Dr. Stanislav Burzynski's cure for cancer has no negative side effects!

I am very very well aware of side effects, toxic effects and unpredictable outcomes. Gathering by your reply I would suggest there may be a case of "A little knowledge is dangerous". Many of those who are on the fringe of medicine know only enough to see what they want to see but sadly, they do not have the cognitive construct to understand or comprehend the larger picture this is why tools such as research, meta-analysis, systematic analysis and Evidence Based Medicine are so important.

One of the problems with being a non-professional in a world of professionals especially those working in support services in hospitals is that they can get the wrong impression. They see three patients in a ward with complications of Chemotherapy but what they do NOT see is the 50 patients who only come in to the day section and live their lives at home without complications.

They see those for whom chemo has failed - they do not see those for whom chemo has been a resounding success because the latter do not come back into hospital - they are well.

It is because of this we need to be ultra vigilant in critiquing research so that we are NOT swayed by individual cases but are able to evaluate overall effectiveness.

 

I'm not into quacks and quack science, believe me. I may be wrong about this guy (probably am, in fact) but he seems to me to exist in a kind of strange, twilight zone area between the freedom of possibility that sheer quackery wears for its clothing and the stifling confinements of govt sponsored science. I guess I like him for the same reason I like Craig Ventor. They are able to think beyond bureaucracy based science, though I'll take Ventor any day for being the genuine scientific article. Burzynski may very well be a quack - I'm not convinced either way about this fellow yet.

 

Sounds awesome to me!

 

Nice rant, but nonetheless, traditional medicine kills hundreds of thousands of people per year, perhaps more.

 

Which is true, but don't trust anyone that when you ask for evidence they call you a shill or a sucker.

 

And again that is where statistics help

Fewer people take alternative medicines but for those who do it would be interesting to see THEIR failure rate

This interesting study showed cancer patients using alternative medicine had a shorter survival rate
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12565991

But it also depends a lot on WHICH alternative treatment you are advocating. Hard to die of an overdose of homeopathy for example but still there is such a thing as water toxicity......

 

Good point on water toxicity. I am a big believer that drinking more water (which of course does NOT mean diet soda, something many Americans would do if advised to drink more water). A year or two ago a lady died of water toxicity after competing in a contest to see who could drink the most water. Her electrolytes were so diluted... oh hell, you know why water killed her.

At any rate, I believe in people choosing their own path. There are quacks of all sorts out there. Personally, I think some of the quacks are doctors who over-prescribe conventional drugs. Given side effects we hear about, one of my "favorites" being "suicidal behavior or actions", there is plenty to be on the lookout against from conventional medicine as well.

I will say this: my physical health has changed dramatically for the better just by eating more raw fruits and vegetables. The American diet was absolutely killing me. I was overweight, clogged up, lethargic and dehydrated, for starters. From my personal experience, it would not surprise me that simply a change in diet can work absolute wonders to peoples' health. And who is to say what will work on some and not others? Personally, I think I simply have a body that simply does not tolerate unhealthy food very well, and suspect that over decades my body reacted worse than others.

 

No argument on the diet - one day look up "paleolithic diet" it is what we were evolved to eat - which sure as !@#!@ does not include raw sugar in large amounts.

One of the things I can teach if anyone is willing to listen are the fundamentals of EBP or Evidence Based Practice which means you look at a multitude of research studies to find the best "fit" or answer to the problem facing you

 

You will find that the diet hawkers are making up their claim.

 

They tried to shut him down for false advertising and sidestepping the law by going through perpetual clinical trials. Also, "legitimate research"? You mean peer-reviewed papers and clinical trials that were completed? Citation needed.

Because you've bandied that quote around several times, I'm sure you can provide an original citation for it. You know, as in, where and when he said it, maybe a link to a press release or interview, or maybe some audio or video clip. Come on, you aren't about to take Mercola's word on a claim so unbelievable, right?

Oh (*)(*)(*)(*), you are going to just take anything these nutters say and swallow it whole. Jesus Christ.

Hey, it wouldn't be so easy to call him a quack if it wasn't for the utter failure of the evidence base behind him. He has completed no clinical trials - started a ton, but never finished. He has published little to no papers on the subject in the past 35 years, his description of Aneoplasteons as "gene-targeted" is completely bunk (it's gene-targeted in the same way a potassium supplement is), and he's been investigated by the FDA multiple times for this crap, because he's been breaking the law.

Neat. And these guys? It's nice that you can cite some success stories, but individual successes and failures are worthless in medicine. I could invite you to our thanksgiving dinner, and you can hear all about how Reiki and Acupuncture helped my friend get over her Liver Cancer. That Reiki has no functionality and that acupuncture obviously can't cure cancer doesn't stop her from thinking it, nor does it change the fact that she got over her seemingly lethal cancer with just that medicine. It means there are outliers.

And if Burzynski had more than outliers, it would be easy for him - just finish one of his over 60 clinical trials that he didn't complete, publish a few papers on the subject, do the legwork necessary to actually demonstrate that his miracle cure works, and wait for the nobel prizes to flow in. But he doesn't. And that's why he never finishes his trials. That's why no independent review has ever found any merit to his cures. That's why he's considered a quack. When you say crap like "A quack, according to people with a vested interest in keeping people going to traditional surgery and drug peddlers", are you aware of the evidence he has to support him? He has testimonials. (*)(*)(*)(*)ing MMS has testimonials advocating it as a cure-all, and MMS is literally watered-down bleach. Does he have studies? Peer-reviewed papers? Completed clinical double-blind trials testing his cure? No! And the fact that he's been offering this cure for decades and still doesn't have that is a really, really bad sign.

 

Unfortunately it depends on who you are reading, The real proponents (and one is Jennie Brand Miller) who have done a LOT of research on this through examination of ancient coproliths and settlements trash heaps

 

If he's breaking the law, why isn't he in jail? Oh tell the people who were sent home to die by traditional medicine and ended up being cancer-free with Burzinski's protocol that success stories mean nothing. I suspect they would have a problem with your characterization.

Unlike you, I have chosen to check out both sides of the story, and clearly the jury is still out.

I am just surprised that so many leftists like yourself are so anxious to do the bidding of for-profit, corporate interests in this area. I thought you people were supposed to care about the little guy.

So is it your worship of government that causes this variation?

 

I agree with that in general. That said, medicine is big business. When we have reached a point that we're being fed medicines that come with warnings of symptoms worse than the original problem, that's a problem. And I strongly suspect our FDA has been bought and paid for by corporate interests.

I will give you another example- fasting. People have fasted for millenia. I was doing some research on it. At WebMd, they warned of possible symptoms as reasons not to fast. The possible symptoms read like a warning of possible symptoms from patented medications. They used extreme examples of hard core religious people starving kids to death. One kid was half her ideal weight when she died. Of course she died! I personally know people who have fasted for up to 44 days and were glad they did for various reasons. But of course, fasting doesn't require seeing a doctor nor being fed drugs or having surgery, so we will continue to see traditional medicine warn us of the evils of fasting.

 

The more I get into this the more I'm led to believe that I may be wrong in giving him and his therapy so much credibility. I have to go with with the Mayo people, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, and others over the cancer research/FDA conspiracy folks in this -

SB may just be a very qualified and maybe even self-convinced snake oil salesman. Sorry friends of Burzynski but when in doubt I still prefer the recognized experts and reliable skeptics over the conspiracy theorists, regardless of how in bed with each other the cancer industry may be when it comes to their research establishment. I say that in spite of the fact that in some cases the establishment may very well be merely engaged in protecting their niche,while the conspiracy advocates are in possession of the facts. Even though that does happen, I'm nowhere near convinced anymore that it's the case for SB and "antineoplaston therapy".

SB won the James Randy "Pigasus" award in 2010:

I appreciate James Randi and Co and their skeptical debunking of bullsh!t.

 

The simple explanation is that he threw a few people under a bus and got off on a technicality. Not to mention that the most blatant issue, the bypassing of evidence requirements through endless clinical trials, is a loophole in the law, not actually illegal.

But they do mean nothing. Again, I refer you to my friend who was sure that Reiki treatments cured her liver cancer. Meanwhile, how are they doing these days? Look, there's a reason that testimonials are looked down upon. They ignore most scientific rigor, they allow for extreme cherry-picking, and they personalize the issue. They stop making it about science, and start making it about people's stories. Yes, those stories are interesting, but they say nothing about the actual data present. Hearing stories about patients doesn't tell you jack (*)(*)(*)(*) about the actual rate of success of Burzynski's treatments, and it does nothing to isolate variables that may have played a part. The plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence".

In medical science, if a doctor provides treatments of a certain type for 35 years and still cannot demonstrate its effectiveness in actual trials, peer-reviewed papers, or indeed anything else, and nobody else can establish it either, then the jury will continue to be out for as long as the FDA fails to bring the hammer down on this guy. How long would you be willing to wait? What would it take for you to realize that this guy is a quack?

Let's just review, shall we: Dr. Burzynski has been selling a treatment for cancer for 35 years. In this 35 years, he has failed to complete clinical trials for the drug, he has failed to write peer-reviewed papers on the drug that provide any convincing arguments for their effectiveness, and has charged people tens of thousands of dollars for the privilege of taking part in what are essentially tests to see if his treatment work. Instead of actually getting the evidence he needs to establish his treatment, he instead spent time making a 110-minute propaganda piece about his clinic that focused far less on the evidence for his treatment and far more about how he's being "targeted by big pharma". He has made it a point to seek out known quacks like Eric Mercola and John Merola as allies, and to play up the idea that there's some gigantic conspiracy against him. He has been investigated numerous times by the FDA, and told he couldn't falsely advertise several times as well. His associates have threatened online bloggers in an attempt to shut them up.

Does this paint the picture of a legitimate medical scientist to you? Because to me, everything on that list screams quack. Hell, even just associating oneself with Mercola is a huge red flag - you don't team up with that loon until you've run out of real scientific sources that'll listen to your crap.

Wow, this makes so much sense. We're against Burzynski because... we worship government? What the hell. That wouldn't even make sense if the premise wasn't completely insane (no, seriously - if you honestly think we worship government, you have problems that may require a shrink). What's more, "for-profit"? Um... I reiterate: Burzynski is charging tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to allow patients to take part in field trials for his therapy. The problem here is not "little guy vs. big guy". It's not "government vs. little guy", either. It's "con artist vs. concerned citizens".

Look, it's really simple. If Burzynski can actually demonstrate that his treatments are as effective as he claims and publicize it, then he will not only die rich beyond his wildest dreams, but he will go down in history as a scientific revolutionary like Loius Pasteur, Joseph Salk, or Edward Jenner, with at least one Nobel Prize in medicine. Lord knows he knows this, so why hasn't he done more legwork to go public with his results? Instead of actually finishing those 60+ unfinished clinical trials and publishing papers on the subject, what happened? He opted to spend his time on a bull(*)(*)(*)(*) anti-medical-science propaganda piece! This is, in my opinion, the best evidence against Burzynski not being the miracle-worker he claims to be. The fact that if he could demonstrate his medicine to work, it would be world-changing, and yet he has done no such thing.

 

I guess the biggest issue here is just how fishy the whole thing looks if you look at it from all the angles. As said above, it's been 35 years. If you have an apparently miraculous cure for various types of cancers, and you can't prove it in 35 years, something is wrong. And then to jump into bed with Mercola... You don't do that until you've run out of serious people who will listen to you.

 

Valid point Stagnant....but is it not also obvious that some people might just lose a lot of money if the Burzynski research was proven valid....and is it not possible for those people to have made it difficult for him to get published?

Both of these films can be viewed for free......but after viewing the film people purchase a DVD copy..........now why would they bother unless........???!!!
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/07/13/burzynski-film.aspx

 

And is it not obvious that even people who profit from treating cancer also get cancer? That they know and love people who get cancer? Also, you are aware that the people in charge of major peer-reviewed journals generally aren't the same people in charge of major pharmaceutical corporations, right? You can scream "CONSPIRACY" all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that Burzynski still hasn't completed more than a tiny handful of his clinical trials. And any meddling from those in power would have to occur after completion - that is, after he's submitted the results. So why hasn't he submitted the results? It'd be childishly simple to go public with the results if someone tried to suppress them, and then he could prove the conspiracy he so wants us to believe in.

What's more, just asserting conspiracy may be good enough for you, but I tend to ask for a little more than just saying, "People in power might lose a share of the profits if it's true, therefore the fact that there's no published scientific evidence for it is irrelevant". Because that is literally what you're saying. You are excusing a near total lack of evidence for Burzynski's claims by saying, "If there was evidence, it'd be suppressed". I'm sorry, but saying that there might be evidence but it's just covered up still doesn't give you evidence. However, it doesn't matter, because there's enough wrong with Burzynski's case that even if there were people trying to cover it up, he could have done far, far more than he has.

Same question about Zeitgeist. That movie was also overblown, conspiracy-theory tripe, most of it being completely debunked. And yet, the creator sold a hell of a lot of DVDs. Why? Because it appeals to a certain group of people who don't have good bull(*)(*)(*)(*) filters, and like the Burzynski film, presents itself in a way to sucker in as many people as possible. And even then, "people bought the movie" is not evidence that Burzynski's treatments work. In fact, what was even the point of bringing this up? What were you trying to prove? "Gullible people often buy into stupid (*)(*)(*)(*)"? Buddy, you proved that particular statement with post one of this thread and every subsequent post I've ever seen from you.

 

So when do you plan on looking at it from all the angles? So far I only see one: from the angle of a devotee to medicine bought and paid for by large corporate interests.

 

Well, what other angles should I consider? Should I simply waive my general requirement for solid scientific evidence for a revolutionary cure? Should I simply accept without hesitation that there is a colossal international conspiracy to keep cancer cures down? No, I'm sorry, I won't do that, because it makes no sense. The evidence doesn't add up in the slightest. Please, feel free to tell me what I'm missing, but I guarantee you something: if a major pharmaceutical company acted anywhere near as shifty as Burzynski, not only would the FDA be up their asses, but the alt med crowd would start screaming bloody murder about how big pharma is dodging the law.

 

Burzynski Clinic - From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Burzynski Clinic is a clinic in Texas, United States founded in 1976 and offering unproven cancer treatment. The clinic is best known for its "antineoplaston therapy", a controversial chemotherapy using compounds it calls antineoplastons, devised by the clinic's founder Stanislaw Burzynski in the 1970s.

The clinic has been the focus of much criticism due to the way its unproven antineoplaston therapy is promoted, the costs for cancer sufferers participating in "trials" of antineoplastons, significant problems with the way these trials are run, legal cases brought as a result of the sale of the therapy without board approval, and for other causes.

There is a scientific consensus that antineoplaston therapy is unproven and of little promise in treating cancer. Clinical trials initiated in 1993 and sponsored by the National Cancer Institute were closed due to inability to recruit qualifying patients, and a Mayo Clinic study found no benefit from antineoplaston treatment. Some sixty phase 2 clinical trials and one Phase 3 trial have been registered by Burzynski since the mid-1990s, but no results have been published. The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center has stated: "Bottom Line: There is no clear evidence to support the anticancer effects of antineoplastons in humans."


Lawsuits

In 1994, a court found against Burzynski in a case of insurance fraud. According to the SMU Law Review, Burzynski was found to have defrauded an ERISA health insurance fund by billing it for unapproved "treatment" with antineoplastons, in violation of the terms of the health plan it covered.

In 2010, the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners filed a multi-count complaint against Burzynski for failure to meet state medical standards. An appeal against the advertising restrictions on the grounds of free speech was denied on the basis that this was commercial speech promoting an unlawful activity. In December 2010, the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners filed a multi-count complaint against Burzynski for failure to meet state medical standards. This suit was eventually withdrawn in November 2012 after the judge allowed Burzynski to repudiate responsibility for the actions of staff at the clinic.

In January 2012, Lola Quinlan, an elderly, stage IV cancer patient, sued Dr Burzynski for using false and misleading tactics to swindle her out of $100,000. She also sued his companies, The Burzynski Clinic, the Burzynski Research Institute and Southern Family Pharmacy, in Harris County Court. She sued for negligence, negligent misrepresentation, fraud, deceptive trade and conspiracy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burzynski_Clinic


What Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski doesn’t want you to know about antineoplastons

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2011/12/12/what-dr-stanislaw-burzynski-doesnt-want/

 

Interesting. In the first lawsuit, he was sued for filing an insurance claim. Not very compelling.

The second lawsuit against him was withdrawn.

The third lawsuit doesn't state the end result. Doesn't seem like much to go on.

The biggest one, the second, was withdrawn by the state. I wonder why...

 

if his treatments were working they'd be getting confirmations of that, instead of lawsuits and criticism from other doctors and the authorities

 

They have gotten confirmations of it. Had you looked into the issue enough, you'd see there are two sides to this story. Your claim that he is getting one and not the other shows you simply do not have enough information to have a clue. I watched patient after patient after patient of his come forward with stories of conventional medicine sending them home to die of cancer, only to end up cancer-free after Burzynski's treatment. He has never claimed it will cure everyone. And I am sure there are a lot of embarrassed doctors and other establishment forces anxious to shut him down through use of the legal system. There is a lot of information from both directions. A wise person who doesn't have all the facts will reserve judgment, as I am doing. It is the fool who isn't even aware of success stories that will prance around making declarations when it is clear that don't have enough information to make any sort of judgment at all.

I hope that helps.

 

not legitimate ones