ve got a, a thousand or 2 thousand different drugs that person might try, and, uh, so
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So the (?) for how to, to try a few of these chemotherapies, but in very small doses
Is that right ?
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There’s 2, 2 chemotherapies
One is an, is an oral chemotherapy that is, uh, quite mild in its side effects, and then, uh, there’s another much stronger one that was, uh, also one of th, the top 2, and, uh, the side effects for it are more varied and more violent, uh, if you will, and, uh, my mother’s had one treatment of that so far, and the treat, the side effects
She did, is suffering from side effects from that particular
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Yeah
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It’s Oxaliplatin, and, uh, some people have very violent side effects but she’s thankfully not had any violent side effects
——————————————————————
So why didn’t you go down the conventional road of having high-dose chemotherapy ?
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Well, when you research the, uh, success rate, with pancreatic cancer, going the normal way, uh, or the normal, uh, road, the success rate is very, very small, and so you’re just guaranteeing, in my opinion, if, if the success rate is 5% or under, uh, you’re introducing yourself to a, a road to death, that’s very unpleasant
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Yeah
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You know, you just want to go home and make yourself very comfortable on painkillers and, and enjoy the rest of your life, uh, if that’s the, if that’s the road you’re planning to take
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Yeah
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Uh, that was our opinion, and so
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What do you think about all the resistance then of, of Dr. Burzynski and all of the kind of, uh, ?
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We have
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(?) people just calling him a
What’s the word ?
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Charlatan
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Charlatan
Yeah
Fraud
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Yes, we, uh, we have seen course, of course these things through our, our life
Dr. Miller
The whole Laetrile treatment thing was something that was, uh, thrown out
You know, it’s pretty well suppressed now
You can go to Mexico and get those treatments
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Why do you think they were, pushed aside ?
This Laetrile
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It’s
——————————————————————
What is Laetrile ?
——————————————————————
Well Laetrile is a naturally occurring, uh, substance that you find in some of our foods
It’s, they call it B17 although, vitamin B17, although there’s some discussion as to whether it’s really a vitamin
Another name for it is Amygdalin
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Amygdalin
Yeah
——————————————————————
Uh, it’s found in peach pits and apricot pits in high levels but there’s a number of other foods that you find it in
Uh, it, it,
I’m not sure, whether this is 100% accurate, but my understanding of it is it’s associated with, with cyanide, and it would be, uh, like an encapsulated cyanide, that as it travels through your body, the cyanide portion, um, does not become available to your body until it becomes in, uh, associated with a cancer cell
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Yeah
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and the cancer cells attack the outer shell of that molecule, and the cyanide becomes, uh, uh, available then, and it kills the cancer cell that’s right there
So it was apparently a very nontoxic substance
Uh, you have regulated dosages
I mean, it seems to me interesting, uh, when a doctor prescribes a dose of chemotherapy, uh, there’s nothing that I can think of much more toxic than a, than a chemotherapy drug, and certainly they’ll kill you if they don’t, uh, give you the right dosage, but it was not seemed, deemed accessible that a byproduct of food; which a doctor could regulate the dosage of as well, could be used as a transfer, cancer treatment
——————————————————————
Yeah
——————————————————————
Uh, and we’ve seen things in the past, as well
When I was a, a very young child, I had a great aunt, that, uh, I was not even aware; at the time I was very young, she was traveling to Texas and getting treatments
Uh, one of them was called the Hoxsey treatment and, uh, she was living a very comfortable life on treatments that she got there
There were 2 treatments in Texas at that time, that, uh, were available
The FDA would come in and raid the clinics, and make just life miserable for them
They got one of them closed down, and that was the one that my great aunt was on, and that treatment was, was pills that she could take, uh, and live quite comfortably, in Nebraska
Once they closed that clinic down, then she had to go down, uh, to the other clinic in Texas, which was a supplement that was a liquid that tasted bad, and she had to make frequent trips, at that point, but still, as long as she could get that treatment she was comfortable and, and lived a normal life
A productive life
Uh, we knew her as our great aunt and, and didn’t even know her, uh, uh, that there was a health problem and, uh, but then the FDA got that clinic closed down
So, as soon as she lost access to those, her treatments, then her cancer which, uh, was no longer able to be controlled, came back strong and, and she died
So, uh, the family had been, had access to this knowledge and this, the FDA’s games with cancer treatments for many years
Um, I’m also married to, a, a gal whose father did blood research as a, he was a Ph.D and worked in university hospitals, in blood research all of his life
He, he discovered a blood protein that was associated with cancer
Uh, it was actually associated more with good health, maybe than you could say with cancer, but he discovered a, a blood coagulation protein, uh, or associated with blood coagulation that would, that could be used as a flag or a test, to see whether a person was healthy or not
Uh, as they applied it to patients in these hospitals, during their research trials, they found that this protein was an indicator whether a person had cancer or thrombosis
Uh, 2 of the very largest killers, and this protein, if present in high enough amounts in our blood, uh, was an indicator that you were healthy, and as the protein’s amount, uh, declined, then it was an indicator that something was wrong, and below a certain amount you knew something was wrong
You better be taking further testing
——————————————————————
Mhmm
——————————————————————
to find out what your problem was
Uh, that has run into resistance
Uh, that (?) has not been approved by the FDA, and, uh, th, our family’s experiences with cancer treatments, cancer drugs, as they’re affected by the FDA, we have determined by our opinion that, uh, it’s, un, unless there’s something that’s going to generate a, a lot of capital, and then a lot of tax money for the Federal Government, the FDA’s not very interested in it
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Yeah
——————————————————————
Uh, so, cynical attitude, but evidence bears it out
——————————————————————
Yeah
——————————————————————
and so we remain cynical until so, until something proves
——————————————————————
Yeah, absolutely
So this is this doctor in, uh, in the 70’s
This is information that he provided
——————————————————————
Yes
——————————————————————
and you can see here that he is obviously, antineoplastic enzymes
See, here obviously
Do you think he meant Dr. Burzynski ?
He just knew of him ?
You have no idea ?
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I have no idea
——————————————————————
He was obviously a fan, if he was someone that eventually said
He said it to you
Did you say he said it to your mum or to your dad?
——————————————————————
To my mom
Probably to mom and dad
——————————————————————
Yeah
——————————————————————
Uh, my mom was the record keeper, and so, she kept the flyer
——————————————————————
Yeah
——————————————————————
but they both took, uh, the, uh, the therapy from, uh, well, the blood therapy
I mentioned it earlier
Suddenly the name’s gone away
——————————————————————
Yeah
——————————————————————
but, uh
——————————————————————
That’s ok
——————————————————————
So
——————————————————————
So what about, um
You know, one of the barriers that we had is, when we spoke to oncologists, they just said, no, you mustn’t come to see this guy
His work isn’t peer-reviewed
He’s a charlatan
Why, why do you think they would say that ?
What
I mean I’m surprised, that these oncologists don’t actually come here, to actually see what, what’s going on
So your opinion about that ?
——————————————————————
My opinion is, that physicians are, very much, tied up, with large pharmaceutical corporations
Uh, I spoke with my father-in-law
My father-in-law had to have research done in, in his Ph.D work, and he had to get cooperation from hospitals, from doctors, and, uh, all of these organizations in order to have the research done that he needed done, ’cause past his lab, when he wants to introduce research, onto a patients, uh, live blood, and he needs to collect specimens from patients, then a whole ‘nother group of, uh, set of authorizations have to be signed and, and he being a Ph.D working with the medical profession all his life, he knew how tied up the medical profession is, by, generally by M.D.’s, that control the money flow, uh, in the medical profession
Ph.D’s do the research, but they have to apply for grants, and typically the grants are controlled by M.D.’s, and so if an M.D. Decides that your, your particular research is either applicable to, uh, something they think will make a lot of money, or it’s the, the quote, uh, popular, popular item of the day
——————————————————————
Yeah
——————————————————————
Politically correct, you name it, then you’re going to get funded
Otherwise, uh, my father-in-law noticed at different times, his research had to be funded out of his own pocket, and at other times, it looked like, it was something that doctors would like, and so they would, he would get funding, but I think that, ah, as he commented, any doctor, coming out of med school, has been contacted by a pharmaceutical company, and has probably signed a contract, that when that pharmaceutical company wants to test a drug, or test an item, that that medical, uh, doctor, will be accessible to them, to test their products
So, with the number of pharmaceutical companies that you have, and all of them recruiting M.D.’s as they come out of med school, and saying, you know, would you be part of our group, you end up under contract with the large pharmaceutical companies
——————————————————————
Mhmm
——————————————————————
and if, if 90% of the doctors are under contract with pharmaceutical companies, to, uh, to cooperate with their drug testing, then large Pharma, has control of virtually all doctors, and so, uh, uh, if you have large Pharma saying, we don’t want to see a cancer cure, that we’re not in control of, we don’t want to see something that makes curing disease cheap, and easy, and food related, then you’re not gonna
They’re going to put the word out to all their doctors: Don’t have any wo, don’t have anything to do with this
Uh, they can come up with, some written material for their, their doctors to read
They send them the evidence
——————————————————————
Mmm
——————————————————————
It may be accurate
It may not be very accurate, and, uh, but it’s just a smear campaign to destroy reputations so that they don’t get hurt financially
——————————————————————
Mhmm
——————————————————————
and, uh, so, uh, that’s the reason I believe
You know, most of these doctors, they don’t have the time, or the expertise to do the research themselves
They can’t read everything, and so when someone they trust, or someone that they’re financially, uh, obligated to, comes down and says: Here’s the stand that we want you to take, and it’s against this particular treatment, or against this doctor, they do what they’re told
——————————————————————
Yeah
——————————————————————
They do what they know best
Uh, my father-in-law, for instance, was, uh, also involved as a professor in these med centers
He taught nutrition, and he said it’s always a, been amazing to me that you can get through med school, and never take a class on, on nutrition
So you can become an M.D., and not understand the value, of nutrition, to a person’s health
That’s a problem
Uh, he recognized it as a problem
I recognize it as a problem because I particularly believe that most of our ill health is because how we treat our bodies
What we eat
——————————————————————
Mhmm
——————————————————————
Whether we exercise or don’t
Whether we provide our body with a way to flush the poisons or not
Uh, healthy living, and if you don’t teach our medical profession, healthy living, how can they teach their patients
——————————————————————
Mhmm
——————————————————————
So this, this whole system is, is just flawed in some ways, and weak in other ways, and, uh, controlled, for the purposes of commerce, instead of the public
——————————————————————
Yeah
So you, you think it’s a good idea treating people as an individual and finding out what they need as opposed to like carpet bombing them ?
——————————————————————
Absolutely
When we understood the, the individualized approach, here at the Burzynski Clinic, that they would take where they would test the cancer cells, uh, against all of these treatments and all of these chemotherapy treatments and, and anything else that might be out there that would, would treat cancer, and come back with a, a individualized care approach to the individualized cells of cancer that my mother has, that’s when we knew that we had to come here
We wondered, and I’ve told my friends, and everybody wonders, that oughta be the standard approach everywhere
Why wouldn’t you test, every cancer, and see what it is that’s gonna treat it best ?
You, you tell me
======================================
Doug Olson chats with Pete Cohen
January 2011
25:00
11/9/2012
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Tag Archives: “side effect”
Critiquing: Stanislaw Burzynski in USA Today: Abuse of clinical trials and patients versus the ineffectiveness of the FDA and Texas Medical Board (Getting Worse is Getting Better)
—————————————————————–
“Orac” and David H. Gorski, M.D., Ph.D., FACS,
collectively, “GOrac” a/k/a GorskGeek thinks that signs of “Getting Worse is Getting Better” [1]😛
That’s right ! 🙂
I almost couldn’t believe my eyes, but GorskGeek seems to have come around to Burzynski’s way of thinking (according to “Dr.” Bob🙂)
GorskGeek describes it thusly:
—————————————————————–
“Conventional cancer treatment can also cause tumors to swell temporarily, due to inflammation”
“A patient who isn’t familiar with this phenomenon may assume her tumor is growing”
“When that swelling subsides, patients may assume it’s because of Burzynski, Adamson says”
“In reality, the tumor was just returning to its previous size”
“Pseudoprogression can be a real confounder in assessing the response of brain tumors to therapy, being observed up to 28% of the time”
—————————————————————–
Here’s how GorskGeek’s “brother” in blatherskite; I’m NOT a doctor, 😷 (but I play one on The Other Burzynski Patient Group), Robert J. (don’t call me “Bobby”) “Bob” Blaskiewicz Blatherskitewicz, describes it [2] 😝:
—————————————————————–
8/27/2012, Monday [2]
“On the 27th, we hear:”
“Firstly, Amelia hasn’t quite been herself unfortunately”
“She has been very reluctant to walk, a lot more tired, slow and pretty lethargic”
“She was sick on Saturday night also” (8/25/2012)
“We are reasonably confident we have probably gone too far with the steroid reduction so we have actually increased these slightly again today”
“We decided we would rather have a happy and more alert Amelia than one who doesn’t want to do too much – so we made this decision today in coordination with the Burzynski clinic“
“We’ll see how she does”
“There is a small chance it is the tumour growing, but much more likely given the scans we have that this is due to swelling of the tumour caused by the treatment”
“Time will tell. […]”
“The symptoms we are seeing right now are a direct result of the tumour, hopefully due to it swelling, and the steroids will fix this”
“They are also what we would see if it has grown”
—————————————————————–
(Below comments by: I’m NOT a doctor, 😷 (but I play one on The Other Burzynski Patient Group), Bob Blaskiewicz 😜)
And here’s another example of something that is…desperately, desperately wrong at the Clinic 😦
The patient is being told that the tumor is swelling because of the treatment 😳
How is it that only at the Burzynski Clinic that getting worse is indistinguishable from getting better?😡
Second point:
this is a tumor on the brainstem
If a possible side effect were swelling of the thing pressing against the brainstem, you’d expect that to be on the informed consent form, right? 😐
The type of thing that would be among the “serious side effects,” right? 😮
—————————————————————–
So, to recap 😄:
——————————————————————
David H. Gorski
• ( “Getting Worse is Getting Better”) 😃
• “Conventional cancer treatment can also cause tumors to swell temporarily, due to inflammation“
—————————————————————–
Amelia Saunders
• “ . . . but much more likely given the scans we have that this is due to swelling of the tumour caused by the treatment”
• “The symptoms we are seeing right now are a direct result of the tumour, hopefully due to it swelling . . . ”
—————————————————————–
“Dr.” Bob Blaskiewicz (I’m NOT a doctor, 😷 but I play one on The Other Burzynski Patient Group)
• The patient is being told that the tumor is swelling because of the treatment
• How is it that only at the Burzynski Clinic that getting worse is indistinguishable from getting better?
• If a possible side effect were swelling of the thing pressing against the brainstem, you’d expect that to be on the informed consent form, right? “O”
——————————————————————
The problem with this is:
In support of this “phenomenon” , the article provides a link to a Canadian web-site [3] 😶
——————————————————————
The site posits:
——————————————————————
“RT/TMZ is now widely practiced and the standard of care for appropriately selected patients, we are learning more about the consequences of RT/TMZ”
“One phenomena, termed Pseudo-Progression (psPD)…”
——————————————————————
The problem is that this only applies to “Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM)”, and the article provides NO proof whatsoever, that any of Burzynski’s “Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM)” patients have taken “RT/TMZ” 😐
——————————————————————
Additionally, the site cites the reference as:
Sanghera, Perry, Sahgal, et al., “Sunnybrook Health Sciences Odette Cancer Centre” (in press, Canadian Journal of Neuroscience)
(“In press” refers to journal articles which have been accepted for publication, but have not yet been published)
However, the journal article in question was published 1/2010, so it has NOT been “in press” for over 3 years and 7 months [4] 😁
Get your act together, aye, CAN-A-DUH ! 😇
——————————————————————
☺
😉
—————————————————————–
—————————————————————–
SpartASScus
—————————————————————–
—————————————————————–
Still wrong, GorskGeek
======================================
REFERENCES:
======================================
[1] – 11/15/2013 – Stanislaw Burzynski in USA Today: Abuse of clinical trials and patients versus the ineffectiveness of the FDA and Texas Medical Board (Getting Worse is Getting Better)
——————————————————————
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/11/15/stanislaw-burzynski-in-usa-today-abuse-of-clinical-trials-and-patients-versus-the-ineffectiveness-of-the-fda-and-texas-medical-board/
======================================
[2] – 6/3/2013 – Amelia S
——————————————————————
http://theotherburzynskipatientgroup.wordpress.com/2013/06/03/burzynski-patient-amelia-s-s-story/
======================================
[3] – Phenomenon – Psuedo-progression (GBM), Brain Tumour Foundation of Canada
——————————————————————
http://www.braintumour.ca/1649/ask-the-expert-psuedo-progression-gbm
======================================
[4] – 1/2010 – Pseudoprogression following chemoradiotherapy for glioblastoma multiforme
Can J Neurol Sci. 2010 Jan;37(1):36-42
——————————————————————
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20169771/
======================================
======================================
Interview with Dr. Burzynski, M.D., Ph.D. Biochemistry (12/2002)
Interview with Dr. Burzynski (M.D., Ph.D. Biochemistry)
Interviewer: Gavin Phillips ©
Distributed 12.05.03
Anyone may post this interview to their website, as long as it remains
unaltered and freely available. Please place a link back to this webpage.
You may click here to download the PDF version of my interview and
save it to your computer. Please help distribute it. Thank you. Gavin.
Click here to download the free Adobe Reader if you do
not already have it on your computer.
This telephone interview with Dr. Burzynski was held in December 2002. The purpose of the interview is to inform people about Dr. Burzynski’s cancer treatment, Antineoplastons. It will be circulated for free on the Internet. I have no affiliations with Dr. Burzynski either personally or professionally.
Hello Dr. Burzynski. I would like to thank you for taking the time to inform people about your cancer treatment Antineoplastons, and your experiences in the area of cancer over the last 25 years.
Is it true that you were the youngest person in Poland in the 20th century to earn two advanced degrees, an M.D. (Medical Doctor) and Ph.D. in biochemistry at only 24?
I’m not sure if I was the youngest, I was among the youngest. In Poland, its 15 years average (Gavin. For a Ph.D.) after you receive an M.D.
What motivated you to come to the United States? When did you arrive here?
Well basically freedom. You see, I could easily stay in Poland. I was a prominent student, one of the best they ever had in medical school and certainly if I would become a member of the Communist Party I would accomplish a lot in Poland. But I didn’t want to be a Communist and after I declared, “forget it, I’m not going to be a Communist”, they persecuted me. So, practically, it would not be possible for me to do any research in Poland. I arrived in the United States on the 4th of September 1970.
You began working at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston?
I was not employed for 6 weeks, then I got the appointment at Baylor in the position of research assistant. A couple of years later I became Assistant Professor.
I have read that your cancer research was motivated by your observation of a cancer patient in Poland that was missing a particular peptide in their blood, is this correct?
Well Yes. First I discovered some peptide fractions in blood and then I was trying to determine their significance. This means that I was screening the blood samples from people who suffer from various illnesses, among them cancer patients. I found some remarkable changes in concentration of these Peptides in cancer patients. Basically there was a great deficiency of these Peptide fractions in the blood of cancer patients.
What are peptides and how did your research develop from there to developing Antineoplastons?
Peptides are chains of Amino Acids, so if you put together 2 Amino Acids, you have a Peptide.
You have said, “Cancer is really a disease of cells that are not programmed correctly. Antineoplastons simply reprogram them so that they behave normally again.”
They do, but we are not really interested in making normal cells out of cancer cells. What we are interested in is correcting one basic difference between cancer cells and normal cells, and this is the mortality of normal cells and the immortality of cancer cells. Cancer cells are immortal. And if you change them into mortal cells again they will die and the tumor will disappear.
I read a humorous part in Daniel Haley’s chapter about you in his book, “Politics in Medicine.” He says that initially you derived Antineoplastons from your friends blood, but had to change because your friends stopped coming around, is that correct?
Certainly it was difficult to obtain a lot of blood for the research. It was a necessity to look for a source that is widely available. I realized from the very beginning that once I use urine, my critics will use this against me; try to just smear me, “That’s the doctor who is using urine to treat cancer.” But there was no other way to do it.
There are plenty of ignorant remarks about your treatment because it used to be derived from human urine. The process you use now does not involve collecting human urine. Please describe the complete process you use.
Ever since 1980, we are using synthetic analogues of Antineoplastons, made in a state-of-the art biomedical manufacturing facility. These have nothing to do with urine or blood.
Would you describe Antineoplastons as natural?
They are natural of course, they exist in our body.
Your treatment does require a strong commitment from your patients as they must be infused with Antineoplastons for many weeks or months, is that correct?
But most of our patients are taking oral formulations. I would say that perhaps 15% of our patients are taking intravenous infusions of Antineoplastons; the rest take capsules or tablets.
The patients who have the most advanced type of cancer will require heavy dosages. There is a limitation of how much medicine you can take by mouth. Fifty or sixty tablets a day, that’s pretty much all you can take by mouth. But if you give intravenous infusion you can deliver the equivalent of 3,000 tablets a day.
You went into private practice in 1977. How was this funded?
Well, I started private practice in 1973. It was not necessary for me to have any funding, because I joined with other physicians.
Is it true that Dr. Mask at a hospital in Jacksboro, Texas ran your first human clinical trial? What types of cancers did you treat? What were the results of these trials?
I would not call it a clinical trial, because only two patients received initial treatment. They were very advanced, close to death and unfortunately, both of them died. But these cases were not lost because we found we can administer Antineoplastons without having bad side effects.
What is the general side effect experienced by your patients when using Antineoplastons? Does it damage the immune system as chemotherapy does?
We are not talking about one medicine; we tried 12 different pharmaceutical formulations. Basically it depends what formulation we use, but when we give them orally, we see practically no side effects at all. Patients may develop skin rash, which may last for a day or two.
But, when we give large dosages intravenously, we have to watch fluid balance…and electrolyte balance. We don’t see any delayed toxicity once the treatment stops. Everything practically goes back to normal within say a day or two. It does not even come close to the adverse reactions that you experience with chemotherapy.
What is the cost today for a patient using your treatment in a pill form and do insurance companies pay for it? *
Well basically, we do not charge patients for medicines, Antineoplastons are given free of charge. What we are charging for are supplies, and we are charging for standard services such as office visits, nursing services, Lab tests, consultation, evaluation etc. And these services are priced the same way as the average medical services, and they are covered by the insurance.
*(Gavin. Insurance companies will rarely pay for Antineoplastons, which is considered an experimental treatment. It also depends on the type of insurance plan someone may be on.)
So if a patient were using the pills, what would it normally cost per month.
About $2,000 a month.
Antineoplastons is most effective against brain cancer, is that correct?
Well, it’s not really correct. Because brain tumors are very difficult to treat, we concentrate our efforts on the toughest type of cancers. Out of our clinical trials, we have eight that came to the final point, which means they proved that there is some efficacy, and six of these are in various types of brain tumors. But there is another clinical trial, which deals with advanced colon cancer, which also proved efficacy and another one with liver cancer. But we still need to wait a little longer to have a larger number of patients treated and then statistically find out if this is going to work.
Basically the treatment works when we have involvement of the gene, which can be activated by Antineoplastons, and such genes, like gene p 53, are involved in 50% of all cancers. The treatment turns on gene p 53. So it has more to do with what kind of gene the patient has in his cancer cell, rather than the type of cancer.
Is there a special diet to follow when using your treatment?
Yes, since we are expecting there may be some changes in minerals, we usually emphasize a diet that is relatively low in sodium. We treat every patient individually. Every patient has a consultation with a dietary expert who tries to individualize his diet
Is your treatment being used in any other countries?
Yes, we have people coming to us from all over the world. I think we can probably count easily 70 to a 100 countries from which people are coming. But the main effort is now in Japan, outside the US. In Japan there are 2 clinical trials being conducted by Japanese doctors. Also, a group of doctors in Mexico obtained approval from the FDA and Mexican government to do clinical trials.
Now I have several related questions about brain cancer in children.
Dustin Kunnari and Dr. Burzynski. Dustin is one of Dr. Burzynski’s great success stories.
Dustin had brain surgery at 2 ½ years old. The surgery removed only 75% of the tumor.
Dustin’s parents, Mariann and Jack, were told that Dustin would only live for 6 months. Chemotherapy and radiation may extend Dustin’s life slightly, but at a very high cost in quality of life with very serious side effects.
Mariann and Jack decided to look into alternatives. They found out about Antineoplastons and after only 6 weeks of intravenous treatment, Dustin’s MRI showed he was cancer free.
One year later another tumor appeared on the MRI. By this time Dr. Burzynski had developed a more concentrated form of Antineoplastons. After 5 months the tumor was gone. Dustin has remained cancer free ever since and was taken off Antineoplastons when he was 7. Dustin is 12 today.
About how many children suffer from brain cancer in the US each year?
The statistics are available for 1999. The new cases of brain tumors in children were counted as 2,200. Now around 3,000, I would say.
Approximately what percentage of children is still alive after 5 years using orthodox treatments for brain cancer?
It depends on the type of tumor and it’s location, some of the toughest are those that are located in the brain stem. Up to 5 years, you have practically no survival when you use the best treatment available, which is radiation therapy. Chemotherapy usually doesn’t work for such patients. After 2 years, 7 % survival. After 5 years, practically none.
Dustin, after brain surgery.
To further complicate matters, Dustin’s oncologist kept threatening his parents with a court proceeding to take Dustin away and force him to take Chemotherapy/Radiation treatment.
This continued for a year, even after Dustin’s success with Antineoplastons.
Please see the Burzynski Patients web site for more information,
http:// http://www.burzynskipatientgroup.org
You may also e-mail Mary Jo Siegel, the lady who runs the web site. Mary is also a cancer survivor using Antineoplastons.
maryjo@siegel.net
Is it correct to say you have had very good results when treating brain cancer in children?
Yes we have. I gave you the example of the toughest, which is located in the brain stem. We get about 40% survival rates after two years. After 5 years at the moment we have about 20% survival rate. The reason is that most of the patients who come to us, have received prior heavy radiation therapy, or chemotherapy. They usually die from complications from these treatments. Those who survive the longest are patients who previously did not receive radiation therapy or chemotherapy. The longest survivor in this category is now reaching 15 years from the time of diagnosis; and she’s in perfect health.
With the more common variety, which is aciotoma located outside the brain stem, we get much, much better. We have 75% of patients who are objectively responding to the treatment. This means that the tumor will disappear completely or will be reduced by more than 50%.
This is another strong point. It’s extremely important. Children are usually damaged for life after radiation therapy, when we can avoid it and bring them back to life.
What criteria must parents of children with brain cancer meet before being able to have their children treated by you?
Well, practically all of these brain tumors must be inoperable. This means that it’s not possible to remove them with surgery. Except for one category, they should have advanced disease. The tumor should have the size of more than 5 mm in diameter and be located in a place that cannot be operated upon.
There is one category of these tumors, medulloblastoma, where the FDA requires that the patients would receive prior standard treatment and fail before we can accept them. In the rest of these children we can accept them without failure of prior treatment.
Roy , a more recent patient of Dr. Burzynski’s.
Please see the Burzynski Patients web site for more information,
http:// http://www.burzynskipatientgroup.org
You may also e-mail Mary Jo Siegel, the lady who runs the web site. Mary is also a cancer survivor using Antineoplastons.
maryjo@siegel.net
Let us talk a little about some of your most successful stories using Antineoplastons with children. Probably the most remarkable case is that of Tori Moreno . In August 1998 Tori was diagnosed with a stage 4 brainstem glioma that was inoperable. Her parents were told she would die in a few days or at the most, a few weeks. When did you start treating her?
Tori had Stage 4 brain stem glioma. The tumor was too risky for surgery. She was diagnosed shortly after her birth. The tumor was very large, about 3 inches in the largest diameter and located in the brain stem. Her parents consulted the best centers in the country and they were told there was nothing to be done. So finally she was brought to us, when she was about 3 ½ months old. This was in October 5 years ago. She was in such condition that we were afraid that she might die at any time. Fortunately she responded, and about 5 months later we determined that she obtained a complete response, which means complete disappearance of active tumor by
MRI criteria. She is a perfectly healthy child and tumor free. She still takes small dosages of capsules of Antineoplastons, but we will discontinue this shortly.
Tori Moreno 9.28.98. Temporarily enlarged due to taking Decadron.
Tori’s parents were told there was nothing that could be done for her and she would be dead in a few weeks.
Tori is alive and well today thanks to Antineoplastons. See photo below.
At the end of this interview, there is a short interview with Kim Moreno, Tori’s mother.
Kim Moreno has set-up a Yahoo e-mail account to answer peoples cancer related questions.
kimmoreno5@yahoo.com
And today she is over 5 years old?
Yes, she’s 5 years old and living a pretty much normal life.
Tori 22.10.02. A perfectly healthy child. Orthodox treatment consists of high does of radiation therapy and possibly toxic chemotherapy as well. Most of the children are dead in a few years. The ones that survive suffer from permanent retardation, along with other serious side effects from the radiation.
Please do not forget about the interview with Kim Moreno, Tori’s mother, at the end of this interview.
But mainstream medicine has been trying to kill the cancer cell using chemotherapy and radiation, is that correct?
That’s right, yes.
Chemotherapy and radiation cannot differentiate between healthy and cancerous cells?
They can differentiate to some point, but basically, this difference is very small, so ultimately, the normal cells will be killed.
Is that why they have such a terrible effect on the immune system?
That’s right, not only the immune system, but also many other systems in the body. Practically, the treatment is destroying healthy parts of the body.
Chemotherapy and radiation also cause cancer, don’t they?
Yes. For instance right now we see a lot of patients who in childhood were successfully treated for leukemia or for Hodgkin’s disease. Then they develop cancer that is practically incurable, like lung cancer, breast cancers; I even encountered a patient in my practice that developed three different types of cancers, and was only 28 years of age. First she was treated for Hodgkin’s Disease, then she developed bone cancer in the places which were radiated for Hodgkin’s Disease, and then she developed breast cancer after that; it’s really horrible. So there is increased incidence of secondary cancers in patients who were treated previously with chemotherapy and radiation.
Shontelle Huron. In remission for several years after using Antineoplastons.
Please see the Burzynski Patients web site for more information,
http:// http://www.burzynskipatientgroup.org
You may also e-mail Mary Jo Siegel, the lady who runs the web site. Mary is also a cancer survivor using Antineoplastons. maryjo@siegel.net
Ric and Paula Schiff write about the torture their daughter Crystin had to endure during chemotherapy/radiation treatment.
Crystin was diagnosed with perhaps the most malignant tumor known, which is a rhabdoid tumor of the brain. Of course, historically, there was no case of such a tumor ever having a long response to chemotherapy or radiation therapy. She received extremely heavy does of radiation therapy and chemotherapy, because nobody expected that she would live longer than a year or so. So unfortunately she was terribly damaged with this. She responded very well to Antineoplastons. We put her in complete response. But unfortunately she died from pneumonia. Her immune system was wiped out, so when she aspirated some food, she died from it. The autopsy revealed that she didn’t have any sign of malignancy.
But there are also likely permanent severe health concerns related to taking chemotherapy and radiation.
In young children there is permanent damage to the brain. Unfortunately some oncologists who are dealing with such cases are really cruel to the parents, because they are saying, “well, your child will survive, but you are going to have a jolly idiot for the rest of your life.”
Is it true that if parents refuse chemotherapy/radiation treatment for their children the hospital, via the courts, could have the child removed from the parents care and forced to take chemotherapy/radiation treatment?
Yes, unfortunately in some States, the law may require taking children away from the custody of the parents to send them to such treatments.
Jared Wadman. In remission for several years after using Antineoplastons.
Please see the Burzynski Patients web site for more information,
http:// http://www.burzynskipatientgroup.org
You may also e-mail Mary Jo Siegel, the lady who runs the web site. Mary is also a cancer survivor using Antineoplastons.
maryjo@siegel.net
Isn’t this what happened to Donna and Jim Navarro when they chose your treatment over orthodox treatments?
That is correct. Thomas Navarro was diagnosed with medulloblastoma. He was operated on and the tumor was removed. Then he was scheduled for radiation therapy. Since he was only 4 years old, the parents knew that he’d be damaged by radiation therapy. Nobody at his age survives this type of tumor anyway after radiation therapy. So that’s why they decided to come to our clinic. Unfortunately I could not treat him because FDA requires failure of radiation therapy for such patients.
And tragically he died in November 2001.
What happened was, the parents decided not to take any treatment. We asked the FDA several times to allow administration of Antineoplastons, because we have already had successful treatments for some other children without any prior radiation. Then ultimately he developed numerous tumors in May the following year. Then we suggested to the parents of Thomas, that if they are not going to take our treatment, they should go for at least chemotherapy. They went for chemotherapy to one of the best centers in the country, to Beth Israel Hospital in New York. The chemotherapy was successful, but he almost died from it. It severely affected his bone marrow. I remember a phone call from Thomas’s father telling me that the doctors are thinking that they won’t do anything else for him and that Thomas will die within a week because of severe suppression of bone marrow.
But I encouraged his father to do whatever is possible because such patients may turn around. Fortunately he turned around, but about a month or two later he developed 15 tumors in the brain and the spinal cord. Then, when he was close to death, when nothing was available for him, the FDA called us and told us now we can treat Thomas. When we treated Thomas he survived 6 months, and the tumors had substantially decreased, but ultimately he died from pneumonia.
Is it accurate to say that the initial orthodox treatment for brain cancer is surgery to remove the tumor?
If the tumor is located in the proper part of the brain. For some locations it is out of the question. But, you are right, that is the first step.
Does surgery alone ever cure a patient with brain cancer?
Well, some cases, with benign brain tumors, when the tumor can be completely dissected, yes, it’s possible. But in most cases it’s not possible.
How much of a risk does surgery present regarding spreading the cancer more quickly and other complications?
Well, not so much regarding spreading the cancer more quickly in the case of brain tumors. Such a spread may happen only with a small percentage of brain tumors that have the highest aggressiveness. But for most of the patients the tumor is not going to spread just because of surgery. Certainly surgery may damage the brain and patients may even die during the surgery. It’s not the ideal thing to do of course because you are removing the tumor and you are removing a healthy part of the brain at the same time. The patient may be permanently damaged by such procedures.
Would you warn against rushing into surgery in light of how effective your treatment is? Would you most times recommend trying your treatment first?
We really would like to know what we are dealing with. This means that we would like to have at least a biopsy; if by chance it’s not going to create sufficient risk for the patient. If the tumor was located in such a place in the brain where surgery is possible, then certainly we could try to remove the tumor. But I think it would be best if we can treat the patient with brain intact and get rid of the tumor completely, because then we risk the least damage possible.
Now I will turn my attention to your legal battles with the FDA. They began in 1983 when they sued you in civil court, is this correct?
In 1983, that was the first court battle with the FDA. The FDA sued us. It took about 6 weeks in court and again, we won.
Then there was an enormous raid by the FDA at your offices on July 17, 1985. What was the reason for this raid?
We were never given a reason. I think there was a concentrated action against a few alternative medicine centers because at the same time there were similar actions in the Bahamas and in some other places.
In the four court cases the FDA has brought against you, have any of your patients testified against you?
Well, on their own will, nobody testified against us. But the FDA encouraged some of our patients, and threatened them in various ways. They forced them to come to the witness stand. But really, once they were on the witness stand they behaved more like our witnesses, not FDA witnesses.
According to Daniel Haley, after the FDA lost its last court case against you in 1997, Congressman Richard Burr said it was “one of the worst abuses of the criminal justice system”. Did Burr ever speak to you about it?
Yes, we talk with Congressman Burr. I believe he is right, because certainly there was no reason for such massive action on the part of the FDA. They knew that the treatment works; that the treatment helps patients, that the patients will die if they win, so they should not do it. All of this was with the taxpayer’s money.
So the FDA has wasted many millions of taxpayer dollars trying to convict you on false charges of transporting Antineoplastons across State lines. What was the motivation for this vendetta?
Well, it’s hard to tell, because it was never properly investigated; why they did it. But, we have some leads. For instance, on one side you have a large pharmaceutical company, which was very interested in getting hold of our patents; this is Elan Pharmaceutical. It happened that I treated successfully a close relative to the CEO of Elan. Elan became very interested in what we have. They came close to signing a final license agreement. But after they learned what we have, they decided to withdraw and then suddenly the FDA and NCI gave their full support to Elan, to do clinical trials with one of the ingredients of Antineoplastons, phenylacetate.
This was a large pharmaceutical company that was trying to appropriate my invention. On the other hand, within the FDA and NCI you have had people who were working closely with this company. For instance Mary Pendergast, who was responsible for the legal action against us, became Vice President of Elan. Also Doctor Michael Friedman, who was initially in charge of NCI cancer research, and who knew that our treatment works, later became commissioner of FDA and he did whatever he could to put us out of business. Not only that, but to simply destroy me.
On the other hand, suddenly the government decided to file for the patents, which claimed the same thing that our patents did. Never in the history of the United States do you have the issuance of two patents for the same invention. It was really a breach of patent procedure. The patent office allowed them to patent something I invented, and which I patented. And dishonest scientist Dr. Dvorit Samid, who initially worked for us, was receiving funds from us and finally went for the higher bidder (Elan).
So you have a lot of leads, which indicate that there was something between the government, dishonest scientists like Dvorit Samid and the large pharmaceutical company, Elan. And it was in best interests for them to get rid of me, destroy me, so they could appropriate my discoveries and benefit from that.
When did you initially apply for your Investigational New Drug (IND)?
We applied in May 1983.
When did you receive it?
Well, it took an extremely long time. Ultimately most of our clinical trials began in 1996, a long time after that. FDA did not allow us to proceed with clinical trials for an extremely long time. Please click here to read the
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Tony Tondelli. In remission for several years after using Antineoplastons.
Please see the Burzynski Patients web site for more information,
http:// http://www.burzynskipatientgroup.org
You may also e-mail Mary Jo Siegel, the lady who runs the web site. Mary is also a cancer survivor using Antineoplastons.
maryjo@siegel.net
It is important for everyone to understand the economics of the drug industry. I have heard that the cost today for bringing a drug to market is upwards of 500 million and takes about 12 years, is that true?
Yes, you’re right.
The drug company is then given a 17-year patent so that it can make a profit on the drug. It is little wonder the drug companies fight against natural treatments such as Laetrile, because they are unable to patent them and they pose a serious threat to their profit margins. But you are able to patent your treatment, so why was there no interest in it from the drug companies?
Basically you have 17 years from the time when you have approval of the patent and this is independent from FDA’s approval process. You file the patent, once you make a discovery, and then you go through FDA procedure. You spend say 12 years or 15 years for the approval process, then you have only 2 years license from the FDA, because license is going to expire in another 2 years. Certainly the pharmaceutical companies are spending a lot of money in this process.
In our case I decided to develop this on my own, to generate money from my private practice and use the money to support the research of Antineoplastons. Again we were approached by many different pharmaceutical companies, which were interested in working with us. Certainly after the bad experience (with Elan) we are very cautious with whom to deal. On the other hand pharmaceutical companies were afraid of action from the FDA.
The NCI put off testing Antineoplastons using the fact that it failed their standard P388 leukemia mouse test, is that correct?
Yes
What is the P388 leukemia mouse test and why did Antineoplastons fail it?
Well we had informed the NCI that this was a bad type of test for antineoplastons. Antineoplastons seems to be specific for species. Different animals have different antineoplastons; mice have a different composition of antineoplastons than humans. Practically, human antineoplastons may work well in humans, but they may not have much activity in mice. We knew this, even before the NCI began testing. On the other hand we didn’t have good results at all in the acute form of leukemia and we didn’t even accept such patients. It was known that if they only do this type of test, it was not going to work. They still tested and used this to say that Antineoplastons don’t work against cancer. Certainly the fact that something works or doesn’t work against mice leukemia is irrelevant.
I’d like the reader to bear with me in the next few questions, as the point will become clear. One of the chemicals you identified in the peptides was phenylacetate. But it was far inferior to the others and you chose not to patent it, is that correct?
This is not a peptide, this is a metabolite of our antineoplastons and it’s an organic acid. So this is a final metabolite of antineoplastons. It has some anti-cancer activity, but the weakest of all antineoplastons. We knew about it and that’s why after some preliminary experience in the treatment of phenylacetate back in 1980, we decided that it’s not worth pursuing this and then we used antineoplastons that have higher activity.
But didn’t you later find out that the NCI actually holds the patent for phenylacetate?
You’re right. NCI is the owner of the patent, Dr. Samid is the author but Elan has the license to use these patents. All of these three work together.
Why did the NCI patent something that was far inferior to your other Antineoplastons?
Because they knew that this was the only chance that they can get hold of something which has to do with antineoplastons.
The NCI ran clinical trials on phenylacetate in 1992 and found it to be worthless, is that correct?
Well, the clinical trials began in 1992 but it took a few years to have the results. It shows some effectiveness in brain tumors and in prostate cancer. But of course it was far away from the results that we can get with antineoplastons.
When did the NCI eventually start clinical trials of Antineoplastons?
In 1994.
I assume you gave the doctors running the trials all the information about correct dosages, is that true?
Yes, well, basically they used dosages that were 50 times lower than what we feel are effective dosages. We have some patient’s relatives who were present when the treatment was administered. Formulations of antineoplastons were badly diluted. This means that the patient was receiving very little antineoplastons and some of these patients were removed from the treatment after a short period of time because they were overloaded with fluid. Well normally we see fluid overload in perhaps less than 2% of our patients. So it makes sense that perhaps the formulations of antineoplastons were diluted and when the Mayo Clinic (1999) determined the concentration of antineoplastons in blood, we realize that it was something like 50 times lower than what it should be.
Do you think the NCI purposely sabotaged your trials?
I have no doubt about it. They sabotaged the trial; they accepted patients who were too advanced. Their main effort was to give a low dose of the medicine for a short period of time and to stop treatment just for some minor problem, like if a patient developed a skin rash. They were trying to give the treatment only for a very short period of time, like for instance a couple of weeks or a month. And then of course the patient was dying after that. It was completely unethical, it was horrible. As you probably heard recently, the pharmacist who was diluting an anti-cancer drug, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. I think the same should happen to these guys who really were trying to use this for their political manipulations.
Jessica Kerfoot. In remission for several years after using Antineoplastons.
Please see the Burzynski Patients web site for more information,
http:// http://www.burzynskipatientgroup.org
You may also e-mail Mary Jo Siegel, the lady who runs the web site. Mary is also a cancer survivor using Antineoplastons.
maryjo@siegel.net
How much influence do the pharmaceutical companies wield in medicine in the US?
Extreme influence. Most of the oncologists, I’m talking about reputable oncologists, they work for pharmaceutical companies, they work in clinical trials, they receive various type of incentives from pharmaceutical companies. And basically these doctors are approving medicine, FDA may approve the medicine, but finally this advisory board may advise FDA to go ahead with this or do not approve that medicine. So really the doctors who are deciding if the medicine should be approved or not, practically all of them have some type of relation with large pharmaceutical companies.
Is there a conspiracy to suppress other treatments or is it just a case of avaricious businesses, the pharmaceutical and hospital industry’s, doing everything in their power to protect their bottom line?
Well certainly they have a lot of power. When I filed my application for IND, the standard FDA policy was such that they would never approve a new drug for an individual owner, only for the large pharmaceutical companies. And that’s why I believe we waited for such a long time to receive the go-ahead for our clinical trial. So certainly there were obstruction tactics. Whether this is a conspiracy or not is hard for me to tell. As you can see, the leads which I presented, like for instance a researcher who worked for me initially and then decided to go to the higher bidder, which was a pharmaceutical company; then the relationship between the pharmaceutical company and governmental agencies. All of this indicates that there is some type of conspiracy. I think a Congressional committee should study this.
Turning our attention to the doctor/oncology profession. When reading Thomas Elias’s excellent book, “The Burzynski Breakthrough”, I was struck by how many times patients said that their oncologists were aggressively opposed to them taking your treatment.
Even after a patient’s success with your treatment, very few doctors give you the credit. Is this due to jealousy, arrogance, plain old denial or something else?
Probably a lot of arrogance. We have some prominent specialists, the best specialists in the world who really acknowledge our results and would like to work with us. On the other hand you have some doctors who hate to see a patient with success on our treatment. The fact that the patient is coming to their office, years after the patient should be dead, is something like a slap in the face. They hate it.
They will do everything they can to lie, to obstruct the information about this patient. We have a lot of evidence that oncologists were lying about the patient’s condition. For instance the patient recovered completely from highly malignant cancer and the oncologist was telling us the patient died from cancer. So certainly, we have a lot of evidence about some of these doctors who are dishonest, who are liars, who cheat. But on the other hand you can’t really put the same label on the entire profession. There are many other doctors who are honest and who like to know about what we have. Of course our clinic has board certified oncologists who are taking care of our patients.
I found an interesting quote by David Stewart, a philanthropist who helped fund Gaston Naessens cancer research in the 70’s. He says,
“I can say categorically that most scientific researchers with whom I have had to deal are highly opinionated, arrogant, condescending, and have built-in, insurmountable prejudices.”
Would you agree with these sentiments? What have your experiences been?
Well certainly, I think he’s right; unfortunately that’s the truth.
We spoke about Crystin Schiff briefly before. This is a particularly despicable story, because when Ric Schiff asked Dr. Michael Prados, then head of neuro-oncology at University of California at San Francisco Medical Center (UCSF), if he knew of any other treatment besides chemotherapy/radiation for Crystin’s brain tumor, Prados replied in the negative. But a few years before, he had sent you 14 letters documenting the effectiveness of Antineoplastons on Jeff Keller, another patient with brain cancer. Is this story true?
Yes, it’s true; of course Jeff Keller had an extremely malignant brain tumor. He had a high-grade glioma of the brain; he failed radiation therapy and additional treatments. He responded extremely well to our treatment. He was one of the patients whose case was presented to the NCI. So there was no doubt about his response. Dr. Prados knew about it. If he was dealing with a hopeless tumor like Crystin Schiff, why didn’t he call us?
Ryan and mother Cindy. Ryan is in remission for several years after using Antineoplastons.
Please see the Burzynski Patients web site for more information,
http:// http://www.burzynskipatientgroup.org
You may also e-mail Mary Jo Siegel, the lady who runs the web site. Mary is also a cancer survivor using Antineoplastons.
maryjo@siegel.net
Do you know why Prados did not tell them about Keller’s success with your treatment?
It’s hard for me to tell. It happens that Dr. Prados and Dr, Friedman, who became the boss of the FDA, came from the same medical school. So they work closely together, and perhaps there is something to do with the general action against us. It would be inconvenient for Dr. Prados to say that the treatment works if FDA was trying to get rid of us and when his friend was Commissioner of the FDA at that time. Perhaps that’s the connection….
One of your greatest critics is Saul Green (Ph.D. Biochemistry), a retired biochemist from Memorial Sloan Kettering. In 1992 the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), published Green’s article, “Antineoplastons: An Unproved Cancer Therapy.” What were his conclusions about Antineoplastons?
Well, Green is not a medical doctor, he’s a retired biochemist; he never reviewed our results. He got hold of some of our patents and that’s what he based his opinion on.
He was hired by another insurance company (Aetna) that was in litigation with us. He’s like a hired assassin. Not telling the truth. So really to argue with him is good for nothing. Even if something were completely clear he would negate it. He is simply a guy who was hired by our adversaries. He would do whatever they paid him to do.
Paul Leverett was diagnosed with a glioblastoma multiforme grade 4 brain stem tumor in May 1999. The prognosis was that he would probably be dead before the end of 1999. Orthodox medicine gave him no hope of survival.
Paul was given the maximum amount of radiation he was capable of receiving. It slowed the tumors growth slightly, but this did not alter Paul’s prospects for survival at all.
After completing some research on the Internet Paul learned about Dr. Burzynski’s Antineoplastons. Paul began taking Antineoplastons intravenously, administered by his wife, in September 1999. After 6 weeks Paul’s tumor had grown by only 2 %, Glioblastoma’s normally double in size every 2 weeks.
A PET scan in December 2000 confirmed that Paul was in complete remission. He stayed on Antineoplastons until August 2001 to ensure the tumor would not reoccur. There is just under 20% tumor necrosis remaining in his brain stem, which is probably scar tissue.
Paul’s oncologist (at MD Anderson, Houston) initially wanted to show his scan’s to his hospitals (MD Anderson) tumor review board. But then, for whaever reason, he refused further contact with Paul and did not go ahead with it.
The photo was taken with his wife Jennie. Paul had a web site created in order to inform people about his cancer experiences.
http://www.dontevergiveup.com
E-mail: pjleverett@ev1.net
Did Green ask to look at your patients’ files or even talk to any of your patients themselves?
No.
You responded with an article with 137 references, did JAMA publish even part of it?
JAMA refused to publish the article. They decided that they would publish a short letter to the editors. And obviously this is another dirty thing, because letters to the editors are not in the reference books. If you look in the computer and try to find letters to the editor from JAMA, you’ll never find it. So people who are interested will always find Green’s article, but they will never find our reply to Green’s article, unless they go to the library. Then they can look in the JAMA volume in which the letter was published, and then they will find it. So many doctors were asking me why I did not respond to Saul Green’s article because they never found my letter to the editors.
Are they obligated to publish your rebuttal?
Certainly they are, because they put Green’s article in JAMA in the first place, they accepted it without any peer review and then they did not allow me to honestly respond to it. I should be allowed to publish my response to the article in JAMA.
At the time of the publication Green was working as a consultant to Grace Powers Monaco, Esq., a Washington attorney who was assisting Aetna insurance agency in its lawsuit against you. What was the Aetna lawsuit about?
One of our patients sued Aetna because Aetna refused to pay for my treatment. Then Aetna got involved and Aetna sued us. Aetna really became involved in what you can call racketeering tactics because they contacted practically every insurance company in the US. They smeared us, they advised insurance companies to not pay for our services. So based on all of this, our lawyer decided to file a racketeering suit against Aetna. This was a 190 million dollar lawsuit against Aetna. So certainly Aetna was trying to discredit us by using people like Saul Green. And they hired him to work on their behalf.
So there was an obvious conflict of interest for Green because he worked for Monaco who was assisting Aetna. Was this information published in the JAMA article?
No.
Green also questions the fact that you have a Ph.D.. At the American Association for Clinical Chemistry Symposium, July 1997, Atlanta, GA., he says in part
“Burzynski’s claim to a Ph.D. is questionable. Letters from the Ministry of Health,
Warsaw, Poland, and from faculty at the Medical Academy at Lublin, Poland, say,
respectively:
1. At the time Burzynski was in school, medical schools did not give a Ph.D.
2. Burzynski received the D.Msc. in 1968 after completing a one-year laboratory
project and passing an exam. (3) Burzynski did no independent research while in medical school.”
He cites the people below as giving him some of this information.
1. Nizanskowski, R. ,Personal communication. Jan 15, 1992.
3. Bielinski, S., Personal communication, Nov. 22, 1987
First of all, do you have a Ph.D.?
Well, the program in Poland is somewhat different than the US. What I have is equivalent to a US Ph.D. When a medical doctor in the US graduates from medical school, he receives a medical doctor diploma. In Poland it’s a similar diploma, but it’s called a physician diploma, which is equal to medical doctor. And after that, if you would like to obtain a Ph.D., you have to do independent research, both in the US and in Poland. So you have to work on an independent project, you have to write a doctorate thesis and, in addition, to that in Poland, you have to take exams in medicine, in philosophy and also you have to take exams in the subjects on which you have written your thesis, in my case this was biochemistry.
As you can see from the letter from the President of the medical school from which I graduated, this is a Ph.D..
Saul Green got information from the guys who were key communist figures in my medical school. The second secretary of the communist party in my school, hated my guts, because I didn’t want to be a communist. So, somehow, Green got hold of “reputable” communist sources (laugh) to give him that information. It is exactly the President of the medical school who certified that I have a Ph.D..
So you are saying that theses people he received his personal communication from, Nizanskowski R, and Bielinski S, are both Communists, is that correct, or they were?
Not only communists, but Bielinski was one of the key players in the communist party in my medical school. So certainly he was extremely active as a communist. And, you know that communists, they usually don’t tell the truth.
So there is absolutely no question about it, you have a Ph.D. and Green’s doubts are totally without foundation. Has he ever acknowledged publicly the fact that you have a Ph.D.?
He’s never got in touch with me regarding this.
There are some mainstream oncologists who have stated publicly that your treatment works such as Dr. Robert Burdick, oncologist and professor at the University of Washington Medical School.
He is one of the top experts in this field.
Dr. Burzynski, there are undoubtedly many people alive today solely because of your treatments, but there could be many hundreds or thousands more alive if the public was given free access to your treatment. Do you see this ever happening?
I see this happening within a few years. We already have 8 clinical trials that prove efficacy of the treatment. However, we still need to treat more patients, because in each of our clinical trials it is required that we treat 40 patients. If we are talking about 78 clinical trials, then the number of patients that need to be treated is about 3,000. We are moving forward, probably in another 2 to 3 years we will have final approval.
A group shot of some of Dr. Burzynski’s patients. Please see the Burzynski Patients web site for more information,
http:// http://www.burzynskipatientgroup.org
You may also e-mail Mary Jo Siegel, the lady who runs the web site. Mary is also a cancer survivor using Antineoplastons.
maryjo@siegel.net
You have fought the government on behalf of your patients’ rights for over 25 years. There must have been a few times when you considered calling it quits. What has sustained you over the years and kept you fighting?
Well you see, basically the principle. Certainly I could practice just regular medicine and not
spend millions of dollars for the research, which I did. And I could go to some other country and practice. But I feel that this is my obligation because what I am doing is right. I’m saving peoples lives. So why should I give in to some mediocre characters, to liars, to people who really misrepresent what I do. And if I fail, then America will fail also. Because really America is the bastion of Democracy in the world. If America is rotten, then the whole world will go down to hell. So if something is rotten in the Patent office, in the NCI and FDA, it is the duty of the citizen to show that this is rotten and should be corrected.
There are a number of good people who can make it work, so why should bad people erode and destroy the entire system. I felt that this was my obligation; I felt that I was right and even if I had to go to prison, I would fight for it, because this is the right thing to do. Otherwise I could not look at myself in the mirror. I would despise myself.
Do you think we will we ever have medical freedom of choice in the US, where we can choose whatever treatment we want for cancer?
I am not sure if this will ever happen. But at least I am hoping that the movement, which we pioneered, like this alternative medicine movement, will bring a lot of good to the American people. After all, now you have official recognition of alternative treatment, more or less, and this is because of our fight. If we wouldn’t fight at that time, then perhaps it would not happen, but maybe it would happen another ten years from now.
Standard medical practices and the observations of physicians who are outside the medical establishment are extremely important, because anybody can make a discovery and improve the health of people. This I think is an important movement, but whether the people of America will ever have a chance to select whatever treatment they want, is another story.
Finally Dr. Burzynski, a hearty thanks to you for keeping your treatment available to cancer patients, for keeping your oath as a doctor and putting the patient ahead of financial gain, and of course, for saving lives. Please keep up the great work. Thank you for giving me the time to conduct this interview and inform people about your work and treatment.
Thank you.
End of interview.
Gavin.
Please be aware. Orthodox medicine often states that people who have recovered from cancer by unapproved methods did so due to a “spontaneous remission”. This means that the cancer just disappears for no apparent reason. First of all, I do not know of any documented cases of spontaneous remissions in brain cancer. In other serious cancers it is so rare as to be unworthy of discussion.
But here is the most crucial point. A true spontaneous remission is when the cancer goes away without any treatment, either approved or unapproved. It’s absurd to suggest that someone who received large amounts of Antineoplastons, and is then cancer free, had a spontaneous remission. If someone has surgery to remove a tumor and they are cancer free for years, we know it was because of the surgery.
Also remember that in many cases cancer patients turn to Antineoplastons (and other so-called alternatives) after chemotherapy and/or radiation have failed. If the patient goes into remission, oncologists often state that it was a delayed response to their treatment. This is a very convenient situation for oncologists. When their treatments fail, they still claim the credit for the patient’s recovery, even after the patient has been on Antineoplastons (or other treatments) for months/years.
Read about Dr. Burzynski’s treatment from the most important sources, the patients who had cancer and who are alive today because of Antineoplastons. The Burzynski Patients Web Site
http:// http://www.burzynskipatientgroup.org
Dr. Burzynski’s clinic can be reached at 713-335-5697.
His web site is http://www.cancermed.com
Kim Moreno’s short interview is below.
Kim also has an e-mail account she specifically set-up for people to contact her about her experiences with Dr. Burzynski, oncologists, Antineoplastons and cancer treatments in general. Any e-mail unrelated to these subjects will be deleted.
kimmoreno5@yahoo.com
Gavin Phillips non-profit web site
http://www.cancerinform.org
Some other Internet links that may be of use to you in your research.
While searching the Internet for links related to Koch’s glyoxylide, I found a recent article on Dr. Mercola’s web site related to a drug called Methylglyoxal (the lead ingredient, which is a metabolite in our body) that has been tested in India for over ten years. Please see,
http://www.mercola.com/2001/jun/13/methylglyoxal.htm
Interview with Kim Moreno
Thank you for taking the time to inform people about your family’s experiences while your daughter Tori was taking Antineoplastons.
Tori was first diagnosed with a Stage 4 brain stem glioma in August 1998, is that correct?
Yes
What was the prognosis?
The doctor’s basically told us to take her home and prepare for her to die.
Were there any records of anyone surviving with this type of cancer, using orthodox treatments?
None that they could provide us with.
How many cancer centers did you visit?
We originally were at Miller’s Children at Long Beach Memorial and then went to City of Hope. We also sent her MRI’s to Dr. Fred Epstein in New York to be looked at.
And they all said the same thing, Tori’s brain cancer was fatal and nothing could be done? How long was she expected to live?
Yes, they all said there was nothing we could do. She was given 2-6 weeks to live.
How did you find out about Dr. Burzynski and Antineoplastons?
On the Internet on a brain tumor support group. We read a letter from a father whose daughter was on the treatment.
Did you ask your doctors about Burzynski? Had they heard of him or researched his treatment?
Yes, we asked all of them about it. Most frowned at the idea, the oncologist refused to see her if we took her to see Dr. Burzynski. The only one who told us that he thought Dr. B might have a good chance with helping us was Dr. Fred Epstein.
When did you first visit him?
In October 1998
Did he tell you he could cure Tori?
No. He said he thought Antineoplastons would help her, but he wasn’t sure he had enough time. He was very upfront and honest with the statistics he had with her type of cancer but offered no promises.
How much Antineoplastons was Tori taking?
I can’t even remember what dose she ended up on when she was taking it intravenously.
What were the side effects? In the photos you sent me, Tori is greatly enlarged, I assume due to fluid retention. Is that what it was? How was that alleviated? Were there any other side effects due to the Antineoplastons?
We always had to monitor her potassium and sodium. So, she had to drink a lot of water and therefore we went through a lot of diapers. Those were the worst of the side effects. In the picture, she was so large due to being on Decadron, which we were able to wean her off of in January 1999.
Were you surprised when Tori started responding?
Yes, I have to say I was. It is hard to believe something great is going to come out of something so painful. I guess she taught me not to lose faith in life.
How soon was it before Tori’s brain tumor started reducing in size?
Immediately. It had shrunk in size by 20% after the very first MRI, which I believe was in 6-8 weeks…it’s been a long time and a lot of MRI’s later.
For how long did Tori continue to take Antineoplastons intravenously? Did you administer this yourself at home?
She took them through IV for 2 years and yes; we did this all at home.
Does your insurance company pay for the treatment? Did they try to avoid paying for it?
No, they do not pay for the treatment.
I understand Tori is 5 today. Is she still taking Antineoplastons? Has the tumor completely gone?
Yes, she just turned five in June. She still takes Antineoplastons orally…. she takes 40 capsules a day. Her tumor has decreased in size by 86% and they believe what is left may be scar tissue.
Has Tori suffered any permanent side-side effects from Antineoplastons?
Not one. In fact, it decreased her symptoms dramatically and never caused her any harm.
So Tori is cancer free and side effect free today?
Absolutely….
This is an incredible story Kim. Your child was diagnosed with a fatal brain cancer and the best oncologists and surgeons in America told you it was hopeless. Yet you found a cure for your child, without the billions, and so-called cancer specialists, that the NCI has at its disposal. Have any oncologists or doctors asked you about Dr. Burzynski’s treatment?
They tend to ask very quietly, but never really respond to what I have to tell them. There is curiosity there, just no one is really willing to step up to the plate and believe that the antineoplastons had something to do with her survival.
What do they say now that Tori is alive and well?
The neurologists told us that sometimes it happens and they called it “spontaneous remission”. Again, I asked them to provide some statistics and there were none to be seen.
That is of course the height of absurdity. To my knowledge, there has never been a documented case of any brain cancer going into spontaneous remission. Have you ever mentioned that to them?
Yes, again with no intelligent response.
So they are quite content to administer the same cancer causing, toxic treatments, when they know about your daughter’s success with Antineoplastons?
Absolutely. It amazes me that some of them can sleep at night.
Has your opinion about the medical profession, specifically cancer specialists, changed since Tori’s recovery? If it has, in what manner?
Yes, it has changed a lot. I guess the biggest change would be that I no longer sit back and believe anything a doctor tells m e and that we have to take our healthcare into our hands by searching for legitimate options. I believe we have the right to choose.
What do you think about the fact that some 3,000 children in the US (untold thousands worldwide) this year will be diagnosed with some form of brain cancer, and their families will have to face the same horror you did, the horror of losing a child. But virtually all of them will not be told about Antineoplastons, the treatment that cured Tori?
It really makes me sick to my stomach. That is why I want to talk to anyone who wants to listen about Tori’s Story
Finally, I commend you and your husband for finding a way to cure your daughter, when all the “experts” said it was hopeless. You gave her life when she was born, and then you saved her life by finding Antineoplastons.
I thank you once again Kim for answering my questions and sending me the photos of Tori. Give my best to your family.
Gavin Phillips opinion
Dr. Burzynski is a great rarity these days. He is a courageous man who risked everything battling the FDA for over 15 years so as to allow cancer patients access to his treatment. A doctor who puts his patients well being before financial gains. But how many people diagnosed with cancer this year will ever find out about Antineoplastons? A tiny percentage, because very few mainstream oncologists will inform their patients about a treatment that has yet to be approved. And why is that? The NCI and ACS have supposedly been searching for decades for any and all treatments that are effective against cancer. For over 15 years Dr. Burzynski’s treatment has shown that it is effective. Many cancer patients, including some very young children with supposedly hopeless brain cancers, are alive today because of Antineoplastons.
Here we come to the most crucial questions of all. Why did the FDA try their utmost to ruin Dr. Burzynski by involving him in 4 court cases? Why did the NCI make certain Burzynski’s clinical trials failed by diluting his treatment and enrolling patients who were the least likely to respond to Antineoplastons? If this was a one-time only event, we could dismiss it as an aberration; on overzealous government agencies. But the persecution of Dr. Burzynski is not an aberration, but the norm. There have been many well-documented cases in the last 70 some years of doctors/healers who discovered an effective cancer treatment, only to find the full force of the cancer agencies trying to destroy them and their discoveries. I have learned about several during my research. Dr. William Koch/Glyoxylide, Dr. Andrew Ivy/Krebiozen, Harry Hoxsey method/herbs, Royal Rife/radio waves, Ernst Krebs/ Laetrile/Amygdalin, Gaston Naessens/714 X, Dr. Lawrence Burton/Immuno-Augmentative Therapy, Dr. Max Gerson method/diet.
What, if anything, does Dr. Burzynski’s Antineoplastons have in common with these other treatments? Most of them are natural; all of them are inexpensive to produce, especially when compared to the enormous costs of conventional treatments. If cheap cancer treatments with virtually no side effects were allowed to freely compete with the cancer causing offerings of the pharmaceutical companies, the outcome is obvious. The pharmaceutical companies, and the hospitals that administer their drugs, will lose tens of billions in profits. And this I believe is the reason Dr. Burzynski, and the people who have gone before him, have been publicly vilified as “quacks” and their treatments discredited. The fact is that the pharmaceutical companies control American medicine, and they are only interested in treatments from which they can derive a profit.
Every cancer patient in America, and the world, should have free access to Antineoplastons. It is intolerable, not to mention totally un-American, to give a profit obsessed industry a monopoly over Americans healthcare. Nobody should have the right to force toxic chemicals down our family’s throat, especially when Dr. Burzynski’s treatment has proven effective (for some cancers) and does not have appalling side effects.
One point, in which I disagree with Burzynski about, is the possibility of medical freedom of choice happening in America. It would happen in a year or two if enough Americans demanded it. You can help make that a reality. Please forward this interview to as many people as you know, as well as media outlets. Around ten thousand Americans die every week from cancer; we simply must have medical freedom of choice. Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
Gavin Phillips.
http://www.cancerinform.org
E-mail this sites address to someone and help spread the word
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E-mail me: cancerinfo11@yahoo.com
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REFERENCES:
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http://www.cancerinform.org/aburzinterview.html
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http://www.cancerinform.org/aburzinterview2.html
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“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
Gentlemen, I start your Insolence 😇
——————————————————————
(1:30) [1]
——————————————————————
The “motto” of “The Amazing (Not so Much) Meeting” is “Fighting Fakers,” which is apropos, since I doubt that “Orac” the “Check my Facts” Hack of Dr. David H. Gorski, grasps the irony, that when I read some of his blog articles, you could easily switch his name with the name of some individual he is flogging, and the proverbial shoe fits, and:
——————————————————————
(1:40)
——————————————————————
“This is a guy who sometimes fools even, you know, physicians”
——————————————————————
(I couldn’t have said it better, myself) 😊
——————————————————————
(2:47)
——————————————————————
He states:
“There is a long segment about “The Skeptics”“
(applause) 😝
——————————————————————
(4:25)
——————————————————————
“His lawyer wrote a book”
“About a half of it is about Burzynski“ [4]
——————————————————————
6:00
——————————————————————
Gorski mentions that Burzynski noticed that there were higher levels of these chemicals in healthy people, than people with cancer
——————————————————————
Whereas, Burzynski is on record as having said [5]:
” . . . healthy people have abundance of these chemicals in blood
Cancer patients have varied to none“
I did NOT know before now, that GorskGeek thinks that “none” is a “level” 😶
——————————————————————
He continues:
AS2.1 – which is a chemical called phenylacetic acid, which is a byproduct of metabolism that turns into phenylacetylglutamine by the liver
A10 – soluble is basically the same thing
It breaks down to PAG
——————————————————————
WOW !
I thought it was: AS2 – 1 😊
They are “basically the same thing” ? 😳
What does Burzynski say ? [6]
Phenylacetylglutaminate (PG) and Phenylacetate (PN) are metabolites of Phenylbutyrate (PB) and are constituents of antineoplaston AS2-1
PG and PN are naturally occurring in human body as result of metabolism of phenylalanine in liver and kidneys
formulation of antineoplaston AS2-1 is 4:1 mixture of synthetic PN and PG
A10 is 4:1 mixture of PG and iso-PG
That does NOT look like “basically the same thing” to me 😛
——————————————————————
(6:50)
——————————————————————
Gorski founders on:
“And these are substances which were actually studied in the ’50’s and ’60’s and not found to be particularly, um, promising, but, he didn’t know that then”
——————————————————————
GorskGeek has #FAILED miserably to prove that on his blogs [7] 😄
——————————————————————
(8:00)
——————————————————————
Gorski comments about Burzynski’s “animal testing,” “species specific” claims:
“There are ways of getting around that”
——————————————————————
But Gorski, again, has #FAILED miserably to prove it [8] 😅
——————————————————————
(12:00)
——————————————————————
Gorski makes lame excuses about the NCI phase II clinical trial [9] 😖
——————————————————————
(12:50)
——————————————————————
Gorski claims Burzynski was indicted for insurance fraud in the 1997 case 😱
——————————————————————
GorskGeek, care to try and prove that one also ? [10] 😃
——————————————————————
(14:25)
——————————————————————
Gorski then states that out of 61 trials on clinicaltrials . gov, “most” are “closed or unknown”
——————————————————————
GorskGeek #FAILED again 😁
At the time it was:
1 – Not Yet Recruiting
(OPEN)(Phase 3)
1 – COMPLETED
2 – WITHDRAWN
(Withdrawn due to slow enrollment)
7 – WITHDRAWN
(This study has been withdrawn prior to enrollment)
(9=WITHDRAWN)
10 – Recruiting
(10=OPEN)
40 – Active, not recruiting –
(40=CLOSED)
61 =TOTAL
——————————————————————
(15:20)
——————————————————————
Gorski attempts to go all “legal eagle”:
“Listen to Burzynski’s lawyer!”
“You listen to Burzynski’s lawyer; and, and I swear I don’t understand, like why Burzynski would let him, let his lawyer say stuff this damning in his own book, but he does”
“So, get a load of some of these quotes, referring to one of the clinical trials, he says:”
“It was a joke”
“. . . there could not be any possibility of meaningful data coming out of the so-called clinical trial, it was all an artifice, that, you know, designed so that they could continue giving the treatment“
“The FDA wanted all of his patients to be on an IND, so, that’s what we did”
——————————————————————
Gorski, attorney Rick Jaffe is an American, living in America NOT the formerly communist Poland
He can say whatever he wants
GorskGeek is NOT a lawyer 😓
And there’s an excellent reason why
Nor is he schooled in the proper usage of the English language
FACT:
” . . . the so-called clinical trial . . .”
Any human being with a modicum of intelligence about the English language, understands that the term “clinical trial” is singular, i.e. one
Burzynski’s lawyer is obviously referring to the CAN-1 clinical trial mentioned in Burzynski’s 11/25/1997 Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing [11]
One trial that is retrospective is CAN-1 Clinical Trial
——————————————————————
CAN-1 PHASE II STUDY OF ANTINEOPLASTONS A10 AND AS2-1 IN
PATIENTS WITH REFRACTORY MALIGNANCIES
133 patients
——————————————————————
Clinical trial of patients treated by Dr. Burzynski through 2/23/1996
FDA has indicated it will not accept data generated by this trial since it was not a wholly prospective one
——————————————————————
Gorski continues his trend of #FAILURES when he mentions the additional types of treatments that Burzynski was offering, but he #FAILED to mention [12] 😂
——————————————————————
” … in 1997, his medical practice was expanded to include traditional cancer treatment options such as chemotherapy, gene targeted therapy, immunotherapy and hormonal therapy in response to FDA requirements that cancer patients utilize more traditional cancer treatment options in order to be eligible to participate in the Company’s Antineoplaston clinical trials”
——————————————————————
(18:20)
——————————————————————
Gorski addresses the case of Tori Moreno
——————————————————————
Kim Moreno states:
“We originally were at Miller’s Children at Long Beach Memorial and then went to City of Hope“
“We also sent her MRI’s to Dr. Fred Epstein in New York to be looked at”
Gorski suggests that 3 different opinions could have misdiagnosed Tori Moreno
You can read an interview with Tori’s mother [13]
——————————————————————
(19:45)
——————————————————————
Gorski goes on to mention Burzynski patients going to Texas Children’s Hospital with hypernatremia issues
——————————————————————
Gorski, do you mean this ? [14]
The changing pattern of hypernatremia in hospitalized children
Department of Pediatrics, Texas Children’s Hospital, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA
——————————————————————
(20:00)
——————————————————————
Gorski mangles the case of Hannah Bradley, who had a grade 3 anaplastic astrocytoma brain tumor
GorskGeek makes excuses like “spontaneous remission”, but then provides no citation, reference, or link to a case of such a tumor having spontaneously exhibited remission [15]
——————————————————————
(20:40)
——————————————————————
Gorski states that antineoplastons are chemotherapy
——————————————————————
No, Gorski, antineoplaston are:
“…an unapproved drug, not ordinary “chemotherapy“ [16] 😣
——————————————————————
(21:53)
——————————————————————
Gorski claims in regard to Burzynski’s personalized gene-targeted therapy:
” . . . gives to the patient without regard for synergistic toxicity“
“Boom, there you go”
——————————————————————
Gorski’s #FAIL rate continues, as Burzynski has stated that phase 2 and 3 publications are reviewed as part of this process [17]
Gorski, “BOOM, THERE YOU GO” ッ
——————————————————————
Gorski, you should hire out to the Democratic Party as their mascot, because you must be the biggest pompous ASS I’ve ever seen 😜
Gorski, my advice: don’t quit your day job, HACK 😷
——————————————————————
The #TAM2013 audience then has to suffer through 22:36 of the blatherskite of Robert J. (don’t call me Bobby) “Bob” Blaskiewicz Blatherskitewicz [2]
He blathers about the “dozen,” “17,” “16 dead,” “pancreatic cancer,” “Joseph, who was alive but died well within the life expectancy given his diagnosis,” “Joann, who was alive but died within a year of starting therapy,” “Irene S., who was dead within month,” “Maxine, who was already dead,” the “103 in 2011,” “63 in mid-June,” “17 on original 1999 site,” “about 3 added a year,” the “about 50 stories,” “1/10th of patient names gathered,” “Amelia S. – 7, tumor breaking up,” “Chase,” “Cody – 1994, 20 years ago, 2 visits, 6 weeks treatment breaking up,” “David,” “Janet, 3 – 5 yrs., oncologist, now dead, ovarian cancer,” “Pete took video down,” “8,000 patients,” “probable ischemic necrosis,” “13 yr. old, getting worse getting better, vomited – Marlene, nurse,” “Rory died 2005,” “Supatra, swelling, last wed., brain tumor,” “Side-effect, 2%, sodium load,” “Andrea, U.S. News and World Report, 30% chance recovery, glioblastoma, ANP in luggage, died on plane,” “Cathy wanted to be on ANP, Greg Burzynski, found out only brain tumor,” “Denise D. breast cancer,” and finally:
——————————————————————
(18:45)
——————————————————————
” … and light as many fires under his butt as we can“
——————————————————————
Mentions Rick Jaffe’s book Galileo’s Lawyer
IT’S ALL ABOUT THE PATIENTS [4]
——————————————————————
All you need to know about Blaskiewicz is:
“White man speak with forked tongue” [18]
——————————————————————
The 3rd video is a panel discussion, which includes “man-crush” tag-team [3]
Robert Blaskiewicz and David Gorski
——————————————————————
(8:00)
——————————————————————
Bob says:
“Yeah, I’m not that type of doctor“
——————————————————————
Bob, the correct answer for you, is:
“I’m NOT a doctor” QUACK
——————————————————————
(13:05)
——————————————————————
Gorski gabs that he’s a:
“Game of Thrones Geek”
——————————————————————
I just knew I was right, GorskGeek [19]
——————————————————————
(14:00)
——————————————————————
The only female panelist mentions “bureaucrats”, “wimps”, and “people without balls”
——————————————————————
2 out of 3 ain’t bad
She describes the Bob and David show to a T
——————————————————————
(15:00)
——————————————————————
The claim is made that a Burzynski physician appeared on the Burzynski Facebook page announcing results
——————————————————————
(16:00)
——————————————————————
Gorski #whines that the Texas Medical Board wasn’t successful in shutting Burzynski down because of “politics”
——————————————————————
LAUGHABLE
——————————————————————
(20:55)
——————————————————————
Gorski gives his usual excuse:
“He’s not an oncologist”
——————————————————————
GorskiGeek, that claim is as dead as apparently, quite a number of your brain cells [15]
——————————————————————
(34:40)
——————————————————————
Audience members are given the opportunity to speak, and this is the garbage served up:
——————————————————————
“Hi, this is Susan
Ah, don’t forget to mention that Wikipedia has been a major battlefield
We’ve had 23,000 views to the clinic’s page this last month, also rebutr . . .”
——————————————————————
“Control the flow of information”
——————————————————————
Gorski pipes up:
“What she said”
——————————————————————
(35:20)
——————————————————————
Blatherskitewicz chimes in:
“When it comes to Wikipedia can I just mention that is, that is, that that is so effective that Wikipedia was singled out in the most recent Burzynski movie“
——————————————————————
Gorski chirps:
“Yes”
——————————————————————
Bob yacks:
“as being controlled by evil skeptics“
——————————————————————
Gorski ejaculates:
“No, seriously”
——————————————————————
Bob bleats:
“No”
(applause)
——————————————————————
“You have to unleash the evil hoards of skeptics“
“Wahahaha” 👿
——————————————————————
Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski on Wikipedia:
“Simply don’t pay attention to it, because it, it’s not true”
“You won’t be able to, do any, clinical research which we do, without convincing evidence, especially when you have the most powerful agency in the government which is against you“
“So they would love to find something which is wrong with what we are doing”
“Ah, so the fact that they’ve, um, agreed that what we have has value, and they allow us to do phase 3 clinical trials it means that we are right”
“Because, uh, uh, nobody who didn’t have any, concrete evidence that it works, would be able to go as far”
“So whatever Wikipedia says, well, I don’t care for them“
(laughing) [5]
——————————————————————
Enlightening ?
Inspiring ?
Amazing ?
Hypocrites
Apparatchiks [20]
======================================
REFERENCES:
======================================
[1] – David Gorski – Why We Fight (Part I): Stanislaw Burzynski Versus Science-Based Medicine – TAM 2013 11/8/2013 (22:44)
——————————————————————
======================================
[2] – Robert Blaskiewicz – Why We Fight (Part II): It’s All About The Patients – TAM 2013 11/8/2013 (22:36)
——————————————————————
======================================
[3] – Medical Cranks And Quacks
TAM 2013 JREF
11/8/2013 (42:42)
——————————————————————
======================================
[4] – “Galileo’s Lawyer” Richard A. Jaffe, Esq.
——————————————————————
http://www.richardjaffe.com
======================================
[5] – 11/9/2013 – Pete Cohen chats with Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski:
——————————————————————
https://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/11/09/pete-cohen-chats-with-dr-stanislaw-burzynski/
======================================
[6] – 6/2012 – Journal of Cancer Therapy, 2012, 3, 192-200 doi:10.4236/jct.2012.33028 Published Online June 2012, Pg. 192
——————————————————————
======================================
[7] – Burzynski: Oh, RATS!!!:
——————————————————————
https://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/07/26/the-lancet-oncology-peer-review-team-d-12-01519-fail-2/
======================================
[8] – Critiquing: How Stanislaw Burzynski became Burzynski the Brave Maverick Doctor, part 1:
——————————————————————
https://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/07/22/critiquing-how-stanislaw-burzynski-became-burzynski-the-brave-maverick-doctor-part-1/
======================================
[9] – 9/19/2013 – Critiquing: National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) CancerNet “fact sheet”:
——————————————————————
https://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/09/19/critiquing-national-cancer-institute-nci-at-the-national-institutes-of-health-nih-cancernet/
======================================
[10] – 9/25/2013 – Critiquing: National Council Against Health Fraud, Inc. – NCAHF News: JURY NULLIFICATION THWARTS BURZYNSKI CONVICTION:
——————————————————————
https://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/09/25/critiquing-national-council-against-health-fraud-inc-ncahf-news-jury-nullification-thwarts-burzynski-conviction/
======================================
[11] – 7/9/2013 – Burzynski: The Original 72 Phase II Clinical Trials:
——————————————————————
https://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/07/09/burzynski-the-original-72-phase-ii-clinical-trials/
======================================
[12] – 4/26/2013 – Burzynski: FDA requirements that cancer patients utilize more traditional cancer treatment options in order to be eligible to participate in the Company’s Antineoplaston CLINICAL TRIALS:
——————————————————————
https://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/burzynski-fda-requirements-that-cancer-patients-utilize-more-traditional-cancer-treatment-options-in-order-to-be-eligible-to-participate-in-the-companys-antineoplaston-clinical-trials/
======================================
[13] – Tori Moreno
——————————————————————
http://www.cancerinform.org/aburzinterview2.html
======================================
[14] – 9/1999 – Pediatrics. 1999 Sep;104(3 Pt 1):435-9
——————————————————————
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/10469766/
======================================
[15] – 11/2/2013 – Critiquing: Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski’s cancer “success” stories:
——————————————————————
https://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/11/02/critiquing-dr-stanislaw-burzynskis-cancer-success-stories/
——————————————————————
10/25/2013 – Hannah Bradley – I Feel Empowered, In Control Of My Body: Four Women On Fighting Cancer With Alternative Therapies http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/10383724/I-feel-empowered-in-control-of-my-body-four-women-on-fighting-cancer-with-alternative-therapies.html
——————————————————————
https://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/10/25/hannah-bradley-i-feel-empowered-in-control-of-my-body-four-women-on-fighting-cancer-with-alternative-therapies-httpwww-telegraph-co-ukhealth10383724i-feel-empowered-in-control-of-my-body-fo/
======================================
[16] – NOT ORDINARY CHEMOTHERAPY
——————————————————————
https://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F3/27/27.F3d.153.93-2071.html
======================================
[17] – 9/4/2013 – University of Michigan, where is alum Dr. David H. “Orac” Gorski’s Grapefruits ?:
——————————————————————
https://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/09/04/university-of-michigan-where-is-alum-dr-david-h-orac-gorskis-grapefruits/
======================================
[18] – 10/13/2013 – Why “The Skeptics™” Perfessor Robert J. (don’t call me “Bobby”) “Bob” Blaskiewicz (@rjblaskiewicz) of University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, “Fame,” is a Coward and a Liar:
——————————————————————
https://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/10/13/why-the-skeptics-perfessor-robert-j-dont-call-me-bobby-bob-blaskiewicz-rjblaskiewicz-of-university-of-wisconsin-eau-claire-fame-is-a-coward-and-a-liar/
======================================
[19] – 10/27/2013 – “The Skeptics™” Burzynski Bias, Censorship, Lies, and Alibi’s: September 28, 2013 “The Skeptics™” Burzynski discussion: By Bob Blaskiewicz – 2:19:51
——————————————————————
https://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/10/27/the-skeptics-lie-lied-lies-liars-lying-burzynski-bias-censorship-lies-and-alibis-september-28-2013-the-skeptics-burzynski-discussion-by-bob-blaskiewic/
======================================
[20] – 11/9/2013 – Wikipedia Articles:
——————————————————————
https://stanislawrajmundburzynski.wordpress.com/2013/09/11/burzynski-timeline/
======================================
Robert J. (don’t call me “Bobby”) Blaskiewicz’s #Epic Skeptic “Word-Salad” #Fail – September 28, 2013 “The Skeptics™” Burzynski discussion: By Bob Blaskiewicz – 2:19:51
Are you there ?
Okay, we might as well get started if were going to do this
Alright, so ummm I guess we can start with uhhh bit of a conversation
Uhhh
You’ve been on the Burzynski Hashtag for a long time – what’s you’re motivation ?
Okay
So what information have Skeptics posted that they uhhh that they missed that demonstrates that Burzynski’s uhhh treatments are effective ?
What, what have we missed ?
Well okay, uh one of the issues that Skeptics have with Burzynski is that in order to, let’s say, elevate uh the profile of his drug, in order to make sure that everybody who needs it can get, is to complete a phase 3 uh trial uh he started uh I believe was it just the one, right ?
Uhmmm, and that’s gone nowhere
In fact, it was withdrawn this I think within the last week
It doesn’t look like its going to happen, and this is, you know, for all the the phase 1 and phase 2 trials, those are very preliminary trials
Uhmmm, the phase 3 is is will be the gold standard, and also the bare minimum that that the larger medical community will accept uhhh as evidence, so it’s like you’ve lowered the bar for for evidence in a way that that you know oncologists don’t
The the
Right
So, do you think that there is a uh uh conspiracy to keep Burzynski from publishing ?
Right
Right
So, uhmmm, as far as I understand it The Lancet, uhhh the the question of The Lancet publication ehhh is par for the course, that most people are, when they get a speedy rejection from a uh uh, uh journal, are actually uh grateful, because that means there allowed to go ahead and submit their material to another journal more quickly and get it out there
Uhm, but the reaction that we saw on the side of the Burzynski camp was that, see, they’ll never publish us
Uhm, which is, eg, taken as far as I can tell as evidence of a conspiracy or that his name is is poison uh I mean, I think it is, but uhmmm, that wasn’t indicated in the in the rejection letter in order to uh claim that it is is to go beyond the evidence which again we’re not really willing to do
So, uhmmm what is the the ration the the something that I think a lot of of a lot of The Skeptics have been curious about when it comes to your your your blog and your behavior on-line uhhh is that that that, that the format of your blog does not make sense to us, we don’t understand exactly what you’re trying to do with it
Could you kind of clarify that for us because it’s uhhh long and it’s it’s intense and there’s a lot of emotion behind it but we don’t understand exactly, what it’s supposed to mean
Alright, ah have you read The Other Burzynski Patient Group ?
So, ahmmm what is your response say to the story of Amelia Saunders ?
Okay, what part of, what did I get wrong ?
Uh was that Amelia and Luna ?
Luna was the other one, correct
Oh, I, you’re talking, oh this is one of the very 1st ones that we did on the, on the site
Uhmmm, oh, her name is, her name escapes me at the moment
Um, but she wasn’t there for for very long but uh her condition deteriorated very rapidly
Uhmmm, and one of the questions that we had, we raised, is is, you know, you you don’t need to reach full dosage ’cause the the full dosage for these ANP seem to be pretty high, at least the sodium load that that that patients are asked to to carry, or required to carry if they they go on it
And we wondered if the sodium load was ah to great for someone who has a brain tumor, I mean uh, you know uh sodium load will increase your blood pressure, and these people have extra things in their brains that probably won’t react well to swelling, right, and and wont react well to pressure, so we were wondering, if in fact you don’t have to reach the full dosage in order to have uh severe side effects
Ummm, you know maybe you haven’t reached a therapeutic dose level, but that doesn’t mean that it didn’t have an effect on her
And you can clearly tell, that, you know in the videos, well at least the videos before the family took it down, that she was lethargic and a little bit out of it, she uh the the difference in her conscious state was no noticeable for anyone to see
Ummm, to, you know where she had been up and about to in her bed kind of slurring and and, and and and, in fact just disoriented, just looked like someone had taken the piss out of her
I mean, ummm, so that’s, that one, ummm, you know the critique that, reaching therapeutic levels and having a biological effect on someone are are clearly different things in her case
Uhmmm, now I never went on you know on to say ummm that uh she had uh reached therapeutic levels
Uhmmm, I I think as far as I went was that she went, she paid her $30,000 dollars and then she died
Uhmmm, and and and what part of that’s not true
Okay, so, um, going back to Amelia, um, some of the the most um I think the most serious charges is that we see a uh repeatedly in his uh uh stories of his patients, um those are all cited, those are all backed uh by, you know, um at least as good as anything the Burzynski Patient Group has ever done
Uhmmm, something that we see over and over are patients reporting over and over that signs of getting worse are signs if getting better
Um, in particular a, uh report that’s very common from from patients is that the center of their solid tumors are breaking up
One of the problems that we we we see is that that is more frequently a sign of ischemic necrosis that the tumor has outgrown its blood supply and that it’s dying on the inside
And when you see something like a 5th of the patients who we’ve been able to to document, reporting this excitedly, we get extremely concerned about what’s happening
Uhmmm, what part of that is not absolutely terrifying to you
Well, the the yeah I’ve never seen anyone say that the purpose of the antineoplastons is to cause uhhh, you know, to restrict the blood flow to the tumor and and and uh cause it to die that way, which is certainly one therapeutic approach that’s been, that’s been floated and research has been done on uh and might even be promising and uh what he’s saying is that cancer is caused by a lack of antineoplastons in the system and that basically what he is doing is antineoplaston uh uh supplement therapy uh rath, what’s the word I’m looking for, uhm uh, replacement therapy
Uh and there isn’t a doctor on the planet, uh not a medical specialist on the planet, who, I, who has identified at at as a contributing factor as a contributor to cancer or antineo or lack of antineoplastons
So
Why isn’t he, you know, you understand that these doctors, ummm like nothing is true or false because a doctor says it is true or false
Uhmmm it’s it’s it but when the entire medical community uhhh who are des are desperately are are every bit as tired of seeing patients die uhmmm and seeing patients suffer or as anyone else’s families are you you imagine what an oncologist sees in that office over the course of of a year and there’s going to be unimaginable suffering
I’m sure that they’re tired of that
And that they would, you know, that if there was the slightest hint that antineoplaston deficiency was a cause of cancer that it would make it into the literature, with or without Burzynski
Uhhh ummm, why should we trust him when he has uh the sole uh the only person who had identified antineoplastons as a contributor to cancer when he is the sole manufacturer of the of the therapy uh when he is the uh sole prescriber of the therapy and when he is, where the sole distributor of the therapy from his pharmacy
He’s read everything
I think
Can you go ahead and send me that link that that I saw in the chat that you had uh posted a couple of times in the chat
Could you send me that link, to that publication
I can give you a minute to to go find it if that’s
That would be good
Uhmmm
Well, yeah that’s a, that’s you know one of the major problems that this this cancer has is the location is such a pain to get to
Uhm, and often when we are talking about these cancers, the thing that gets me over and over and over, and this is something that I’ve learned from from working uh with others on the Burzynski Patient Group is what’s it like to be a cancer patient, only by proxy, man I couldn’t imagine really going through this myself, and, you know I’d hate to see my family go through this
That these people are at what could be described as a low point, they’re um uhhh, you get a diagnosis of uh brainstem glioma the prognosis is very bad
Uhmmm, there are only a few cases of people recovering from that, I mean they’re there uhm uhhh but, you know that it’s an, it’s an extremely grim prognosis
Uhhh and I worry that when they’re in that desperate state and especially let’s talk about the children, you have these kids who are uh you know 2 and 3 and have had this, you know uh awful diagnosis and the parents are willing to do literally anything to keep their kids alive
What protections are in place for patients as far as that these kids are and and their parents are protected
Who had the better results ?
Okay
Hmmm, yeah, the, Guy Chapman has just um uh tossed in a a, a comment
I guess uh that there are a lot of people who wanna talk to you (laughter)
Uh, Guy Chapman has just jumped in and said it looks like you forgot the phase 3 trial is withdrawn and none of the phase 2 trials were published
Uhmmm, this, this is not a minor thing for for for Skeptics
This, this is exactly what will convince us to get on board the Burzynski train is the publication of these trials
But even the preliminary trials, one has been finished, and none has been published in its entirety for over 15 years
When you consider that this is a, as you just pointed out, this is a a cancer, the, especially the brainstem gliomas
That these cancers uh the cases resolved fairly quickly, we know what the outcome are fairly quickly
Ummm, do you have any sense of when these trials are going to be published ?
From Laura ?
Right
When you, when you think about a major, sorry, go ahead
Yeah, right, uh
Antineoplastons has a better rate ?
Right
Right, one of the things that that there there are 2 points to be made here
Uhm, the 1st one is that major pharmaceutical companies that are getting this accelerated approval have a track record of producing results which Burzynski does not have
Secondly, when it comes to ummm the rates of antineoplastons, how can we possibly say without a single published trial he, that he has an improved rate over Temodar or anything like that, and that’s exactly what would show to us whether or not his rate is better, the the types of publications that he’s done, that look really good on paper, ummm, to the to the, the common persons eye are these case series where he goes through and picks out people who have happened to have survived
But what that doesn’t tell us is whether or not the antineoplaston had anything to do with it
What you need to do is go and separate the background noise, the random weird rare but very real survive, unexpected survivals that occur, and separate those, uhhh, from any effect of antineoplaston, he’s never done that
But if you think about that, I mean that if it does have a a an improvement rate above uh other treatments
That still has an improvement rate, you know, that, that would give another option to people, ummm, even if in the aggregate their rates aren’t better
It might work on some individuals tumors rather than on, you know, you you it it is it taken as a, as a lump but extend life by uh quality of life for 3 months or something um in some cases but, you know, it it still has an effect, a real effect, and deserves to be out there
That’s a long time when someone is dying
Well, one of
One of the problems that that doctors have in in this country when it comes to doing ummm antineoplastons studies to verify any any effect that uh Burzynski has uhhh I i think back to the one where people say well that the FDA sabotaged his trials, and
Well, if if you think about it though, um, the, the proposed action as I understand it of the antineoplaston is that it’s a deacetylase inhibitor, which slightly unspools DNA, that allows uh, which would allow uh proteins to get into a pair of damaged DNA
And we have drugs that do that which carry a much lower sodium load
Uh, um, it, that would have a therapeutic effect on and that the risks outweigh the possible benefits of using this one particular drug
Um, I’ve seen any number of people looking at um, if you look at the Luna ah Pettiguine uh uh story on The Other Burzynski Patient Group um you see that the doctor is absolutely horrified by the insane sodium load that that Burzynski’s patients are carrying
Um in in some ways that that sodium load is uh leading people to constantly drinking up to I’ve seen 12 liters of water a day
That’s not necessary for other deactsylace inhibitors
Um the, why would you prefer that to to another drug if it did essentially the same thing, that didnt have this massive side effect ?
thats not necessary for other deactsylace inhibitors
Well that sss I believe that that’s proposed by the researchers, the design trial, you know they they sign off on it but that is is, is up to uh Burzynski uh my uh David James @StortSkeptic on the
ah he has asked everything that Burzynski does looks sort of like the behaviors of pseudo-science
So what we’re saying uhhh he does uh uhhh Burzynski like for instance like I said he has vertically integrated, ah, he controls all parts from identification to the creation of the drug uh to the diagnosing uh well he doesn’t do the diagnosing but he does um um prescribe and distribute, he does all that vertically, which is actually something that snake oil salesmen do
Another thing that that’s a red flag in Skeptic circles is that his one compound seems to be a sort of panacea for all sorts of different types of, of of cancers, um where we know that cancer has a a varied uh, uh, ideology and and the uh panaceas are are are to be and a variety of different types of causes um, in fact in any one tumor you would, you could say that these, these tumors are are completely uh heterogenous
The idea that there’s gonna be one knockout, it seems rather unrealistic
Um, additionally he charges immense amounts of money for this drug, um, even though the components cost pennies
Um, on top of that, um, there’s something that he asks for a a huge payment up front
That’s something that’s been warned against for generations of uh by anti-quack um uh crusaders if if they’re asking for everything up front, then be afraid
Ummm, another thing is that uh the kind of cult that’s sprung up around Burzynski, uh, one that is immune to uh criticism, reason, and pits people who are doing standard cancer research, as enemies, um, creating a black and white version of the world where there are good people and there are bad people
There are people who are fighting the disease, and then there are people who are really helping the disease
I mean, if you look at the, the new web-site by the Burzynski patients fighting back group, they say support the cure not the cancer
That’s a manikin world-view of black and white
Um, these are all huge red flags, that you’re dealing with a quack
Um, why hasn’t Burzynski done anything to change that ?
Right
Well, there, this is important
This is really important though
Wha, when she’s talking about, that’s Luna Pettiguine’s mother, is is talking about the costs there
Uhmmm, you, when someone is not insured in in this country,
Ahm, the, the the base cost that that’s calculated is, is the hospital only expects to get a fraction, a tiny fraction of that back from the insurance companies, and that’s why the costs are so inflated
Um, usually, when a patient is self-pay there is a self-pay price which is a more reasonable price
Additionally, all of those therapies, have demonstrated efficacy, and if Burzynski were to demonstrate his efficacy, $30,000 dollars to start on a life-saving treatment for a child would be a steal, and he would earn every nickel of it
Um, so, those arguments hold very little weight with us
He has a a an enormous house that’s valued in the tens of millions of dollars, he could do that if if the other, the other thing he could do, and this, we would love to see him do this, wousa, would be apply to Federal grant
That, that would be amazing, if he could get a grant to study this stuff
But, you know, um, I I don’t think he’d be able to get one, I don’t think he’s shown uh that he can carry off a uh a research program responsibly
Uhmmm
Well
Oh he, have you noticed the the, the thing on his web-site where if you make a donation to the clinic it goes directly to him ?
Right
You know, you know
Ummm, o-kay
Uh, I want to turn this over to the people who are watching
Um, I want to give them a a chance to address you as well
Uhmmm, hi everyone
Uhmmm, so, um, let’s, let’s wait for for that to roll in, and I do wait to go back to the, the the, the and let’s be very specific about this, the the things that you see on The Other Burzynski Patent Group, a patient reporting that um uh getting worse is getting better
How do you explain that ?
Well that’s just a known side-effect, your going to know that going in, but we actually have people say
Are there, why why why not, these people, see this is the thing though
The reason that site was started was because the people that don’t make it don’t have a voice
And when you, when you whittle away, when you only look at the at the, the positive outcomes, which is exactly in Burzynski’s favor to only look at the positive outcomes, and to have no sense of how other people’s diseases progressed, right, you’re gonna get a skewed and inaccurate version of the efficacy of this particular drug
Now lets lets lets go back and not talk about Laura, lets talk about these patients who report symptoms of getting worse, as if they were signs of getting better
Some people say that oh it’s a healing crisis or it’s progression of the disease
Or other people say it’s breaking up in the middle, hurrah
No, it’s actually a tumor that’s growing
That record there, that’s being left by patients, whose stories are every bit as important as the as the stories of the patients who have lived, are painting a completely different picture
How do you explain that ?
Are they feeding these people their stories ?
Are they feeding these people their stories
Okay I’m going to go back, I want to point something else out to you
Um, I have to, I don’t remember the exact patient so I have to go back to my web-site to take a look at it
Um
Because we are, because we’re on a Google+ stream that that’s a lot of data it takes awhile to bring up my, my site
Let me
Uhmmm
Well, that seems to give him an instant out, no matter what happens
That turns his claims into something that’s unfalsifiable
If I could give you an example of what unfalsifiable is
Um, and I’ll I’ll draw an uh, uh, case, uh hypothetical case of um uh proposed by Carl Sagan as the invisible dragon in your garage
If you say you have have a dragon in your garage, um, you know, you should be able to go over and verify that there’s a dragon in the garage
So let’s say we go over to Carl Sagan’s garage and, you know
Well, I don’t see anything
Well it’s an invisible dragon
Well okay, well then, let’s uh spray paint it
Well, it’s incorporeal
Well, uh, let’s measure for the heat of the breath
Well it’s heatless flame that it breathes
And, you know, okay, well then we’ll put flour down on the ground to see that it’s it it’s standing there
And, oh no it’s ah it’s floating
Well, you know, at some point, when you can’t falsify something
When you cannot, even in principle, prove something false, it’s indistinguishable from something that’s not there
And that kind of out, that oh well the tumor can keep on growing
Th (laugh) that that that’s an invisible dragon, as far as I can tell
A every time that I and and and and , and David points this out, that um, you you know your not going to speculate about the the FDA but then at every turn your invoking the FDA as being obstructionist
I, I just find that to be contradictory and and self-defeating
Um, let me see
Well, that’s not necessarily true
I mean uh when it when it comes to the case um I’ve i’ve talked to oncologists about this
And when it comes to uh for instance in in this case it sounds like it was a pediatric patient who was dying, ummm, who had died, ummm, the,
the 1st inclination is to ascribe the death to, um, to the tumor, which actually, would be to Burzynski’s benefit if there were other cases, I’m not saying there were, but if there were other cases where this type of complication arose, and it was ascribed to the tumor they might well not do it, uh, do an autopsy
Um, it’s ah as you could imagine it could be very difficult for the families to do that especially when they have ooh ah, a possibility of what, you know, led to the ultimate demise, that didn’t involve them ultimately somehow being responsible for it, right ?
So, it it it doesn’t seem to me that necessarily an autopsy would be um a a done deal
Um, let me see
No we don’t and it would be irresponsible to completely speculate on on, on, the outcome of that uh, uh, uh, individual patient, I am still scrolling through looking for this story that I wanted to talk about
Uh, and, I guess I’ll
It should be in Amelia’s I I, I packed Amelia’s story with all the stories, um, that I could find um in what we’d written up already
Um
Hold on a sec
She is a cute kid though
Um, alright
Now, our favorite oncologist (laugh), as you keep putting it, um, uh, with with the Amelia story, um, uh, was able to correctly determine that the Saunders family, had a, did not understand the significance of this cyst that had opened up in, uh, that had opened up in the center of the tumor, in fact they were ecstatic
They were delighted
Um, the family, of Haley, um, S, also
Uh, the the family of Haley S., also, had the same reading given to them
Um, the same diagnosis uh same prognosis was to, was given to Justin B in 2006
A similar cyst in Lesley S’s story uh ah, was in 2006
Um, and that kept her on uh treatment for a a another month so that could be another $7,000 some odd dollars
We same thing in the, in the case of, uh, Samantha T in 2005
We see it again as far back as 1994, in Cody G’s story
And then lastly and and the worst uh thing that we’ve seen, the patients report that Burzynski himself told Chase uh Sammut
The exact same thing
Um, and that was a
Have you read Chase’s story
It would stick with you, because that case is grotesque
The parents, uh, there was even a uh, uh, a fight over whether or not the parents should be allowed to continue treating this kid
He was basically lying, uh, in a uh uh brain dead uh for all intents and purposes, uh, in a in a coma uh without possibility of reversal, in his parents living room for months
Um, eh, all the while, he’s still on the, uh, well I don’t actually, I can’t say that, I don’t exactly know if he was on the treatment the whole time
Um, but, we do have this pattern, that is there, of people believing, that this particular pattern is, uh, progress, a a is not progression of disease but is is inducement to to stay on, um, eh, and this has been going on for decades
Eh, eh just based on what we’ve been able to find that patients have been reporting this for decades
At some point, you would think that a doctor would realize that perhaps what these patients are walking away with is inaccurate
Why hasn’t that changed ?
E wel that that that that’s not it
This is this is like the 2nd day of oncology class, that that’s what the tumor looks like
People are reporting that the tumor is no longer growing, um, or that the growing has slowed after they’ve started
Well, okay
There, there is an explanation for that, and why you can’t take that as necessarily being evidence of efficacy
Ah, the tumor grows exponentially while the resources are available to it, but then it reaches a point where it’s a self-limited growth, so it, the time between uh doublings in size decreases logarithmically
Um, so this is, this is like basic tumor physiology that we’re talking about, and his patients don’t leave his office, knowing these facts, for decades
This doesn’t have anything to do with the, do with the drug
This this
But, but when it’s, this treatment is working or this is not evidence that the treatment is working
That’s pretty basic
I mean we’re not, we’re not talking about deactsylace inhibitors or anything like that were you’d really need to know something about
This is, whether or not, you’re getting the outcome that you want
This is the whole reason for going
And it has nothing to do with the with the with the drugs
Which is, which is like which we just pointed out was a was an invisible dragon
you’re you’re you’re assuming
You’re you’re you’re assuming that
You’re assuming that
Um, I’m not assuming that
Ultimately it would, but whether or not it it it had a genuine therapeutic effect is a different matter all together
Um, this, what would, what would convince you that you’re wrong
So you’re saying because the Orphan Drug Designation and the face that there’s a phase 3, therefor it works ?
So what you’re saying is there’s nothing that would convince you now, that it doesn’t work
O-kay
Um, it’s it’s it’s not the FDA’s, but you understand it’s not the FDA’s job to tell someone that their drug doesn’t work
it’s it’s it’s up to Burzynski
It’s up to Burzynski to show that his drug does work
And it’s always been his burden of proof
He’s the one that’s been claiming this miracle cancer cure, forever
Um, I don’t know if you’ve read Jaffe’s book
There seems to have been a lot going on there you really should look at it because it’s it’s it’s kind of revealing
Um, that that that it seems that there was a lot of political pressure applied to the FDA which may have been, uh, uh, have influenced the way in which these these trials were approved
I I would say that it is a genuine con uh uh bit of confusion on the parts of Skeptics
We don’t know why the phase 3 trial was approved
I don’t know that we’ve seen even the phase 1 trials, we don’t know why he’s getting a phase 3
And there’s a real story in that, we think
Um, that we’d love to see, however we can’t see, however we can’t see it because of proti protri proprietary uh protections that the FDA is giving to Burzynski, right ?
They’re not sharing his trial designs because they are his trial designs, right?
That the makeup of his drug that he’s distributing are his, uh design, and his intellectual property
So the FDA is protecting him, uh from outside scrutiny
While you may imagine that that, that that the FDA is is somehow antagonistic toward him
They’ve given him every opportunity, over 60 opportunities to prove himself worth uh their confidence and hasn’t
Um, but I definitely recommend that you look at Jaffe’s book and you will see, I think, um that um it’s called um, uh Galileo’s
You know what it’s called, okay, yeah
Um, definitely look at that
Um, you, you will see, the ways in which, the way that we got to this point, isn’t necessarily having anything to do with the efficacy of the drug
That comes across very clearly
Um, you, you mentioned it yourself, he he’s done well to listen to Jaffe’s advice, right ?
So, there there’s a lot to that
Um, uh, but yeah, let me go back to the Twitter feed
Um
Well it sounds to me like they’re they’re not um, the the the you know, they’ve put the clinical hold on now because they now have evidence that somebody may have died because of the treatment
Um, I don’t know what the state of that is right now
Um, uh, oh my gosh, um, let me see
Someone has just sent me a, a ah a link to, are you following the Hashtag, as this is going on
Okay
I’m doing, I’m doing the 2 things at once and it’s um, ok ok well it’s well ok I can’t I can’t go in and read that right now
Um, I would, ok let me tell you exactly what it will take, for me to come around and promote Burzynski
Um, for me, he needs to get a publication in a uh, yeah, uh uh uh publication in a peer-reviewed journal, a respected peer-reviewed journal, not like the the Journal of Medical Hypothesis or things we just made up
Um, something, you know, a a good, respectable journal that oncologists would read, that research oncologists would read
I would need an completely independent group to replicate his findings, and then I’d be all for it
I would say that right now, the business model that the Burzynski Clinic seems to depend on, as best as I can tell from an outsider, that, um, uh, that it depends on people paying money up front
It doesn’t depend on him developing and taking away a viable drug, that he can market to the entire world
His business model as best I can tell, is to keep it in house
That seems, if it works, if his drug genuinely works, and he hasn’t sent it along to mass approval, where he gets, for a couple of years at least, you know, exclusive rights to produce and sell this stuff, for one of the most intractable diseases, uh that man eh can can can, you know, can get, um, that suggests to me that there’s something else going on here
Now, someone has just sent a a note, uh that he has failed 3 different Institutional Review Board audits; this is Guy Chapman, uh no other institution has a 3 for 3 fail, according to to Guy iye he knows no other one
Um, that 45% of phase 3 clinical trials fail due to deficient phase 2 design
Um, he has an approved phase 3, but phase 2 was deficient so phase 3 fails
Do you think that that could possibly have anything to do with why we’re not seeing the phase 3 advance
He’s claimed
He’s claimed
That’s a different thing altogether
And in fact
Well, you understand why they do that, because in order to, it’s
No, they do do this with other drugs, well, it depends on the type
Some drugs it’s ethical to give something completely questionable, what they want to make sure that they at least get the standard care, you know which includes radiation
Um, and radiation does seem to extend life, reduce the size of some tumors some times
Um, do you concede, that in order to have a phase 3, you do not need to have a successful phase 2 ?
When 45% of phase 3 fail because they have a deficient phase 2 design, do you concede that ?
Well, ok
It doesn’t matter where
It doesn’t matter where it comes from uh, um
So-kay, um that would be shooting the messenger as opposed to dealing with the question, but
the idea, the best, well, the best, well in that case the best response is “I don’t know”
There’s something that that we don’t know, you’re coming, honestly we didn’t know what to expect when we talked to you
We, were looking at the design, of your web-site and wondering whether or not we would be able to get a a coherent sentence out of you, because the web-site is disorganized, uh
Um, at at at at least it’s the organization is not apparent to the readers
Um, and um according to
No, that is tied together
But let me, we know that that the the, the central concern is Burzynski
Ah, the source of this ah of of those #’s that I just gave you, Chapman has just updated me and he says um that it is, and I’ll go back to the, the ADR research . com issues in clinical research, so it’s the question, Bay Clinical uh Research and Clinical Development, a white paper called “Why do so many pase 3 clinical trials fail ?
Uh, it’s prepared by Anastassios Retzios, Ph.D
Is Anastassios Retzios reliable ?
There is a correct here
Exactly
That’s the right answer
You don’t know
You don’t know
You need to look into it
Alright ?
Before you dismiss it you have to look into it
Everytime somebody throws uh uh something to me, I have to look into it
That’s just, it’s my responsibility as a reader
Um
What, what stuff would you like
What stuff would you like me to do ?
I generally, I don’t read your blog
Uh um, alright
Okay, I’ll look at that, and I will respond to it once I’ve taken a look at that, okay ?
Um, and I’ll respond on your web-site
Um, seems only fair
Um, one question I’d wondered, what is the Didymus Judas Thomas reference to
Oh, so this is the Doubting Thomas
This is the Doubting Thomas
Okay, so this is the one, you show me the, you put your your, the, your hand inside the wound
You know, Jesus says, basically, ok, bring it on, check me out, right ?
Okay
Alright
That that, I didn’t, I didn’t realize that he was also, that that was the same guy
So, it’s it’s the Doubting Thomas
Um, what we would say, um, is that if Burzynski is the savior that he claims to be, that he should, open up his trials, he should open up his uh research uh protocols um and just say, “Look, bring it on”
Check out these wounds
But he’s never done that
Instead he he he wants us to just take the words of of of of his apostles
I don’t necessarily trust his apostles
I don’t think that they’re unbiased
I wanna see the data
I wanna see the the wounds in his hands and the the mark on his side
Oh, hey when when we talk about The Other Burzynski Patient Group, I don’t make any pretensions to make that my site proves anything
I I I really don’t
It’s not my job to prove anything
It’s Burzynski’s job
It is a researchers job to prove these things
But we just pointed out, we just pointed out, that the FDA, often approves, phase 3 trials, based on flawed phase 2 clinical trials
That is therefor a real possibility in this case
Yes you would
T t and what I would honestly expect and hope, is that you would be honest about this, to yourself, and and and that’s the thing we don’t, we often don’t realize that we’re not being honest with ourself
I try to fight against it, constantly
But, um, uh but the way that you’d earlier phrased your uh your response to “could you possibly be proved wrong ?”, . . really did exclude other possibilities of of of of yourself being wrong
So if the FDA
Well I’m not talking about the Guy Chapman
What you off, when I asked you, yourself, you know, what would prove you wrong, you said that the FDA hasn’t approved a phase 3
Well, ok
Let’s let’s back, let’s back up
What would the FDA, what happens if the FDA occasionally op op opposes, approves uh phase 3 trials, based on bad phase 2 trials
Would that be, would that cause any doubt in your mind ?
About the efficacy of ANP
Yeah, hello, yeah, you’re back
Yeah Google+ is a little wonky sometimes
But, would, does, if you were to learn, that sometimes phase 3 trials, uh, are approved, and failed, based on flawed phase 2, would, would that make you reconsider your position of the phase 3 being evidence that it works
Uh um could you send me that link, the, the, um . me see
I’m just looking at other things that are coming in on the Hashtag right now
Um, so the ANP is Orphan Drug status but is it Orphan Drug for glioma ?
Is it sodium phenylbutyrate or is it the the versions of the drug, the AS10 stuff or A1 or whatever it’s called ?
Okay, that’s what has Orphan Drug status
Alright, I’ll look into that
I hope somebody is writing all this down out there, so that we can go back and look at these claims later, right ?
So, oh, um
Do you have any questions for me ?
I’ve spent a lot of times asking questions of you
Mhmm
Guy Chapman, throws up the the, the comment, permission to investigate is not evidence of anything other than evidence of a valid protocol, not a uh, evidence of efficacy, in and of itself
That’s another comment
Um, alright then, this is your chance t, there are lots of people have lots of questions about me out there
Uh, about what my motivations are and such
I might as well put that out on the table just so it’s on the record, is that I am taking exactly no money from anyone for this, and have gotten nothin’ but grief from a lot of people, even people who, even people who support me have given me grief for this
Um, just so that you know, um, there have been, some of the things that have happened, oh, this is an important point too
Um, that when we have criticized this, uh, a # of us, especially Gorski, uh myself, uh Rhys Morgan, uh, um, and and uh Popehat, the the lawyer, blog, uh, um, who else was on there, um, oh, the Merritts, uh, t, uh Wayne Merritt, and his family, people have been critical of of of Burzynski have faced retaliation for opposing him ah and intimidation, and including, um, I had my uh a couple weeks before Christmas my, my, the Chancellor of my University was contacted via e-mail, and uh Eric Merola said that I had been um, uh, been spreading mis truths about Burzynski, that I had been a be, on my my show um had said things that were demonstratively untrue, and he also said that the drug was FDA approved, which it, you know, that’s not right
But um, he said that he was gonna do, talk about me in his new movie, in, uh, relat, in millions of homes, um, and he wanted to get a statement from the University
The University of course ignored him, and immediately let me know that I was going to get smeared
Um, I consulted my lawyer and uh uh, you know, the best course of action was figured out, and um uh a Gorski has had his accreditation board contacted, he’s had his bosses contacted, Rhys Morgan received threats of liable suits from somebody who had been hired, by the clinic, to clean up his on-line reputation if he didn’t take down his on-line review of Burzynski, uh, had his a picture of his house sent to him, clearly the message being, “We know where you live kid,” uh, Wayne Merritt; a pancreatic cancer patient, this is something that, that people generally, do not recover from, like generally, die from, received phone calls at home, from, this individual, threatening him with lawsuits; he doesn’t have a law degree so he’s misrepresenting himself
Um, but all of this, was done, to critics
Do you think that is deserved ?
Do you think that that is right ?
Mhmm
Well to be fair
It it it doesn’t strike me as necessarily a “Free Speech” issue, you know
Was it down-voted ?
No
Mhmm
Mhmm
Well we do have for for for for one thing, um, I guess to understand is that we are uh motivated by um uh a respect, this is the one thing that that all Skeptics I think um are uh respect critical thinking, um, and um respect scientific uh a we we’re mostly scientific enthusiasts, there’s some Skeptics who are not um, uh, you know oh u space nerds, or whatever who are um just sc scholars and the humanities but for the most part we all respect scientific consensus and we respect scientific method and have an enthusiasm for living in the real world, this is something that like all of us us are about
And to that end, sometimes that influence is how we run, is how we decide to run our personal web-sites
Um, uh, that whether or not we want our, to give a platform to people who disagree with us, um, you know, uh, when we do, uh . . it it is our sandbox, you know, right ?
This, this, we’re allowed to to let whoever we want into our sandbox if we, you know, uh if we want
Did he, did he leave them up ?
Did he leave them up ?
Right, um, do you think that he is required to answer you
Right
Mhmm
Um so a a question uh why were why do you have so many Twitter and Wikipedia sock-puppets
Wikipedia
You left Wikipedia
Mhmm
Um a
Uh We have uh a response from David James, everyone uh gave you a fair shout
You were a spammer plain and simple
You couldn’t, you couldn’t
work out your questions
Twitter does not
Twitter does not block people for for arguing
Only for spamming and policy violations
Mhmm
Okay
Um, let me see
Each new account was blocked for additional violations of policies
Um, this is a uh uh referring to the Wikipedia rules too
Um, so
Um, Wikipedia, do you know why um they’ve locked the Burzynski page ?
Did you notice the part where he threatened, did you notice the part where he threatened to expose Wikipedia
We have to, well, they they uh are looking that it’s not one-sided information they want to show
Like they discuss, there is controversy about this guy
Yeah, Jaffe’s on there
Jaffe’s on there
uh well you could add that if you hadn’t gotten blocked
Okay
Um, so, who are you
She’s gotten threats
So we don’t know who you are
Like, she has suffered at the hands of some really mess, and she’s also, you have to realize she’s in the U.K, where libel laws are very lax at this point
That’s changing, ah, but uh, the the legitimate criticism, there is a big case last, me maybe 2 years ago of Simon Singh, talking about an alternative therapy, and, um, he was just saying that there’s no evidence for it but it’s promoted by um chiropractors, or something, or something like that
And he got slapped with a libel suit that cost him several years of his life and a lot of money
Um, so, there are several reasons why someone in the U.K. might uh be uh reticent to use their real name um, uh, and legitimate reasons
Um, in the U.S., I’m not sure that there is
I’ve been using my real name for a long time now
Um, you know, Gorski blogs under his real name, and is critical of uh, uh, also, let’s face it, everyone know, knows who “Orac” is
Um, how do we know that you don’t work for the clinic ?
Mhm
Well see, one of the the problems is, Ju, I don’t know if you were around for the BurzynskiSaves thing
Did you ever see that account ?
Mhmm
Right
Oh no, I mean you have a right to do that but but I I’ve found that posting under a pseudonym diminishes my credibility
Um, so, . . the quote was uh um, uh, “Happily promotes bogus therapies,” was Simon Singh’s quote that got him sued
Um, but Josephine Jones does it to, quote “protect her family”
Um
So there’s that
Um, are you afraid for you’re family ?
Um, you don’t see that there would be anything to gain from, from going on-record ?
Um I I haven’t, I’ve never, honestly, I’ve never seen a Skeptic actually go after a person individually
Um, you know, uh, you, unless they were doing colossal harm to people
Um, to to focus on an, uh, let’s say, call someone’s work for um, yeah
Cite one example, of a Skeptic making shit for a Burzynski shill or anyone else in real life
That’s a quote
That’s, that’s something coming in from, from Guy
Like had anyone ever contacted Sheila Herron, or has anyone to to um, go after her job, or go after um, you know, my brother has gotten stuff from people
He didn’t tell me because he didn’t want to upset me, but my brother gets things from Burzynski supporters that are violent and threatening
I get letters telling me that I suck cancer’s dick
Um, I I’ve all sorts of things um, and I just, I’ve never seen that, that intrusion into real life on the part of uh, um, uh, Skeptics
I’ve never seen them doing that type of of of stuff
I’ve never seen them threatening bogus lawsuits
Um, and I I I wonder there, if there is some sort of, what do you think accounts for that, that difference?
Mhmm
Mhmm
I’ve I’ve I’ve shown up on, you know, as you, as you might, I imagine you moni, you monitor the Hashtag, right ?
Okay
Um, which is, which is your right
Um, uh, but every so often I jump in and say, you know, this movie has some flaws in it
You know, that’s something I say rather frequently
Um, and I invite people, if they’re interested, to take a look at a couple of links
I don’t, I, you’ll notice that I no longer force people to like, “Well how do you explain this ?,” because that doesn’t seem to be very persuasive, or work at all
Ah, only people who are open minded to having their mind changed, those are the only ones I want to talk to
So I give them a choice
Kind of like Morpheus in The Matrix really
Um, b, that was a joke for me
Um, um anyway
Um, but, it it I, honestly, I would encourage you to go on-record, um, but I have, less than nothing invested in that, so, um
Uh, what’s next for you
Well what happens
Well what happens if he doesn’t understand what you’re saying ?
I mean one of the
I mean seriously
Well, one of the problems I think that a lot of Skeptics have had, in in back channel discussions about this is that we don’t understand exactly what you’re saying
We certainly don’t understand why you’re so attached to him if you’ve never had any uh, you know, close dealing with uh, uh, with Burzynski
We don’t really understand that
Actually, especially when you consider, that all the information that we’ve put forward, that we’ve backed up with statements from uh, you know, uh, it, it, the statements that we have from from patients saying that you know, we’ve we’ve, we were told that, no that’s not exactly, they put it usually that but that that we believe that getting worse is getting better
Like how could someone continue to defend someone, when we pile up all of these different, you know, sources, saying the same thing ?
It it is, it is beyond us and we wonder if there’s absolutely anything that we could say that would convince you otherwise
But, I mean, but that means
Everything on The Other Other Burzynski Patient Group is referenced
It goes
There’s very little on
thehoustoncancerquack
There’s very little on
thehoustoncancerquack in the 1st place
Eh, right
The they both go to the same place
Uh un but, you know, we, the thing that that totally befuddles us, and is just endlessly frustrating, is like how many more examples, of patients believing that getting worse is getting better, and it’s not us saying it, it’s the patients saying it
And how many more of those patients do we need to to give you before you will like reconsider that perhaps you might be wrong ?
I don’t, the thing is though that, that that’s a inver, shifting the burden of proof off of Burzynski
Burzynski has to prove them wrong, has to prove him right
The FDA is not there to say this doesn’t work
The evidence would be
The evidence
The evidence would be phase 2 trials
And ev the evidence would be a completed and published phase 3 trial
That’s not forthcoming
The phase 3
You don’t know that he’s trying
He’d start completing these trials
And he would, he would be soliciting um, uh, lots of um, uh, you know, you know he’d be putting out papers constantly um and if the the British Medical Journal example’s anything uh representative of how Burzynski works, he’d immediately tell everyone that his he’s being . . blackballed by the, by the journal, even when it’s just a courtesy that he gets a a rejection
So, I mean, honestly, um, saying “Well, when the F, FDA tells you that it doesn’t work, the FDA’s never gonna say that because that’s not their job
So, given that what would, how many more patients do we have to show you before you consider that you may be wrong ?
That’s not an option, because they’re never gonna do it
They relinquish, a lot of authority, over to Burzynski, and his Institutional Review Board, which, I would mention, has failed 3 reviews in a row
Right ?
It is Burzynski’s job to be convincing
It is not our uh, uh, it it it he hasn’t produced in decades
In decades
In hundreds and hundreds of patients, who’ve payed to be on this
Hell, we’d we’d we’d like a prelim, well when you’re talking about something that is so difficult as brainstem glioma, that type of thing gets, really does in the publishing stream get fast-tracked there
they test it
Yeah, and they they they want uh, that was evidence of fast-tracking is what, that rejection was uh e was very quickly
Um, so, uh, uh again, the FDA is not the arbiter of this
It’s ultimately Burzynski
So, how long will it be before Burzynski doesn’t publish, that you decide that uh perhaps he’s he’s, doesn’t have the goods ?
You’ve been speculating about what the FDA’s motivation are like crazy
Why not speculate about Burzynski a little bit
Well actually I’m not even asking you to speculate about Burzynski, I’m only asking you to tell me, how long would it take, uh how, for him to go unpublished like this, um, for this long, before you would doubt it ?
What ?
But these but but but that doesn’t have any bearing on
That doesn’t
Oh I’m not asking you how long, how long, would it take you for you to start doubting whether or not he has the goods ?
How long would it take ?
It’s a it’s a it’s a question that should be answered by a number uh uh months ?
Years ?
How long ?
It’s been 15 years already
I could push it back to 36 years
He hasn’t shown that it works for 36 years
I can do that
I was being nice
Perhaps based on bad phase 2
He withdrew
He withdrew the the phase 3 clinical trial
I that before recruiting,
although I’ve seen lots of people say they were on a phase 3 clinical trial
I wonder how that happened
Uh did do do you think that if they thought that he was a real doctor that they all would have refused like that ?
He’s changed things
That The Lancet is a top-tier journal like New England Journal of Medicine
It’s basically be, besieged by uh 100′s of people submitting their, their, their reports
Um, it’s just, you know, let’s say he, someone has such a thin publishing record as Burzynski does, do you think that it’s likely that he will ever get in a top-tier journal ?
What about the the Public Library of Science ?
It’s not the only journal there
What about BMC Cancer ?
There’s lots of places that he can go
Um, and he doesn’t seem to to have evailed himself of that, as far as I can tell
And I would know because he’d get rejected, or he’d be crowing, you know
Either way, he’s gonna tell us what happens
He told us what happened with The Lancet, you know
I don’t have any evidence that suggests to me that he’s even trying
So let’s go back to this
How long will it take ?
How long will it take before you, the Japanese study’s interesting too because we should be able to find that in the Japanese science databases, and we can find, we can’t find it at all
We can’t find it anywhere
And, and those are in English, so it’s not a language problem
We can’t find that anywhere
We’ve asked
We asked Rick Schiff, for, for that study
And, and it hasn’t come to us
He is now I believe on the Board of Directors, over there
He should have access to this
We can’t get it
How how long will it take before you recognize that, nothing is forthcoming ?
How long would that take ?
Well, I mean, were talking about a blog here
We’re talking about life
No, we’re talking about a blogger’s feelings in that case
In in this case we’ren talking about, 1,000′s of patients, over the course of of of generations, you know
This is important stuff
This is not eh eh equating what’s happening to to patients with what’s happening to you is is completely off-kilter as far as I can tell
It’s nothing
It’s nothing like you not getting to say something on my web-site
You know
This is they they have thrown in with Burzynski, and they’ve trusted him, and he’s produced nothing
Nothing of substance
Nothing thas that has made all of that um, uh, n nothing th th th that uh his peers would take seriously
The other thing that that that strikes me now is that, you know, you you you you keep saying that, well Eric is going to to share things with you
Does it ever concern you eh uh eh occur to you that Eric might not be reliable ?
He then, and then he
And then he he, you know, the the the the dialogue that sprung up around that was, well see, he’s never going to get to get published
Well you’re just setting yourself up for wish fulfillment
You want him to be, persecuted, so you are ecstatic when he doesn’t get to publish, which is unfortunate for all the cancer patients, who really thought that one day, all the studies were going to be published
Where has Eric been wrong ?
It’s it’s it’s it’s a form letter
You know
They’re just saying, “No thanks”
“Thanks, but no thanks” is what they were saying, in the most generic way possible
Like I said, they’re besieged by researchers trying to publish
So, so, possibly
So possibly what you are saying is that they in fact have read it, and after having read it they’ve rejected it
Is that what you’re saying ?
Because that’s what peer-review is
Do you know it was the same editor, that it came from the same desk ?
You can’t make that assumption that that the form letter will be the same form letter every time
I mean you just can’t
I mean in in some ways we have a lot of non-information that you’re filling in, with what you expect, as as opposed to what’s actually really there, and I I I just think you’re putting too much uh stock in one uh, uh, in in in in this uh the publication kerfuffle
Um
Well, not necessarily
I’ve been in any # of professional groups where the organization is just not optimal, and publications certainly th there are all sorts of pressures from all sorts of different places
I I have no problems whatsoever with seeing that this might not be completely uh um uh streamlining uniform processes as possible
The fact that it’s not uniform, doesn’t have anything to do with Burzynski not publishing, not producing good data
Not just going to a, you know, god, even if, even if, let’s put it this way, even if he went to a pay to play type publication where you have to pay in order to get your manuscript accepted; and he has the money to do this, it wouldn’t take that much, and he were to put out a good protocol, and he were to show us his data, and he would make his, his his stuff accessible to us, then we could validate it, then we could look at it and say, “Yeah, this is good,” or “No, this is the problem, you have to go back and you have to fix this”
Right ?
So we really, every time we talk about the letter that he got, yeah that doesn’t have much to do with anything, really
We wanna see the frickin’ data
And if he had a cure for some cancers that otherwise don’t have reliable treatments, he has an obligation to get that out there anyway he can
And if if peer-review doesn’t, you know, play a, if peer-review can’t do it, you know, isn’t fast enough for him, then he should take it to the web, and he should send copies out to every pediatric, uh, you know, oncologist that there is
That’s the way to do it
Oh I, I I I certainly don’t think that he would put a lot of stock in it, but I, I, I know Dave Gorski enough, he wants this to work
He has patients who are dying, you know
And if if if let’s say that that Burzynski could get ah his gene-targeted therapy to work on breast cancer patients in in a reliable way, that would be, such a help to these people, that that Gorski’s trying to help
And, it it it doesn’t make sense, I mean, there, some of the best um, one of the the most important developments in medical history, was the development of of just washing your hands uh uh before uh uh going in and delivering a baby
Right ?
The guy who did it, was a colossal jerk, but it still worked and it’s the standard now
Right ?
Um, yea, it doesn’t matter now whether or not Burz, whether or not Gorski agrees with how Burzynski publishes
It’s the, it’s the data itself
If if Burzynski is is, is confident in his data, he will put it out there
Right ?
One way or the other
But he is a, the thing is, the thing is, you thing you have to understand is Gorski, Gorski is a genuine expert, in matters re re regarding on oncology studies
I mean, he has a
He, He’s able to convince people, he’s able to convince people, on the strength of his record, to give him money to carry out research
People who know what they’re talking about
To give him money to carry out his research
Right ?
Well what about all the other physicians, um, going back long before the Burzynski thing broke on-line
Of all these patients, with whom they have long-established relationships, and then doctors essentially after years, of treating these patients, basically saying, “I can’t work with you anymore if you go to Burzynski”
What about that ?
Di, are all of these doctors just as biased ?
Did he get burned at some point ?
We don’t know
Yeah, well, you wouldn’t expect Eric Merola to say that he got, that a doctor got burned
Would you ?
But he, he doesn’t have, he hasn’t given us his data
He’s given, he’s given, he’s given case studies
He’s done
Okay
Except for a ph, completed phase 3 clinical trial
Yeah
One of the things, one of the things that I’ve noticed going through these um, well, well there there is that
Uh, Guy Chapman, “It’s a blog, not a peer-reviewed publication”
Um, almost no treatment goes out without trials
Massive amounts of data are required
Um, so, it it is kind of, slightly disingenuous to hold uh Gorski to the same . . standard that you would, it on his blog
I think that professionally he would make, he he he would follow-up on these things, but u what I’ve noticed when you you mention these other people who are working with with Burzynski as co-investigators, the co- investigators don’t seem to have access to these, to these records
Um, you know, when they have to, when a patient has to, and often you have someone like a pediatrician, uh, signing on um uh to eh eh to work with with, uh and arrange care for patients when they’re out of state, away from Burzynski
Um, it’s it’s it’s often not an oncologist
It’s accurate to say that B Burzynski is not a board s uh certified oncologist
It’s accurate to say that no trial has been completed and fully published
Um, yeah it’s um, it it it if, all of the arguing on behalf of Burzynski doesn’t give him a single phase 3
It doesn’t give him um a uh uh of of a completed and and published phase 2
Uh, in in in that sense, you know, uh all the the the, you know, kind of back-peddling and and and trying to defend him is is going to, not going to help his case at all
You are, honestly as far as I can tell you are doing the um, you know, you’re you’re ah throwing up uh, uh, uh, you’re giving me another uh invisible dragon in the garage, um
What is the issue were not talking about
Yeah, but they
But they have track records that support the idea that you should trust them
Okay, so
What you’re telling me is that you trust the FDA to to be able to tell you when he’s not doing, good science, but also that you don’t trust the FDA
Do you see an inherent conflict there ?
Well, when I, whenever I would ask about, like, why would these trials aren’t happening uh and, you know, you say well the the FDA’s arranged it
The FDA’s in control
They sign off on these things
But they’re they’re they’re they’re at the same that they’re, they’re trustworthy they’re also not trustworthy depending on what you need for the particular argument at the time
You’re suggesting that they’re untrustworthy
I I would say that the the FDA has given Burzynski every opportunity for decades
Every opportunity
When he didn’t have r r really, he got special treatment as far as I can tell
Uh, the, I’m rather stunned every morning I wake up and don’t see in the paper, that that place has has been closed down
I, I really am
Uh, so, you know, that one doesn’t really fly with me either
Um
Do you know that the FDA pulled out of the prosecution ?
Did you know that the FDA pulled out of the prosecution um of his criminal case, because they were backing a researcher ?
Yeah, the the the it wasn’t the FDA who was pressing charges, it was a Federal prosecutor
Right
And and, they declined to provide information that the prosecution needed
That’s important
That that that’s really important
That he has been given the benefit of the doubt, and he has come up wanting, for decades now
The, no, claims works
He claims works
One of the things I think
One of the things that I think is happening here
One of the things I think is happening here, is that lots of people have worked with Burzynski and then have stopped working with B Burzynski
Uh, you know, uh lots of uh uh uh these partnerships do not seem to work out in the end
I often wonder, if the uh, the way that these things are, are are playing out, because it’s s so reliable that they’re, that these partnerships are going to fail, I I wonder if th they are designed in such a way, that for instance, um a, uh, a a partner would be uncomfortable working
with him
Or um or that the specifications for what it takes to enter one of these trials is so high, that nobody will ever enter the trials
I mean, I wonder if they are, what, especially, like why hasn’t Burzynski left the country ?
That’s what I want to know
Exactly
If he was so, if he was s so persecuted and really cares about getting his treatment out to the world, why wouldn’t he ?
They’re, they’re lots of things going on here
David James has pointed this out, that a lot of questions I’m asking are not going answered
“I still don’t know how long it would take before you would have any doubts about Burzynski”
“I still have no idea, how often we can see patients reporting that signs of getting worse are getting better, before you would change your mind”
I’ve made it very clear that he just needs to have a completed study published and replicated before I support his right to go out and charge people what he’s charging for these, for these drugs, and I’m I’m just not seeing that here with you, and I I wonder what could come from, and don’t worry I will go to your site and I will comment on on on what you’ve run
Um, but, you know, I I I I it’s hard for Skeptics to imagine, what could be gained from engaging with you, if there seems to be no conceivable way, that we can, one, get a straight answer for, how many patients will have to report that getting worse is getting better before you starting doubting your opinion, or, uh, how many uh, uh, how many years does this have to go on before you decide that, “No, we probably just can’t produce the goods”
One of the interesting things about Doubting Thomas that I think you should definitely consider for yourself, is that at some point, when faced with the real opportunity to prove or disprove his assertions, he doubted himself
And that’s important
And that’s where you’re falling short in the analogy
I’ve laid out exactly what it would take for me to turn on a fucking dime
I have, I have made it abundantly clear what I need
Gorski has made it abundantly clear
Everybody else, Guy, and David, and Josephine Jones, uh, the Morgans, all of them have made it abundantly clear, what it would take to change our minds, and you’ve never done that
And even in this, this was an opportunity to do that
To come up with a basis for understanding, where it’s like, you know what, If we can show this, you know, if we can show a this guy, that, that, there, that his standards are not being met, then, you know, we could possibly have some sort of ongoing dialogue after this
Why wasn’t that study
Why wasn’t that , that that that, still . . again, it it doesn’t seem really to to approach the the the, main question here
You know, um . . what are the standards that you have that it isn’t, what are your standards to show that it isn’t efficacious ?
Why was the Mayo
Why was the Mayo study delayed ?
Well you said you had so many years before you finish it and go in
Why, why did it take so long ?
I have something for you, okay ?
Send me that
Could you send me that study the way that it was published because um, just just send me the final study, um, to my e-mail address
Um, because, I can ask that question of those researchers, why was this study in this time, and what happened in-between
Why did it take so long for it, for it to come out
Right
Um, but it it would, perhaps, answer the question; because you’re using it as an example on the basis of which to dismiss criticism, whether or not, uh, it is the standard, and therefor you’re allowed to accept that Burzynski hasn’t published until 2016, or, um, it’s an anomaly, which is also a possibility, that most stuff comes out more quickly
I I, yeah, the other thing that David James points out is, you know, why 2016 when he’s had 36 years already ?
Treating people
You would expect the Burzynski Patient Group to be a lot bigger after 36 years, and in fact is
So, if you’re unsure about this stuff, if you’re unsure about the the time to publication, why are you defending it so hard, other than saying, “I don’t know, I really need to”
Uh about the
The reasons, the reasons for which that he’s, no, why are you defending him so hard, when you’re unsure ?
I’ve backed-up everything that
Every time that I’ve tried
and then other people
Way back
It is about
It is about as efficacious
Yeah, I’ve, and and I based that on a a a that type of thing
You, you, you can read that how you want, right ?
There
He does have the accent though
Right ?
No
Alright ?
No, but listen, like, it it it’s not, it, we we don’t understand why you defend himself so hard, when there is such a paucity of of of information out there
Um
Even if it’s true or false you, honestly though
Even if it’s true or false, in in that particular instance, you know, eh let’s just say that you’re right
Gorski gets that point completely wrong
It has no bearing on whether or not, ANP works
That’s a Red Herring
You’re just focusing on this, on this little niggly stuff, where the real question, is does it work ?
Are patients getting better at a better rate then not
or otherwise ?
We’re were talking about whether or not there’s evidence to suggest it works
The FDA, see that’s the thing
You, the FDA are are, you know, you invest them with, we’re just, we’re just circling around again
Uh um, alright
Well, this has gone on for rather a, longer than I thought it would
Um, I, uh, wanna thank you for coming on here
I wasn’t sure that you would actually do it
Um, I’m glad that you did
I’m glad that we talked
Um, I will look at your web-site, and we will, uh, we, uh, you, oh make sure that I I go to your blog and and I talk there
Um
Please do
And I will look at those
Maybe not in the next few days; I’ve got a lot going on but
Alright
Um
I don’t think he is
I don’t think he’s afraid
I just think he’s got a lot going on
He is act, a full-time surgical oncologist and researcher
He does have insane am, he has to pick and choose his battles
And if, if if he saw that we were going to ultimately be circling around our same arguments again and again; kind of like we’ve done here, um, he uh, you, he doesn’t have time for that, I don’t think
Alright
I I would ask that you to to go back over The The Other Burzynski Patient Group and take their stories seriously, because they deserve at least the same amount of consideration that the survivors do
That’s my
That’s my kids, okay
Well, Thanks for much for talking
I greatly appreciate it
Alright
Take it easy