https://www.burzynskimovie.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=110
The following summary was sent to me by a friend:
Burzynski, the Movie is the story of a medical doctor and Ph.D biochemist named Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski who won the largest, and possibly the most convoluted and intriguing legal battle against the Food & Drug Administration in American history.
His victorious battles with the United States government were centered around Dr. Burzynski's gene-targeted cancer medicines he discovered in the 1970's called Antineoplastons, which have currently completed Phase II FDA-supervised clinical trials in 2009 and could begin the final phase of FDA testing in 2011-barring the ability to raise the required $150 million to fund the final phase of FDA clinical trials.
When Antineoplastons are approved, it will mark the first time in history a single scientist, not a pharmaceutical company, will hold the exclusive patent and distribution rights on a paradigm-shifting medical breakthrough.
Antineoplastons are responsible for curing some of the most incurable forms of terminal cancer. Various cancer survivors are presented in the film who chose these medicines instead of surgery, chemotherapy or radiation - with full disclosure of medical records to support their diagnosis and recovery - as well as systematic (non-anecdotal) FDA-supervised clinical trial data comparing Antineoplastons to other available treatments-which is published within the peer-reviewed medical literature.
One form of cancer - diffuse, intrinsic, childhood brainstem glioma has never before been cured in any scientifically controlled clinical trial in the history of medicine. Antineoplastons hold the first cures in history - dozens of them. [ANP - PubMed 2003
This documentary takes the audience through the treacherous, yet victorious, 14-year journey both Dr. Burzynski and his patients have had to endure in order to obtain FDA-approved clinical trials of Antineoplastons.
Dr. Burzynski resides and practices medicine in Houston, Texas. He was able to initially produce and administer his discovery without FDA-approval from 1977-1995 because the state of Texas at this time did not require that Texas physicians be required to adhere to Federal law in this situation. This law has since been changed.
As with anything that changes current-day paradigms, Burzynski's ability to successfully treat incurable cancer with such consistency has baffled the industry. Ironically, this fact had prompted numerous investigations by the Texas Medical Board, who relentlessly took Dr. Burzynski as high as the state supreme court in their failed attempt to halt his practices.
Likewise, the Food and Drug Administration engaged in four Federal Grand Juries spanning over a decade attempting to indict Dr. Burzynski, all of which ended in no finding of fault on his behalf. Finally, Dr. Burzynski was indicted in their 5th Grand Jury in 1995, resulting in two federal trials and two sets of jurors finding him not guilty of any wrongdoing. If convicted, Dr. Burzynski would have faced a maximum of 290 years in a federal prison and $18.5 million in fines.
However, what was revealed a few years after Dr. Burzynski won his freedom, helps to paint a more coherent picture regarding the true motivation of the United States government's relentless persecution of Stanislaw Burzynski, M.D., Ph.D.
Note: When Antineoplastons are approved for pubic use, it will allow a single scientist to hold an exclusive license to manufacture and sell these medicines on the open market-before they become generic-leaving PhRMA absent in profiting from the most effective gene-targeted cancer treatment the world has ever seen.
Burzynski might be a fraud. He can't show that his drugs work (aside from a study in 2006 Pediatric Drugs with a small patient group which cannot be independently replicated). People are remortgaging their houses to buy this guy's expensive treatments, so aren't they owed proof? His phase II trials are just a ruse because he can't sell his non-approved drugs to anyone unless they're part of a trial. These trials have been on-going since 1990 - he should have plenty of data on how many patients he's cured by now, shouldn't he? I think we'll soon hear that the clinical trials weren't trials at all - they were a business model. And now, instead of publishing his "amazing" results in a peer-reviewed journal where his methods can be subjected to the same scrutiny the rest of us scientists benefit from, he makes a documentary aimed to convince non-scientists. What Burzynski is doing is unethical at the very least. He seems to think he's exempt from the burden of proof. In reality, he simply found a loophole in the system - you can sell people bogus drugs as long as you wrote it up as a clinical trial. I am not under the impression that I can convince you but please just consider this - where is all the clinical data from the last 21 years? When is he planning to publish evidence that his drugs work?
ReplyDeleteProblem is that FDA controls the trials, and individuals are rarely granted trial status. Yes, his treatment is expensive, but so is chemo, and insurance covers chemo that often results in patients' deaths, so why not cover anti-neoplastons which has been proven to help or cure many of his patients. The FDA confiscated many of his records which is possibly why the study can't be duplicated.
ReplyDeleteThe point is: people in America should have the medical freedom to choose whatever treatment THEY choose, and not have the choice of the FDA, which is chemo, forced upon them as the ONLY option. Not everyone wants to inject toxic poisons into their system. We must insist upon other options. Placebos work better than chemo.
The scientific method is "cause and effect." Look at chemo (the cause). Look at the millions of deaths resulting from people who took chemo (the effect). It just does not work. It is a bad science experiment.
His records have nothing to do with it. At least three other groups, using his published protocols, have not been able to reproduce his results.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I don't understand why everything about Burzynski ends up in some conversation about FDA conspiracies and all these other distractions about the evils of chemotherapy. I never said I supported chemotherapy and it has nothing to do with whether there is or isn't an FDA conspiracy. Burzynski charges $20-30k for his services and he has not shown (for whatever the reason) that his drugs work. Conspiracy or not, there is no evidence of efficacy. Even in the papers he cites (which I've read), he uses some very questionable (dishonest?) methods. One paper seems to address efficacy, but after looking at his methods, it's not sound science. Again, my argument is NOT that patients should not have a choice, nor that there is no FDA conspiracy, nor that people should inject "toxic poisons" into themselves. My argument is that, for some reason, Burzynski supporters have excused him from the burden of proof to which he should be held.
Bottom line: Burzynski has not shown that his drugs work.
Parenthetically, and this also seems to be common among Burzynski supporters, you have imposed a false dilemma on yourself. Specifically that, if you're against chemotherapy then you must be for anything that is not chemotherapy.
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ReplyDeleteI think it's fair to say that Burzynski has had some success with his treatments because his patients have testified in support of his treatments. Anecdotal evidence is often dismissed in favor of peer-based review. However, studies can be manipulated, but a live human being who has recovered from cancer is difficult to dispute. The 2nd link tells the story about why the antineoplastons could not be duplicated.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.alkalizeforhealth.net/Lburzynski.htm
http://www.foodconsumer.org/newsite/Non-food/Drug/the_great_cancer_hoax_0611110835.html
Apparently, the FDA thinks he's onto something, since they have approved his clinical trials.
My message is, and has been from the start of my journey, that we have to ask questions and do our research, and not just go along with the knee-jerk reaction of chemo as the solution to cancer. For many people, it has not been the solution. How do we know that? From the 600,000 people who die annually in the US. Only chemo and rad patients are tracked. People like me who decline chemo are not tracked. So everyone who has died, ostensibly from cancer, has had chemo or rad. What killed them? The disease or the "cure"? Is antineoplastons the solution? Not for everyone, but yes, for some people. And there are countless other valid solutions out there as well that, yes, we should examine and test, and not just summarily dismiss.
Your link explains the NCI trial (albeit a little unsatisfyingly), but what about the trials by Sigma Tau Pharmaceuticals and the Japanese National Cancer Institute?
ReplyDeleteI actually DON'T think it's fair to say Burzynski has had success with his treatments. If a drug works at all, it should be demonstrable in a clinical trial and stand up to peer review. It's not a perfect system but it's the best we have. The reason why anecdotal evidence is dismissed in favor of peer review is that we have no way of knowing whether a live person who claims to have had success with Burzynski's treatments would have had the same results on a placebo (which is why there are large trials and control groups). We also don't know whether that patient relapsed after the interview, if he/she actually had cancer in the first place or if they have been paid to make those claims. Then what about anecdotal evidence that antineoplastons don't work? Why should we ignore those anecdotes in favor of the positive claims?
Even if we're to believe anecdotal evidence, shouldn't there be some means by which the bogus therapies are weeded out? I mean I could make the claim that ice cream cures cancer and, if a patient has eaten ice cream before their remission, I could then say that ice cream cured their cancer. Of course a controlled clinical trial would be able to disprove this, but, if I were able to convince the former patient that it was the ice cream, well I've got my anecdotal evidence that ice cream cures cancer. If you accept anecdotal evidence, all methods are valid solutions because there's no means by which false methods are proven false.
Being granted a phase II trial doesn't indicate anything about what the FDA thinks about Burzynski's drugs. It only means that the drugs have been proven sufficiently non-toxic and that the proposed protocol has no ethical problems (i.e. denying standard treatment to patients who opt out during the trial, etc). This is not evidence that the FDA thinks that the drugs work or might work - it only means they are non-toxic. The entire point of a phase II clinical trial is to establish some degree of initial efficacy. Any doctor could do initiate a phase II clinical trial with beetroot or garlic or whatever they wanted, so long as the experimental therapy is not toxic at doses they intend to use.
I don't think Burzynski should have been summarily dismissed in the 80's, but I think we have good reason now. Almost 40 years after he first published his 1973 protocol for isolating antineoplastons, he has not been able to show that his drugs work and seems not to feel he has a responsibility to do so despite that, for the last 20 years he has been charging people enormous sums of money for those treatments.
It seems that Burzynski has expanded the FDA/drug company conspiracy to swallow most evidence that he is dishonest or, at the very least, misguided. But it's all a distraction - he hasn't shown that his drugs work. Wouldn't a much simpler explanation be that his drugs just don't work? As much as he and you and I want them to, maybe they're just ineffective.
As you said, we should do our homework and ask questions, but I think you are seeing Burzynski thing through rose-colored glasses to a certain extent, because you really want antineoplastons to work. And who wouldn't want there to be a non-toxic cure for cancer? But I think he's using phase II trials as a business model. As long as he's got approval to do the trial, he can make a lot of money selling snake oil.
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ReplyDeleteDr. Oz speaks to Dr. Burzynski & Eric Merola
ReplyDeletewww.youtube.com
For more info: http://www.oprah.com/oprahradio/Dr-Stanislaw-Burzynskis-Cure-for-Cancer-Audio