Tagged: brain tumor Burzynski

Burzynski Patient Amelia S.’s Story

[This is a repost of an earlier story.]

As Stanislaw Burzynski stands in front of the Texas Medical Board to answer for yet another litany of abominations, patients are no doubt gathering to protest in front of the courthouse so they can beg for their lives. Many of his supporters in the past have been then-current patients who were convinced that Burzynski is their only chance at life. Burzynski’s patients often have dismal prognoses and their prospects do not improve when they buy into his medical adventurism. In anticipation of such patients being used as human shields yet again, we are focusing on stories of people who have testified on Burzynski’s behalf, begged for their lives in courts and in the public, but who of course died anyway. These patients, so far, include Burzynski patient Elke B., Burzynski patient Douglas W.,Burzynski patient Janet C., Burzynski patient Sen. Ed G., and McKenzie L. These patients may not be testifying in the upcoming trial, but their stories are perhaps the most important and are far more eloquent and revealing.

Last week, we posted about the patient who had perhaps the most high profile campaign in the US in recent years. This one is perhaps the biggest in UK in recent years. The case of Amelia S. is a hard one to write about, because it tipped skeptics off to a pattern in the stories that patients at the clinic were telling, that their worsening symptoms were signs of improvement. As you will see, this is a story that Burzynski’s patients have been relating for decades. It’s a long post, but it’s important that you read to the bottom.

***

3-year old Amelia S. lived in Reading. In about September of 2011, Amelia started displaying neurological symptoms–wobbliness and a trembling left hand (often drawn into a fist). The family brought her in to the hospital after she started falling down. On Jan 30th, 2012, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor, and on the 1st of Feb it was determined to be a large tumor on the brainstem. Surgery revealed a grade 2 diffuse astrocytoma, which the family was given to understand meant that the core of the tumor was likely grade 3. Doctors were unable to remove much of the tumor, only the 4 biopsy samples.

Amelia’s medical team was honest. The benefit offered by radiation and chemotherapy, on average, could be measured in weeks. These are bad, bad tumors. The family brought Amelia home on the 20th of February, her mobility and speech impaired, opting to spare Amelia the unpleasantness of the chemotherapy and radiotherapy. When they saw Amelia improving (we’re not told what those improvements were–whether they were reduction in tumor size or reduced swelling as she recovered from surgery, for instance), however, family understandably felt obliged to look for other options.

They found Burzynski. Immediately, the enormous price tag of his antineoplaston treatments spurred the family on to raise funds. Amelia’s father began documenting their journey to Burzynski in a couple of places, at ameliasmiracle.com and on a Facebook page of the same name. As a whole, his story is the most moving and insightful account of parental heroism that I have read since I began this project, and I strongly recommend that you read it for yourself.

By the end of February 2012, the family had decided on Burzynski. We were introduced to Amelia on February 28th in a video posted by her father:

Attached to the video was a simple plea:

Our daughter, Amelia, was diagnosed at the beginning of February with a very rare type of inoperable brain tumour. She has only a few months to live. We have a ray of hope – treatment for her is available at the Burzynski clinic in Houston, Texas. This treatment in total will cost around £200,000. We need to raise this money to allow Amelia to have the chance to live a normal life.

From the beginning, the family sought media attention to raise money for the Burzynski Clinic, as we see in a Facebook post. the earliest example of Amelia’s story appearing in the press was in the local Wokingham Times on 8 March 2012. The public campaign was launched. And by 14 March, £45,000 had been raised by the community, enough to get Amelia in the door at the Clinic (recent accounts put that initial consult at $30,000). The Wokingham Times seems to have informally adopted the family and followed their progress closely for the rest of the year. These community fundraisers appear as human interest stories and reaffirm that people are basically kind and generous and trusting. In fact, my first exposure to Burzynski and realization that something was profoundly wrong came after I did a newspaper database search for all of the patients that I could find. Of those patients I could find an outcome for, every patient who appeared in the international press, usually begging for money, with a single exception was dead.

A week before Amelia hit the papers, on the 6th of March, Eric Merola, who made an uncritical hagiography to Burzynski unironically called, Burzynski: Cancer is a Serious Business, interviewed the family about their upcoming trip to Houston for his new movie, a sequel, which comes out soon. He planned to follow Amelia’s progress in the film. On the 17th, as they planned their trip to the US, the family put up a short video for Amelia’s donors:

So, she clearly she packed everyone’s hearts into her suitcase. Such a dear.

They left on the 23th of March for America, having raised a staggering £75,000 for Burzynski. In a Wokingham Times piece, her father stated some of the opposition that the family had met:

Mr Saunders added that he was amazed at the number of people who had suggested the American treatment would be fruitless.

He said: “I was warned about this before we decided to go with the Burzynski treatment – it is like there is a vendetta out against the man.

“It is so strange, and all I keep getting are contacts from patients who have been or are being cured by the treatment, or at the very least have had positive results.”

People for whom Burzynski’s treatments fail tend not get into contact with other patients. We are witnessing what is known as survivorship bias. You can talk to a dozen survivors and have a positive impression of a treatment but fail to take into account the 10,000 failures, which would put a treatment well below the efficacy of chance remission, misdiagnosis, and unrecognized responses to traditional therapies. This is why controlled trials are so important to determine efficacy, so we can sort out the background noise of chance from real effects. It is also an important reason that dependence on patient testimonials is a red flag for quackery.

Amelia has had a hole opened in her chest where a Hickman line has been inserted, where she will receive her ANP. These frequently have complications with infection and clogging.

By the 30th, Amelia has her backpack full of antineoplastons, as we see in a video. Her family will spend the customary 3 weeks or so in the US learning to administer the ANP themselves. They are infused at high doses almost continuously.

Amelia’s dad shares his first impression of the Clinic on the facebook page:

The clinic have been fantastic. I am still amazed that people give them such a bad press. They have literally bent over backwards to get this started for us. The receptionist Irena even has a photo of Amelia behind her desk, she is so lovely!

Well there is a reason, of course. It’s because they apparently tell patients that they can tell brain tumors are shrinking by looking at their urine:

Mr Saunders said: “Every day is a milestone and the clinic is being extremely thorough in its tests – Amelia has regular blood tests and these are all closely monitored to check for signs of all sorts of things.

“Interestingly, they can actually see the early signs of the tumour breaking down by how her body excretes it in her blood and urine. This might be the only time in my life I get excited by seeing this kind of information!

I’m not sure what this is supposed to mean, and before Amelia’s story I would not have even noticed this. I can see why a parent clinging to hope would sieze onto any augury of healing. Remember, this family has not had good news about Amelia since her diagnosis. Little steps, literally, mean the world to them. I contacted research oncologist David Gorski, who studies and treats breast cancer, about this claim, and he replied:

“Oncologists don’t monitor anything in the urine for tumor breakdown, at least not for that tumor. There is such a thing called tumor lysis syndrome, but that’s usually only seen in leukemias and lymphomas as a result of induction chemotherapy that kills a lot of cancer cells really fast, releasing potassium, and a number of other byproducts. However, as I said, you don’t generally see this in solid tumors (mainly because none of them respond nearly as dramatically to chemotherapy as hematological malignancies). It’s also a complication to be managed, because its most frequent result is renal failure. It’s possible that he’s referring to GFAP, which is a biomarker for glioma under study, but I don’t think it’s really been validated as a measurement of response to therapy.”

There are apparently no biomarkers for glioma that appear in urine. Amelia had chronically low potassium at this point in her treatment.

We don’t see a lot of what is going on at the clinic on facebook, where most of the story is told record, but we get a clue on Amelia’s other website:

10th April 2012

I realised I hadn’t updated the news section here for a few weeks, this is largely because we update our Facebook page daily and much of our time has been taken up going to and from the clinic. Every day has been a bit of a rollercoaster here. Amelia has been on antineoplaston treatment for a week and a half and at the end of last week we hit a bit of a wall with the treatment dosage. Amelia got pretty sick so we had to back down on the dose a little. Yesterday she started getting really bad headaches so we have now also put her on a low dose steroid as well. Other than this, she is doing well and responding well to treatment. We think there are some very slight improvements in her coordination of her left hand side. We are continuing the treatment, and the aim is now to increase the dosage more slowly to see how she responds. All in all we are doing well and looking forward to coming home soon!

So, she’s been up and down. The steroids are a recurring feature of treatment and can very quickly reduce inflammation in a way that leads to improvements of the type that the family is reporting. You see it a lot on this website. It’s hard not to think of John D., who experienced worsening symptoms while under treatment (and on steroids), which was met with joy on the part of the staff:

I want to mention that the IV nurse told mom today that she’s been there for 10 years & has seen this before & many times, the more severe symptoms that are seen as a result of the therapy is really a good sign that it’s working better. I know this nurse & she is very honest & helpful. She also runs the class they run every week for new patients.

On April 19th we hear that the family is preparing to return home, and on the Wokingham Times page where it is announced, we see that damned picture again, patients literally at death’s door, posing in front of the Burzynski Clinic. We get the update that they have arrived back in England on the 22nd. Amelia’s dad talks about the fundraising (truly amazing acts of generosity by the whole community) and how grateful he is for the immense support that the family has received. (Amelia gives her own thank you’s in an adorable little video a few days later.)  He speculates on the road ahead:

I have come home from Houston with a strange kind of feeling. Perhaps a little apprehension, a bit of fear, a dose of happiness and a shot of hope. We still feel that every day is a roller coaster. We may be sitting on a ticking time bomb, and it may still be that any day we might lose Amelia. Every day truly is so precious, and it is a joy to watch her and her little sister back together again, albeit in a different way, a more careful one, where we have to watch them all the time.

The next day, it sounds like Amelia is having the unquenchable thirst that comes with ANP:

Amelia has been OK today, she was a bit sick earlier but we think this was because she drank too much too quickly – she was fine shortly afterwards. We’ve been getting used to life again at home and putting everything in place we need to.

And we hear that she is due for her first post-treatment MRI:

As far as the MRI goes, I just want to make a point that we aren’t expecting a lot to have happened with this next scan. As part of the medical trial we are required to get a scan done every 4 – 5 weeks – and these things take time to show any change. It is very likely the tumour may be the same or have grown slightly. This is fine and we expect this, and clearly if it has shrunk then great – but we aren’t expecting it to have done.

Tumors on which chemotherapy is working should probably not be growing at all. It’s the definition of “working.”

On the 25th:

Today has been a busy day. Unfortunately Amelia was pretty sick this morning – those of you who have been following our journey will know that we are trying to increase Amelia’s dose of drugs and it sometimes has side effects, this seeming to be the most common. She was fine afterwards and has been eating for the rest of the day.

We had an appointment at the hospital at lunchtime and ended up spending most of the afternoon there so we could get everything sorted. The doctors here are being very cooperative – but I must emphasise that they are recommending different treatment (chemo) and we have consistently turned this down. We have not found a single person with a DIPG tumour that has had any effect with chemo – so continue to find it strange that this is offered. Our plan is to continue the antineoplaston treatment for as long as required. We realise this is being frowned upon by the doctors here – but ultimately we are trying the only thing we found that had credible results.

Credible results would have been publication and replication of his trials. Burzynski can’t seem to complete his trials, much less publish them (which is odd given that he has the test agent already developed and the tumors he is working have outcomes comparatively rapidly). If trial completion were a batting average, he’d be at .015 and his trial publication average would be .000.

By May 4, Amelia is a celebrity. They have raised £160,000 (!) and she is meeting and hanging out with celebrities. And the paper has clearly been reading Amelia’s dad’s updates. Also, her dad’s website announces:

Well we have now been back from Houston for a few weeks – and Amelia has continued to slowly improve with both her walking and speech getting better. The Burzynski clinic were brilliant – we were made to feel so welcome and Amelia really made an impression on everybody there!

We had an MRI scan on Monday that revealed her tumour has stopped growing. Considering she has had no treatment other than the antineoplaston therapy from the Burzynski clinic, we are really pleased (and impressed) that the treatment seems to be working so quickly. We are now continuing the treatment and increasing her dose such that we try to get her to the ‘target’ dose for her weight.

This tumor “stopped growing” news is taken as validation that the treatment is working, so much so, that the Wokingham Times irresponsibly reports that result.   According to her dad:

1. Amelia has been on treatment for less than 4 weeks.
2. She is not on full dose yet, and has some way to go to get there. This is a slow progress, perhaps taking another month or so to achieve this (or more).
3. She has a low grade tumour. Any response will be slow. In other kids where the treatment has worked it has taken many months to show response.
4. She is still on steroids.
5. Her previous scan showed a 13% growth in 7 weeks.

So, having now had several opinions of the scans, I can confirm that Amelia’s tumour has STOPPED GROWING. This is amazing news and we are over the moon that this is the case. For this tumour type, in this short time, with a tumour of the size of Amelia’s, this is an incredibly good result. This is an INCREDIBLY hard tumour to do anything with, one of the hardest to treat and normally very lethal. In most circumstances Amelia would no longer be here (in February there was no way we thought we’d get to May with her) so to have the thing stable is fantastic news.

A few important points. It’s a low grade (slow growing) tumor. This does not seem to have been a PET scan, which would give  a sense how of active the tumor was–to see if it had in fact “stopped.” And initial responses to chemotherapy (and ANP is chemotherapy by every definition) correlate poorly to outcomes, which is, of course, the final goal that everyone involved is keenly interested in. Of course, the Clinic doesn’t convey that information:

I also had a good chat with our doctor in Houston earlier. Again all sounding very positive, and we have again increased Amelia’s dose tonight […] The clinic sound very positive that Amelia’s tumour stopped growing so quickly. Let’s just hope we have more positive news on the next scan in June.

On 12 May, we get an update about Amelia’s progress:

Amelia was on top form today, she was pretty tired after the wedding but perked up and during doses, when we unplugged her from her backpack, she was really bubbly. Later in the afternoon she was doing some proper walking – unassisted. I think we have now realised that a lot of the walking problem now is just her confidence. She was walking almost normally, and certainly the same or better than she was before her operation. Fantastic.

So, they are at point zero, which considering where they have been is wonderful from the family’s perspective, but it doesn’t tell us that the ANP is working of if she has just recovered from surgery to her brain stem and is now on steroids. And this may be important, as dad mentions on the 20th:

She really has improved. We’ve both noticed significant improvements in her speech, mainly in the quality of her pronunciations and also the speed and which she speaks. Slow speech is a classic symptom of her tumour location, so any improvement is a good sign here. This might be the steroids causing this improvement so we have to be careful, but we have a lot of fingers crossed we’ll be taking her off the steroids within the next few weeks if we can get her second bag to target dose. We’ll see.

On the 21st:

Amelia has been a bit groggy, fairly lethargic and pretty reluctant to do a lot. […] Because of the lethargy, the doctor in the US has recommended increasing her steroid dose very slightly. We’ll see if this improves things – if it does then this is a good sign. It does all tie in with us increasing her dose, which is now at maximum on her larger bag. No wonder.

Also on the 21rd, just over a year ago, the fundraiser reaches its goal of £200,000, and the tally continues to climb. In the intervening time, however, we hear that Amelia has had some complications with the Hickman line, which has been replaced because of a tear:

She is doing well otherwise, and we’ll be resuming her treatment tonight. She is now walking by herself, her coordination and balance have all improved and her speech is much better. It looks like the treatment is definitely helping her.

In early June, dad is rattled by the deaths of patients Billie B. and Supatra A., who had the same tumor as Amelia, and for a few days he rails against skeptics. Apparently some have been contacting him and criticizing him. This is wrong, in my opinion. Cancer patients have enough on their plate.

On the 21st, we hear that the tumor remains stable:

Firstly we are waiting on a further interpretation from Dr Burzynski, but as we suspected from our own view of the scans this morning, Amelia’s tumour remains stable. In other words, there is no change since the last scan.

The family accepts this as a sign that they have stayed the brain tumor:

We are 100% sure that without antineoplastons, Amelia would either be in a hospice by now or dead. She has a grade 2 tumour, on scans it appears as a grade 3, and it is very large and in a very dangerous part of the brain. Even a few mm of growth would cause a significant impact on her quality of life at this size. We are all walking on a knife edge. Dr Burzynski’s treatment is undoubtedly keeping her alive. I actually want to wave this in the face of all the skeptics we came across along our journey.

It’s worth noting that the tumor hasn’t shrunk. Small victories–including just not dying–are huge when your child has one of these tumors.

Amelia has her 4th birthday on the 22nd of June, and it is celebrated in the papers.

Again, we see that the steroid dose is being increased on June 25th to control the symptoms of the disease:

We have been advised by the clinic to increase her steroid intake back to how it was last week to see if we see an improvement in her. We will then try in a couple of weeks time to reduce it again but at a slower rate, reducing it by 0.25mg instead of 0.5mg per day. The steroid intake is a tricky issue as they are essential and help reduce the symptoms of this awful disease (headaches, tiredness), however long term steroid use is not good and cause side effects such as weight gain, muscle problems.

We still haven’t seen anything that looks like clear evidence of improvement past diagnosis; it sounds like the symptoms return when the steroids are tapered. She seems to be doing pretty well on this dose of steroids, going to school. (Her last day of nursery school is 11 July.)

On July 15th we hear:

Well – we have had a pretty good weekend. I had a truly amazing conversation last night. Purely by chance I’ve been contacted by the mother of another little girl, who is almost the same age as Amelia, who is receiving the same treatment (for longer), with the same tumour (DIPG) and her tumour just shrunk. By 36%. We are so, so pleased. There is so much hope in our hearts now.

I’ll just briefly mention how frustrated we still are to read so much crap on the internet about Dr Burzynski. I feel like we are ‘insiders’, in a way, and know how the whole thing works now. These doubters clearly don’t. The lady I spoke to last night was told her daughter would die. When she went to Burzynski, her doctor shut her off. Refused to speak. Thank God she chose to follow her heart, and not that doctors advice. She might just have saved her daughters life. There is no doubt this works, and we want it in every hospital in the world. We’ll keep spreading the word until it is.

This child, sadly, is now dead.

By August the tumor has not shrunk, but Amelia has been coping very well. A few weeks earlier she had a wonderful day at the zoo. She’s still a little wobbly on her feet and in the pictures her family put on the Facebook page, you can tell that her face is not symmetrical, but by God she’s enjoying her life, which is an immense thing in itself. On the 6th however, she gets pale and sick; when her blood work is done, they find that her potassium and magnesium are way down, though they stabilize her.

On August 8, we hear:

One of the many things I have said throughout this year is that I hope that maybe, one day, I can learn that another child has had success with this treatment because of the inspiration they gained from Amelia. I know of one little girl, Chey, who is waiting to go to the clinic right now. But due to some complications with the FDA and the clinic, there are some delays – but we are all hoping she will get there very soon. We felt so welcomed by the Burzynski clinic and everything we saw there made us puzzled why so many people don’t believe in it.

We just found out exactly what happened. According to an SEC filing:

In a letter dated June 25, 2012, the [Burzynski] informed the FDA of a serious adverse event which may have been related to the administration of Antineoplastons.  On July 30, 2012, the FDA placed a partial clinical hold for enrollment of new pediatric patients under single patient protocols or in any of the active Phase II or Phase III studies under IND 43,742.  The FDA imposed this partial clinical hold because, according to the FDA, insufficient information had been submitted by the Company to allow the FDA to determine whether the potential patient benefit justifies the potential risks of treatment use, and that the potential risks are not unreasonable in the context of the disease or condition to be treated.

According to the mother of patient Alynn H., her understanding was that a child had died (link is password protected). We have not heard anything else, only that the ANP trials, almost a year later, have not started up again and that the partial hold remains.

On August 13, Amelia’s dad posts a video about Amelia’s life since diagnosis. This write up an unusually long post for this blog, and I haven’t done justice to the support the family has received from their community or the sheer number of people who pitched in to help the family, and this video gives a sense of that:

On the fifteenth, we hear that the family is understandably anxious for the tumor to shrink:

Incidentally, we are well aware that a stable tumour is good. Mondays scan was one that we went into thinking ‘if it is stable then great’. I’ve had a few people come up to me and ask “is the tumour shrinking?”. Now I know people mean well – but it is a little like me walking up to somebody and saying “have you won the lottery yet?”. In other words, frustrating. I smile, say no, it will take time, and move the conversation on.

So far, the tumor’s behavior has been utterly unrelated to the dose of the antineoplaston chemotherapy. On Aug 25, we hear that Amelia is tired on treatment and that she has had a progression of symptoms:

We are still looking to increase her dose slightly as she has gained a little weight since Houston so she should be able to tolerate an increased dose (or at least we hope so). We will probably have to increase her steroids in line with this, but we have been considering this anyway as she seems to have become a lot more wobbly lately. We know from the MRI that the tumour hasn’t grown so an increase in her steroids should help this.

Now, I’m not sure how this was verified. The definition of a “stable” tumor can actually accommodate some growth, so, we can’t know exactly what is happening. And we hear from the family a few days later that they have come to a hard realization:

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. 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.

It really, really looks that her wellness is linked directly to how much steroid she is receiving. 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? It’s not, at least not in a version of the consent form used after Amelia had started ANP:

consent1 consent2 consent3consent2consent3

(Burzynski’s supporters who have been saying that the treatment has no long-term side effects would do well to look at that first paragraph. The paperwork that every patient signs says it can have exactly that.)

On September 5th, we see a candid moment on the facebook page. The parents are committed to seeing this therapy through, but the father has that lingering awareness that this nothing the tumor has not shrunk:

Whether we have returned to a feeling of optimism or not remains to be seen. I still feel uneasy about the fact that we are so far on without the tumour shrinking. It is frustrating, because we have worked SO hard with the treatment – our entire lives are ruled by it and it is almost a full time job sorting it all out – we just share it between us and make it happen. We just know to be patient, and we 100% know it can work.

At this time, Amelia was returning to school (she had already been going to nursery school on treatment). And the way it appeared in the press, and certainly how I and other skeptics read it, it was being promoted as, “See? This treatment is working enough to let this little girl go back,” a human interest story (The Mirror’s coverage was profoundly disgraceful–suggesting UK doctors “refused to treat” Amelia, whereas when you look above you see that in fact: “The doctors here are being very cooperative – but I must emphasise that they are recommending different treatment (chemo) and we have consistently turned this down”), and by god it was good to hear that Amelia was having a great time, but there’s a lot more going on than is contained in the articles. On the 5th we see how much support was needed to get Amelia in. This was not the return of a healed child that everyone took away from the coverage:

“There has been a LOT of organising around this, far more than getting a healthy child to school. We’ve arranged our nanny, we’ve had to work around the school timetable, we’ve had meetings with the school and the teachers and the hospital nurses and made everything happen. The school have been absolutely fantastic every step of the way – we literally cannot fault them.”

On the 8th, we see on the Facebook page:

“On Monday we have a physiotherapist coming to look at her to see if she can get her walking again. I tried a little walking with her today and she is really, really trying. You can see she struggles, like her brain doesn’t know how to do it but the conscious Amelia that we see and know does. It’s a bit like trying to write with the wrong hand – you know what to do but you can’t quite make your hand write as well as the other. She tries to walk, but can’t quite make it all fit.”

This is not a child improving.

September 10, on they were visited by Eric Merola for his utterly uncritical documentary about Burzynski. More on that in a moment.

On the morning of the 15th, Amelia woke up crying with a pain in her head. She went off treatment for a day or so and got better, not trembling, perhaps speaking a bit better. One wonders if she is not experiencing relief from the hypernatremia that can appear alongside such massive sodium doses and can have such side effects.

Amelia has a great couple of days in late September (and she really takes to her school!), and her dad talks about how the awful waiting game goes in between MRIs, which I have learned is how time is measured by cancer patients:

I’ve said this many times before, but the really frustrating thing for me is not having anything really tangible that tells you this is working, until we get the scan image in front of us. This means an 8 week wait between scans when you really have no idea what is going on, and if she gets worse like she did a few weeks back then I think you naturally assume the worst. Then she gets better, and you relax a little!

The October MRI shows no change. But later that month, the family is trying to come to grips with what life will mean in the likelihood that Amelia is not with them. It’s a beautiful post, and I hope you read it. It’s immensely sad and healthy and you can’t help but feel the full force of their grief and fear. This family is mentally preparing themselves for a horrible future, and this makes what happened next absolutely inexcusable by any measure.

By November 19th, Amelia’s right hand is immobilized, a clear progression, and the family gets the results of a recent scan:

What I don’t want to do is get ours, and everybody else’s hopes up about things. I could not bear thinking that this is working and then to be told it isn’t. (emphasis added)

What I will elude to is that the Burzynski clinic feel that there is a cyst forming inside Amelia’s tumour, very slowly. This does seem apparent on the scan images but we want to make sure this has grown over the longer timeframe. A cyst will form where there is cell breakdown, so clearly is a good thing from a ‘killing the tumour’ viewpoint, but possibly bad in that you then have fluid in a very difficult place to get to. We’ll address that little hurdle if we get to it being a problem in the first place.

This sounds exciting (it is), but we are really trying to be careful about getting too much so. Amelia has got worse, although she has had some improvement over the weeks before her MRI. This could be due to a number of factors and we know the tumour has not grown.

Another point with this is that the tumour isn’t shrinking, but if a cyst is forming then it might be some time before the tumour does shrink. We’ve always said that due to Amelia’s tumour being very slow growing, we have more time on our hands more than most kids who get this.

When this news was released on the family’s Facebook page, followed by rapturous confirmation the next day, it was brought to the attention of Orac at Respectful Insolence, who gave an honest medical opinion:

It pains me greatly to do this, because, no matter how I write this, it will be perceived as trying to take away the hope for Amelia’s survival that the Saunders family holds. Such is not my intent, by any stretch of the imagination. However, these “cysts” almost certainly represent areas of ischemia (low blood flow) leading to tissue death as the tumor outgrows its blood supply. This is a phenomenon commonly seen in advanced malignancy. I know this because tumor angiogenesis ia one of my areas of research interest. […]

Sadly, then, seeing “cysts” growing in Amelia’s tumor most likely says nothing one way or the other about whether or not it’s responding to Burzynski’s antineoplastons. That’s assuming that Burzynski’s interpretation of the scans is even correct, which I wouldn’t bet money on. Most likely, these “cysts” indicate that there is no therapeutic effect. I take no pleasure in saying this, but most likely this is true.

Amelia’s dad was understandably upset and actually responded to Orac on Nov 29th, but the day after Orac posted, the family updated their followers:

We know that some people doubt what we are doing. We understand that it is in human nature to question, and many people will not just take something on faith alone. But, ultimately, this is our choice. And that choice seems to be paying off.

Yesterday I sent a CD with the latest MRI scans on to our local oncologist and I’ll be waiting for their opinion. We’ll consider this, and then continue until the next scan and see if the cystic formation that we have been shown grows in some way. I don’t want anyone to think we just take things at face value and accept them – we consider what we see, what we are told, and get as many opinions as we can. We can see with our own eyes though that something has changed with the tumour and we hope this continues. Amelia’s tumour hasn’t enhanced or progressed, so we know it is unlikely to be anything other than cysts, but we will get that second opinion for sure.

Amelia had a magical week. She won a community award, the “Child of Courage” award, and was literally the star of a Nativity play with her friends. The reality of Amelia’s situation soon came upon the family, however. On 2 December:

The truth is, Amelia isn’t getting any better neurologically. We live with her every day and we see it. She is very slowly deteriorating and I think we would be putting our own heads in the sand if we didn’t accept this. On one hand we have the Burzynski clinic who believe the tumour is beginning to die. We are getting opinions here about this theory and we’ll very likely need another scan of a different type in early January to back this up. Everything is based on opinions – and nobody agrees, which makes it all very hard on us.

And the final assessment from the Great Ormond Street Hospital:

We had our meeting at Great Ormond Street yesterday and, sadly, they just don’t have anything for us. We kind of knew this before we went – but wondered if they might have a trial that we could take part in. Unfortunately they don’t.

They felt that Amelia is in the latter stages of the disease, and that what is called ‘progression’ has already started. This means her tumour is growing, the cancer is spreading and we don’t have a huge amount of time left. Again we had already guessed this was happening but it was good in a way to have another opinion of this.

Were it just a one-off bad interpretation of an MRI on the part of the Burzynski Clinic, we might have been able to write this off as a simple mistake. But it’s not. Not by a long shot.

 

Had Burzynski not used this line on the family who had given him by far the most publicity of any other in years, this recurring theme might have slipped by unnoticed. But it’s clear that this is not just a coincidence, it’s an M.O. predicated on false hope that strings parents and patients along. And it’s been going on for decades! And it leaves patients utterly crushed and confused. The few skeptics who have been working these stories in their spare time have found case after case of patients thinking that getting worse is getting better (a partial, growing list can be found in this post). Consider that the cases written up at this website represent 1/10th of the total cases we’ve been able to find and will be bringing to you, that we have only found a small fraction of cases, mostly from the most recent years, and that this guy has been operating for over 35 years! My god! Imagine what that means!

In light of this, when Eric Merola, in his new movie, says in a series of title cards:

Two months after this interview, Amelia’s tumor began to swell and fill with fluid.

There was confusion and disagreement among between their local radiologists and the radiologists in Houston, [sic] about why this was happening–

So her parents decided to discontinue antineoplaston therapy.

[Then he cuts to a picture of Amelia’s obituary and says,]

“Amelia passed away with her parents by her side on January 6, 2013.”

…it is fundamentally dishonest. There was no confusion. There was the right diagnosis and Burzynski’s diagnosis, a story that’s been spun for decades to desperate parents, and it’s a goddamned disgrace that Merola suggests that the parents’ evidence-based decision could have been related in any way to the outcome.

Instead of the usual plea for a donation to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which researches children’s tumors and provides care for free, we’d like to ask you to make a donation to Naomi House, the children’s hospice center that cared for Amelia’s family in the last days and which seems to be the family’s preferred charity.

If you want to take action, protect the vulnerable, and put reliable information in front of patients who might be looking into this Clinic, the Skeptics for the Protection of Cancer Patients (facebook page here) have put up guidelines about how to boost good information into Burzynski’s search results.

Burzynski Patient Sen. Ed G.’s Story

As Stanislaw Burzynski heads to court again to answer charges made by the Texas Medical Board on behalf of a variety of patients, he is doubtlessly preparing by getting the testimony of current and former patients. In anticipation of this pony’s one trick, we are telling the stories of patients who have testified on Burzynski’s behalf over the course of his long, dubious career and see where they are now. This one is notable because not only was the patient a State Senator, but he also reported that a probable sign of getting worse was a sign of getting better. Oh, and he testified on Burzynski’s behalf in front of Congress.

In the last week of the 1996 Georgia state senate race, incumbent from Macon Ed G. tried to speak on the phone, but couldn’t. Also, printed letters looked scrambled. While he initially dismissed it as stress related to his campaign, a friend who was a physician sent him to the doctor the next day. An MRI on Nov. 14th revealed not the small stroke they expected, but a brain tumor lodged in the front of his brain.

The decisions that he made in the days following the diagnosis reflect his approach to his treatment:

I went to three of the best neurosurgeons in Atlanta and they seemed to contradict themselves in what the best options for treatment were for me. The last doctor was one of the best neurosurgeons at Emory University in Atlanta. This doctor suggested chemotherapy and radiation and said this might control the growth of the tumor for a while but eventually it would come back and be a lot worse and at that time we would have to see what options were available. Obviously this was not a very good option in my opinion. I decided against chemotherapy and radiation because of the toxic side affects and the increase chance of other cancers they themselves caused. A person that takes chemo and radiation is 25 times more likely to have another form of cancer than the average person.

I talked it over with my wife and we decided to look at an alternative type of treatment. I looked and studied the options for several weeks and decided that Dr. Burzynski had the cure for brain tumors.

This, of course, is the Nirvana fallacy. Chemotherapy and radiation, while not perfect and while they carry real consequences, might actually have been the best course of action. And you reject the best advice of the best neurosurgeons at your own peril.

In mid-December, he went to the Burzynski Clinic, and he reports:

three weeks later 50% of the tumor was gone. After five months the cancerous part of the tumor was completely gone. I have to remain on the IV part of the treatment until the end of this year and then will take the antineoplastons for several years by capsule.

Of course, he was sold on the treatment entirely at this point. Adding to his commitment was a $14,000 start-up fee and $5,000 for the first treatment, according to the Macon Telegraph,  which broke the news of the state senator’s decision to undergo antineoplaston treatment on January 10th, 1997. This announcement seems not to have met any skepticism whatsoever, which is mildly surprising given that at the time Burzynski’s extensive legal troubles were at their height. The Senator’s state-run insurance was not going to cover the treatment, and so a number of public officials banded together to raise money for their unfortunate colleague’s doctor. Lt. Gov. Pierre Howard challenged people to raise funds for the treatment, and by the time the article ran, the church accepting the donations had received $35,000. The monthly treatment would cost an additional $9,000 a month, the church official interviewed reported: “He’s not sure how many months he’ll have to be in treatment. That will be decided as he goes along.”

The same representative reported that the Senator had had a brain scan the previous week:

“It showed that the tumor had not increased in size at all, so the treatment has stopped the growth,” Pardue said.  “He said to us it was moderately growing.”

So (besides it growing and not growing at the same time), even if the tumor had stopped growing, it would not mean that the treatment was having any effect, because of a feature of solid tumors known as Gompertzian growth or “day 2 of your introductory oncology class.” We also hear that the Senator is flying out to Texas every month for treatment. This is interesting because at this time it seems that the Clinic is obeying the rules that federal prosecutors were trying to enforce. The Senator will participate in the upcoming 40-day legislative session but he will be carrying a “fanny pack” that has his infusion pump.

Four days later, the Telegraph reports that the 44-year old Senator has returned from his most recent trip to Texas, and that his sons help him prepare his bags of ANP. He reports:

“I can’t sleep at night sometimes because of the medicine. Sometimes I have to take naps.”

What this public official can’t say in polite company is that the quality of sleep of patients on antineoplaston is heavily degraded because the high sodium load means that the patient has an unquenchable thirst, and he is constantly at the toilet. At the same time, he reports:

“My condition is improving, and the cancer is reducing.”

As the Macon Telegraph reported the next day, the Senator thanked his colleagues in the Senate for their support. Due to their efforts, $45,000 had been raised for the expected $100,000 treatment, projected to last for a year. The paper reported that that he told his colleagues “that his tumor, located in the right front area of his brain has already been reduced by 30 percent. He said he will return to Texas on Feb. 20 for another treatment and is hoping that doctors will find his tumor gone.”

We get an update from the Macon Telegraph on the 12th of March about the Senator’s progress:

“Ninety-two percent of the worse part of the tumor is gone,” he said. “I think God is going to heal this thing in his timing. […] Burzynski is predicting that the ‘worst part of the tumor’ will be gone in a month, [the Senator] said. The treatment will run another eight months[.]

It’s a strange qualification. 92% of the worst part? How does that relate to tumor size? Nonetheless, the Senator is now fully behind Burzynski, as you might expect. The same day, the paper would report, he presented a bill to the Senate that would allow patients to take “experimental treatment” without facing legal repercussions, though the article mentions that doctors could already prescribe experimental treatments to patients. The Senator says it will protect doctors, but the Medical Association of Georgia opposes it:

“This is misguided public policy,” said David Cook, director of governmental relations for the Medical Association of Georgia. “In the bill, a doctor could tap dance around your bed and that could be the cure for cancer.”

At least the tap dancing doctor could be entertaining and someone would be getting some exercise. ANP doesn’t show even those benefits. The bill passed the Senate 74-2. It passed in the House 146-19, the Telegraph reported on the 26th of March. It was rushed through by the urgency of the Senator’s situation.

By June 26th, Burzynski has already exacted all of the money raised by the Senator, and another fundraiser is in the works, this time to raise $100,000. One of the guests at the fundraiser is future Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue. Half way through the article, the Senator reports something horrible:

[The Senator] said the treatments have shrunk the tumor to the point that brain scans now pick up a ‘2-inch circle of fluid or something. It’s not an additional mass,’ he said. ‘It’s actually eaten through the brain.

And there it is. Another patient reporting that a cyst in a tumor is a sign of improvement, not a sign that the tumor has outgrown its blood supply and that the ANP has not arrested its growth one jot. Patients have repeated this horrible, unconscionable, misleading prognosis for what is ischemic necrosis for decades.

Why? I bet it has something to do with the 100,000 that the future governor is raising.

At this time, it seems that the Senator will be on treatment for up to two years, and that he has another 8 months at least hooked up to the IV pump. He here confirms that he is experiencing the most noticeable side effect of treatment: “The only thing that I have is a tremendous amount of fluid going going through my body. It just wears you out.”

The fundraiser nets only $25,000 for the Senator. “It just means we’ll have to have another one,” he says in the July 8th edition of the Telegraph. In November, the poor guy is asking for another $25,000. The paper reports that:

“[…] recent tests show his brain tumor is completely gone, but he must continue is treatment for several more months ‘just to make sure.’ He now needs $25,000 to pay for the intravenous and oral medications.”

This seems difficult to believe, especially given what’s coming.

In September, the Senator is one of the delegation who travel to Washington to appear before Congress on behalf of the man who is bleeding him, his family, his church, and his colleagues dry. In his testimony in front of the Government Oversight and Reform Committee, the Senator says:

After learning of alternative treatments and the problems they were having with the FDA, this past January during the Georgia General Assembly I introduced and was successful in getting passed an Access to Medical Treatment Act. The citizens of Georgia believe that patients ought to have the access to the treatment of their choice when their lives are threatened. Because I am a State Senator my name has been in many stories nationwide associated with Dr. Burzynski. This has led many potential patients to call and ask me about the treatment and for help getting into a protocol.

The most disheartening thing about the whole ordeal with the FDA is that while the FDA is allowing the antineoplastons to go through clinical trials to test their efficacy, they are making patients take treatments they do not want to take before they can become a part of a clinical trial. One reason we choose Dr. Burzynski is that his medicine is nontoxic. For the FDA to make a patient take radiation before they can become part of a clinical trial for antineoplastons is unreal.

The FDA will not allow patients that don’t fit the protocols to take the antineoplastons without a fight. One gentleman from Texas had high blood pressure and because the medicine is a sodium based medicine taking the normal dose the way the protocol requires would have caused him more problems. This gentleman needed a special treatment unique to him. It took six weeks of fighting with the FDA and getting his Congressman involved before he could take the treatment.

When the FDA was created it was with good intent. The citizens of this country needed help with determining whether drugs were safe or not. But if I allowed my two boys to grow up without supervision they would become something different than they are now. They would be arrogant, belligerent, undisciplined and uncaring much like the FDA has become. I believe it is time that Congress steps in and brings some discipline to this department and restore some integrity.

Of course, a protocol is called a protocol for a reason, so that you can get reliable data by comparing like cases. A patient who has high blood pressure (and presumably a brain tumor) should probably not be on one of the sodium bombs that Burzynski’s Clinic administers.

On 20 August of the following year, the Senator decides to not run for another term in office, as reported in the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

State Sen. Ed [G], Republican from Macon, has changed his mind about running for re-election. [Senator G] was diagnosed with a brain tumor two years ago, and has withdrawn from the race for health reasons.

[Senator G] had no opposition in last month’s primary. The state Republican Party’s executive committee has nominated Susan Cable, a Macon community activist and former Bibb County school board member, to run in his place for the 27th District seat. The Democratic nominee in the race is Floyd Buford, a Macon attorney.

[Senator G] said he plans to serve out the rest of his term. However, he said the rigors of campaigning, combined with the medication he’s taking will prevent him from seeking re-election. “I probably wouldn’t be able to do it — not as well as I should,” he told the Macon Telegraph.

Since his diagnosis, [Senator G] has been traveling to Texas for alternative therapy that he said has resulted in significant improvement in his condition.

Yet he’s too sick to continue. What happened to the “disappeared tumor”?

The Senator died on Nov 8, 1999 according to the AP, “of brain cancer.” He was 46-years old. If the Senator was in a clinical trial, it remains unpublished to this day.

For reliable information about clinical trials, visit to clinicaltrials.gov. Please contribute to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, which cares for sick children even if they can’t pay. Unlike Burzynski.

Burzynski Patient Derek T.’s Story

Derek T. first appeared in the press in June 1993. At the time, he was suffering from a brain tumor and the community was rallying around him (and 2 other kids with cancer) to raise money for the Children’s Wish Foundation. Derek was 6 years old and had been taken to Sea World by the charity. According to his mother, who appeared in the Hamilton Spectator:

Derek’s mother […] was also overwhelmed.

“I just can’t believe how much the community is pulling for us,” she said. “People really didn’t know what to do, so they did this. It has helped the family and I think the trip to Sea World helped Derek’s health.”

Derek’s journey was chronicled by the Hamilton Spectator, so we have a pretty good record of his progress. At the time of the fundraiser for the Children’s Wish Foundation, according to an article that appeared in April of 1994, his tumor was shrinking thanks to radiation treatment. He went back to school in September but, then we hear in the issue from April 18:

But, around Christmas, his flu-­like symptoms turned out to be the tumor growing again and pressing on his brain.

‘It happened very fast,’ said his aunt.

Before long, he was confined to a wheelchair. As the condition overtook him, Derek could only shake his head and move his hands to communicate.

That’s when the [family] re-­mortgaged their home and decided to ignore the advice of caregivers at McMaster University Medical Centre.

They were on their way to Houston, to the Burzynski Clinic, where they have used an unproven experimental chemotherapy for nearly 40 years under the guise of clinical with no good evidence for efficacy. The Spectator is way out of its league and has basically no idea what the treatment entails as we see in April:

In Houston, he hopes to receive a new treatment involving injections of plasma­like antineoplaston cells through the chest catheter.

No, not even close. If only the Spectator had reviewed the 1982 report by Canadian physicians Blackstein and Bergsagel commissioned by the Ministry of Health in Ontario, which had some damning revelations:

We were left with the impression that either [Dr. Burzynski] knows very little about cancer and the response of different tumors to radiation and hormonal measures, or else he thinks that we are very stupid, and he has tried to hoodwink us. As we look back over the cases were were shown, we are left with the impression that the only patients who are still alive either had slowly growing tumors, or had received effective treatment before being referred to Houston.

The 1982 Canadian report concluded:

After reviewing 20 case reports, selected by Dr. Burzynski as his best examples of clear cut responses to Antineoplastons we were unable to identify a single case in which therapeutic benefit could be attributed to Antineoplaston.

And even more from the 1982 Canadian report:

We believe that it is unethical to administer unproven agents such as Antineoplastons to patients without satisfying the requirements of the FDA and an ethics committee, that the minimum standards for human experimentation are being met. We also believe that it is immoral to charge patients for this unproven, experimental treatment.

So, in April 1994, the family, facing the progressing disease ends up in Houston. Instantly, unnecessary life-threatening complications arise just trying to get Derek on treatment:

His parents […] and his five-­year­ old sister […] flew to Texas last Thursday, when Derek was admitted to hospital for insertion of a catheter in his chest through which the new drug will be pumped. ‘They had trouble inserting the catheter because they couldn’t find a vein, then when they got him stabilized … his heart went wild and started beating 200 times a minute,’ said his aunt […] in a telephone interview yesterday. ‘He has a very low blood count and when your blood count is down you don’t heal properly,’ she added. ‘We’ve been told the next 24 hours are going to be critical.’ The child has already received one blood transfusion and may need another, she said

The doctors objected to antineoplastons for a reason. At the same time, the family is feeling the pinch:

Money, she added, is becoming a major worry for the family. ‘This hospital stay isn’t something we’d planned on,’ she said. ‘OHIP doesn’t cover any of this because it’s an experimental treatment and you pay for your Kleenex and bedpans and everything.’

This is the case at Burzynski’s clinic, though it would probably not be elsewhere. Usually, patients receive medical care in exchange for being on a clinical trials, because the developers intend to make their money when the drug goes to market. R&D is an investment in real drug trials. At the Burzynski Clinic, patients pay dearly to receive experimental treatment.

When Derek was let out of the hospital, he moved into a motel, where they hoped treatment would begin:

‘They figured on Wednesday Derek was stable enough that they could start the treatments, so what’s going to happen is that they’ll set up all the medical equipment they need in the motel so they can do the treatments there rather than having to get Derek to the clinic every day,’ said [Derek’s aunt]. ‘I think someone will be coming over every day to spend a couple of hours to get this treatment into him. ‘We’re told they may be able to come home in two to three weeks, but it could be four to six weeks before they start to see any effect from the treatments,’ she added.

The kid’s too sick to go to the Clinic.

Two days later, we hear:

They have been told the treatments could last six months, or continue indefinitely at a cost of between $3,000 and $10,000 a month. Yesterday, Derek’s aunt […] said: ‘Yesterday was a good day for him, his spirits are up and he seems to be gaining strength. ‘What they’re going to do is continue the treatments for 10 to 14 days and then see about letting him come home. His parents seem to feel better now that the treatments have started. They seem to be a little more up now.’

All the while the community is rallying around Derek to raise money for Burzynski. A few days later, Derek’s uncle returns home and talks to the press:

‘I think our little guy’s getting better,’ [Derek’s uncle] said yesterday afternoon. ‘They’re saying that if he makes it through the next month his chances will improve fantastically.’ ‘I think the next two weeks are going to tell it all,’ he added.

The child is in a pretty horrible state, almost locked in, it seems:

‘Now he’s a lot more alert and staying awake a lot longer,’ he said. ‘They’ve worked out a little sign language to communicate with Derek ­­he looks up for yes and closes his eyes for no.

And in this interview we get a sense of the power of testimonials, which are nearly worthless as evidence of a treatment’s efficacy:

In the weeks before Derek’s parents […] decided to make one last attempt to save their son’s life, they contacted several former and current patients of the clinic to ease their natural suspicion. ‘We had a lot of suspicion before we went down,’ the uncle said. ‘We were asking ourselves should we go or should we just stay here and let Derek die in peace.’ That’s when they started talking to former patients, gathering uniform reports of miracle cures.

‘I sat there on the phone in tears talking to these people and then told John and Brenda they had to make a try,’ he said. ‘Everyone we talked to had a different story, but it was all one miracle after another.’

And that’s the hook. These patients stories are deceptive, and it’s not because the patients are lying (though they are almost certainly wrong in every case). USA Today reporter Liz Szabo documented some of the problems and practices at the Burzynski Clinic that explain the apparent “miracles” without crediting Burzynski.

On May 6, we hear that money has been pouring in for Burzynski on the back of this kid’s suffering. The uncle seems to be hearing that things are going well:

According to Derek’s uncle […], the child is improving every day. ‘He’s starting to move his arms and say things like ‘Mom’ and ‘No.” ‘They’re quite enthusiastic at the clinic about the progress he’s making. ‘Everything sounds really good so far.’

That may sound like a gain, but it also sounds… really, really slight. Almost imperceptible, and you know that the family is scanning and interpreting every grunt and motion as a reflection of what is going on with the tumor. Except the next week, on the 14th, we hear:

The Winona boy, 6, who is undergoing an experimental treatment for the brain ­stem cancer that threatens his life, was taken to hospital earlier this week for treatment of fatigue and because he wasn’t eating. Derek’s uncle […] said the hospital treatment was needed because the megadoses of the serum he’s receiving frequently left him too tired to eat properly. After two days, however, he was returned to the motel room where he’s staying with his parents. ‘He had a bit of a turn for the worse, but now he’s doing fine again.’

So, by the family’s account, this was a life-threatening side effect of the treatment.

But the fundraising for Burzynski has gone well. By May 25th, some $40,000 in donations have arrived for the treatment. The family is still in Houston. I wonder if he is too sick to move:

In a telephone interview yesterday, Derek’s mother said the child remains weak from the constant flow of drugs he is receiving, but she is learning to take great pleasure in small victories.

“I got really excited yesterday because I heard him laugh a little while he was watching cartoons,” she said. “That was the first time I’d heard him laugh in two months.”

When Derek was discharged from a Hamilton hospital two months ago, his parents were told there was little hope he would survive. That’s when they decided to make a last­-ditch stand against the disease.

“When he got out of the hospital in Hamilton, they said his time was limited, but now we’ve celebrated another birthday and that’s got to say something,” [his mom] said. “If you saw him in the hospital when he could barely move his arms, you’d know just how far he’s come.”

Honestly, I’d be interested in seeing what type of anti-inflammatory steroid dose the kid is on. As reported by USA Today, according to an FDA warning letter from April of 2013:

In a written response to FDA inspections sent to the agency in April, Burzynski had argued that patients with brain tumors often need anti-inflammatory drugs, called corticosteroids, to restore normal levels in the body. The FDA did not accept this explanation, however, noting that Burzynski had patients on steroid doses that were five to 64 times higher than the levels that doctors would expect patients to need. [emphasis added]

This does throw into question, as the FDA noted, the reliability of Burzynski’s results. And in reality, things are not going well, as we hear on the 28th of May:

A thousand miles from home, in a tiny motel room on the outskirts of Houston, Tex., [Derek’s parents] pray for a miracle.

On the bed in front of them lies their seven-year-old son Derek, his mouth hanging open, his pale body limp. A tumor the size of a golf ball is pressing on the stem of his brain, paralyzing most of his body and causing pain no child should suffer.

[…]

The youngster can’t move his limbs, he can’t talk, and it’s a struggle to even open his eyes. But he is alive.

[…]

“As a parent, you can’t just sit there and watch your son die,” [Derek’s mom] says. “You do everything in your power to save his life. You try anything and see anyone who might be able to help because that’s all you can do. You are so desperate.”

Yes. And that’s why the FDA and the TMB need to step up and stop playing ball with predatory alt med peddlers. In the same article, we see the family is having doubts:

At the moment, the [family is] not convinced Dr. Burzynski is Derek’s miracle maker.

[…]

It’s costing the [family] as much as $1,000 a day for doctors’ visits, equipment, emergency trips to the hospital, and to keep up the steady flow of Dr. Burzynski’s concoction for their son.

[…]

“Sometimes I wonder if maybe we should just hop on a plane and go home,” [Derek’s father] says. “But then the next day we’ll see an improvement and think, this is his only chance.”

And at this point, improvement is indistinguishable from just not getting worse. In some ways, this case is reminiscent of the course of Chase S.’s story. Chase was essentially lying in state for months in his parents’ living room, while the family insisted that he was improving.

The family has been in Houston much longer than the usual 3 weeks, and they are thinking about trying to get Derek home in early June, as we hear on the 4th:

While there’s no evidence yet to show the treatment is working with Derek, [his dad] said they are eager to come home. “We’ve been here quite a while now and we are comfortable administering the medication so we could do all that at home,” he said in an interview yesterday.

There were plans to do an MRI scan on Derek to determine if the brain tumor is shrinking but he’s been too weak the last 10 days to undergo the procedure.

He’s been battling fluid in the lungs and cold­-like symptoms; yesterday was his first day back on solid foods in a week.

The father says that Derek is better than when he came down, but how can that be? They plan to return to Canada with a 2-month supply of antineoplastons.

Once the family returns, the paper seems to give us a more frank assessment of Derek’s lack of progress:

“His eyes are much more alert and although he can’t talk, he’s able to communicate with us,” [Derek’s mom] said.

They don’t know for sure if the experimental treatment he received at the clinic ­­- called antineoplastons ­­- has shrunk the boy’s tumor; he has been too weak to undergo the scan that would determine its size.

But they believe the medication has at least stopped the tumor’s growth, based more on what they saw at the clinic than improvements in his physical condition.

“We really truly believe in that clinic,” Derek’s mother said. “We saw so many miracles down there, people coming in real bad shape and walking out of there. We are believers.”

She said seeing those people get better helped keep the two of them going during times when Derek was not doing so well.

“It made us strong and gave us hope,” she said.

“We have no regrets about going down. We’re glad we went and we hope everything works out,” [Derek’s dad] added.

If there is one regret, it’s that they didn’t discover the clinic earlier, when the tumor was smaller, [Derek’s mom] said.

The statement that they “saw so many miracles down there” is curious. It’s too bad they weren’t more explicit about the nature of those “miracles.” They even turn blame back on themselves for why they aren’t seeing improvement, that they did not get their sooner. It probably would have made no difference to anyone but Burzynski’s accounting staff if they had.

Another thing, there’s no evidence that Derek has received palliative care, which is surely indicated. And on June 21st the Spectator headline says it all:

“All we can do is hope, pray,’ says mom: No sign experimental drug is working for Derek”

On September 15th, Derek died. During the intervening time since the last update in the paper, Derek had been in the hospital a lot:

[His mom] explained Derek has been in and out of hospitals in Grimsby and Hamilton for the last five weeks suffering a variety of ailments that included a bleeding ulcer, pneumonia and urinary infections.

And in the end, the family rationalizes why the treatment did not help, as we see in the paper:

Derek’s father […] said they’d been told their son would need to get the anti­neoplaston treatment, delivered through a catheter inserted in his chest, for a solid six weeks in order to show any benefit.

Because of his recurring health problems, however, the longest stretch they managed was five weeks. “We got the treatment into him, but it was never as much as he needed,” [Derek’s dad] said.

This is the first time that we have heard this “six solid weeks” nonsense. As we know from any number of patient reports, nurses have claimed that it begins working immediately. It’s hard to say why in this case the family would be told this (if that is in fact accurate that they were), but it does give the Clinic an easy out when the boy arrived too sick to even make it to treatment.

Burzynski Patient Rebecca L.’s Story

In January of 2000, according to the New Hampshire Union Leader (24 Apr 2000), 9-year old Rebecca L. became unsteady (she was not skiing well during a family trip, and couldn’t get off the bunny slopes) and she started vomiting.

The Boston Sunday Globe (14 May 2000) tells the story:

For the next few days, Rebecca didn’t feel like going to school. Then, when she did go, her parents received a phone call they will never forget. “Her teacher, who know the signs of brain tumors because she lost both her parents to brain tumors, called us,” [Rebecca’s dad] said. “She was crying when she called us. She said, ‘You’ve got to get her checked out today.'”

When they got to the doctor, according to the Union Leader:

The next day, the doctor told them: “We’re going to be looking for a brain tumor.” The [Ls] were stunned.

Becky was taken directly to the Elliot Hospital and following a CAT scan was transferred to Dartmouth by ambulance, where she underwent an MRI. [Rebecca’s dad] said doctors initially thought she was suffering from a benign tumor on the brain stem and scheduled surgery.

It was not benign. It was a malignant glioblastoma multiforme, and without treatment, Rebecca might have 2 months. She underwent 6 weeks of radiation. And that was about all that could be done. After hearing of two of the patients in area who claimed success on Burzynski’s treatment, they determined to go see him:

The family’s insurance policy with Anthem Blue Cross won’t cover the Burzynski treatment because it’s part of a Food and Drug Administration trial. Their old insurance policy with Tufts would have covered it, [Rebecca’s dad] said.

But he said Blue Cross did more than just refuse to pay for the Texas clinic treatment. “They cut us off from all the support,” he said, and won’t pay for MRIs, blood work or anything else.

While the costly Burzynski treatment offers only a 44 percent chance of success, “I have to try it. If you give up hope, you have nothing,” said [Rebecca’s dad].

The drugs that were supposed to be in trials were Burzynski’s patent medicine, antineoplastons. There is no compelling evidence that the substances originally derived from blood and urine have an effect on cancers. The Boston Globe (14 May 2000) also reported on this:

“The treatment in Boston offers no cure, but down there [in Texas] 44 percent of his patients have a response,” [Rebecca’s dad] said. “It affects their tumor in some way. And, half of that 44 percent are in remission. That’s not bad, going from zero percent chance of living here to 20% down there. When you are talking about your child, I would do it for a 1 percent chance.”

The 20 percent cure rate the father believes is absolute, unmitigated, unsubstantiated bunk. There has never been a trial that established efficacy; there have been zero convincing publications. That number is apparently conjured from the ether. It’s even sadder to realize that when the FDA went in and examined his trial results, they found the recorded outcome did not match the actual response 66% of the time, and apparently it was always inflated. Rebecca’s dad unwittingly lays out exactly why Burzynski has been so successful attracting desperate parents into his office. He oozes hope to the hopeless. How anyone could give that number to this family when they are the most vulnerable is unfathomably cruel.

The cost was sufficient that Rebecca’s father, like those of so many other desperate dying children, went to the media to raise money.  Both the Globe and Union Leader ran the address of the fund that had been established for Burzynski. The Globe quoted Rebecca’s father:

“There are a lot of expenses and I don’t know how we’re going to do this, but we love our daughter and we’re going to do it.”

And they did it. They raised over $100,000 for Burzynski. The stunning generosity of communities is Burzynski’s cash cow, and he milks it over and over. In March of 2001, the Union Leader filled in some of the gaps about the fundraising:

Their insurer would pay none of the bills, so the family let Becky’s plight be known. Fundraisers included a Christian music concert at Veterans Park, a golf tournament at Tory Pines and a NASCAR fundraiser at the Pinardville Athletic Club.

A phenomenal effort. We don’t get a play-by-play about what happened with Rebecca’s treatment. We get a summary from her father:

For a while they worked, said her father […]. “The money, if people donated, it was so worth it. We had a whole year with her. Every day was treasured,” he said […]. She took a turn for the worse in November, and doctors said nothing else was possible.

Yet another family reporting that the treatment was working before it wasn’t. There are endless cases of this on the website. We don’t see what “working” means here. Not growing? Shrinking? Unknown.

It’s difficult to explain why the father credits the treatment with the year, as it is exactly what the doctors at Dana-Farber said the radiation might give her before the family even went to Burzynski, as reported in the Globe on May 14, 2000:

Clipboard01

Sadly, the intervening year can’t reasonably be credited to Burzynski, no matter what the family believes, though it is wonderful that they did have a year together before the end.

On February 22, 2001, teenaged singer Aaron Carter performed in the area, and a local radio station managed to get tickets and a back stage pass for Rebecca. The encounter was described the next day in the Union Leader:

Before the show, he met with 10-­year ­old Becky [L], a wheelchair-bound Manchester girl with inoperable brain cancer. Her meeting with him was quiet ­­ she was really too shocked to speak.

“I like your nails,” he said to her. She grinned . She’d had them done for the show.

Then he wrote “Becky” on his palm and said, “I might even mention your name on stage.”

And when it was time for the thin, towheaded superstar to go, he told her, “You better enjoy the show.”

“I will,” she said back. He “adiosed” and ran toward his backstage area.

Becky’s mother […] said her daughter acted like any other teenage girl this morning.

“She couldn’t wait to start getting ready,” she said. “She knows every word on his CD these days.”

The following Tuesday night, her breathing became erratic.

The nurse gave her sedatives, then pain relievers. Before Becky closed her eyes, she and her father exchanged their last words.

“I asked her if she was still in pain. She shook her head she was,” he said.

[He] stayed up until 5 a.m., and went to bed after the hospice nurse said it could last for days. His wife […] checked on Becky at 6 a.m.

She died before 7.

Rebecca L. died at home on Feb 28, 2001.

Burzynski Patient Hannah H’s Story

*An appeal to encourage Congress to investigate this follows Hannah’s story*

On Oct 18, 2005, 4-year old Hannah H. began complaining of a headache after her mother took her to skating class. Her mom took her to the doctor who suggested that they go to the hospital to rule out anything serious. By the time they reached the hospital, however, Hannah was slurring her speech and was weak on one side. Very quickly it was determined that she had two brain tumors and one had started to bleed. The first tumor, a benign papaloma in the left ventricle,  was removed with surgery, the other, however, was on the brain stem. According to her mom:

They had to biopsy to see what it was – they had 6 Dr.’s in the operating room and were in there for about 4 hours. She came out of surgery fine with no problems and they were able to get a piece of tumour.

It was a diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, one of the few diagnosed via biopsy. Hannah was in the hospital through Halloween, as was reported in the Vancouver Sun on Nov 1st.

The family continues conventional therapies (timodal and nemotuzamab) for the next year, but in mid-August 2006, the family is clearly looking for new options. They reached out to Justin B’s family (Justin died in 2007):

We’ve tried the standard treatments and while things have remained reasonably stable, with a few ups and downs, we are always looking out for alternate treatments. We’re hearing lots more about Dr. Burzynski’s treatment and would like to ask you some questions about it

Hannah’s family is talking to other Burzynski patients’ families as well. On 9 Sept, on Leo D.’s page (Leo died the next month), her mother leaves a note:

We have found the same thing with Hannah and the Dexamethazone (what they call Decadron in Canada) we have found that her muscles have gotten way weaker, so her walking is really suffering and her speech has declined a great deal – we are also trying new things to get her off the dex… however we’re finding it really hard to do, we use the liquid and can get her down to .25 of a mg and then we have to go up again because we can’t understand what she’s saying… its been like that for about month now…

On Sept 22, the family announces that they will be flying down to Houston for antineoplaston therapy on the 24th and hope to start treatment on Monday:

Well, we have decided to take our daughter Hannah to Houston and have her treated at the Burzynski clinic. Of the choices offered to Hannah for treatment, this seems to offer the best hope for long term survival. The various chemo treatments had what seemed to be good results for short term survival but Antineoplastons had the better long term numbers.

We’ll be be flying down from Vancouver on Sunday morning and get started on Monday with treatment. we’re making all the necessary  arrangements now and hopefully things will go smoothly.

The statement about long-term numbers is not borne out by the evidence. In fact, there is no good evidence that antineoplastons work. Over 60 trials have been started by Burzynski, but none has been satisfactorily published. These are the trials that might have established anything like survival rates, so with no finished, published studies there is no basis for anyone to assert that a “rate” exists. Of course, maybe the clinic was sharing preliminary data, but the problem with that is a recent inspection found that Burzynski (as investigator, the subject of the inspection):

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

This means that several patients who were reported as “complete responses” did not meet the criteria defined in the investigational plan, as were patients who were reported as having a “partial response” and “stable disease.” As a result, his outcome figures for these studies are inaccurate. Furthermore, all the baseline measurements for all patients whose files were reviewed by the FDA were destroyed and not available to investigators. Basically, his results can’t be reviewed. This is part of a pattern of sloppy “research” that stretches back for at least a decade.

The family goes through the customary training period at the clinic, because Burzynski’s treatment requires patients to fend for themselves. This likely contributed to the over 100 overdoses and serious but often unreported toxic events that the FDA uncovered during their inspection. For the record, the FDA told Stanislaw Burzynski:

“You failed to protect the rights, safety, and welfare of subjects under your care. Forty-eight (48) subjects experienced 102 investigational overdoses between January 1, 2005 and February 22, 2013, according to the [trial number redacted] List of Hospitalizations/SAE (serious adverse events) [redacted]/ Overdose [redacted]/Catheter Infection report. Overdose incidents have been reported to you [….] There is no documentation to show that you have implemented corrective actions during this time period to ensure the safety and welfare of subjects.” [emphasis added]

This would have shut down any research institution that received government funds. We’re talking about entire universities, here, not individual studies. Yet Burzynski still treats patients.

While on treatment, Hannah experiences the overwhelming thirst that comes with ANP’s massive sodium doses, with the attendant side effect of urination, and this causes all sorts of problems and consternation:

We’ve had Hannah on the ANP treatment for almost 2 weeks. Things have been going pretty well with treatment and Hannah hasn’t shown any bad reaction to the medication yet.

We’ve had Hannah in diapers for about 3 weeks and what we’ve had a problem with is all the diaper changes and leaks when Hannah is sleeping. There doesn’t seem to be many times when we are able to get her changed at night and often during the day when she doesn’t have a really big pee and fills her diaper and then leaks. This can only get worse the the projected fluid increase as she continues on the treatment.

Ultimately the family decides to line child diapers with adult diapers. That much fluid is going through the poor little girl.

The family had just returned to Vancouver from Houston when we hear that Hannah has died. She died at the same hospital where she was diagnosed a year earlier. I see no mention of any positive results of Burzynski’s antineoplastons in Hannah’s case.

One of the lasting effects of Hannah’s experiences has been the establishment of Hannah’s Heroes, which funds legitimate cancer research and operates to this day. One of the sad facts is that the rare tumor that Hannah had is not well understood and there are not many good therapeutic options. Hannah’s Heroes are trying to fill the research gap in the area of brain stem tumors.

Usually, this is where we would put an appeal to donate to St. Jude’s. You may still do that, if you like, but we are now actively campaigning for an investigation into how the FDA decided to allow Burzynski not only to continue his ridiculous trials, but to actually get a phase III trial after a decade of abominable site visits. Go to thehoustoncancerquack.com and you will find the resources you need to put primary documents–the FDA inspection notes–into the hands of your representatives so they can conduct an investigation. All appeals to understand this made to the FDA have failed, so now we need to press the issue onto the committees that oversee the FDA. Please help us uncover what went wrong so we can fix it and so this never happens again.

Burzynski Patient Laurye L.’s Story

(note: quotations from the Laurye’s family’s website are translated from French)

In September 2002, 2 year old Laurye L. was taken to the optometrist, who diagnosed her as farsighted. In January, doctors carried out some visual tests on her, but it turned out that Laurye’s visual problems were not in her eyes, but in her brain. In early March 2003, her health was clearly deteriorating. On the 11th of that month, her parents received a diagnosis. It was that monster that keeps appearing on this website, the Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma, a brain stem tumor for which there is no real effective long term treatment and to which most patients succumb.

Three days later, Laurye had surgery to reduce pressure in her head, but the prognosis was the same. The family was discouraged from making Laurye suffer through chemotherapy by their doctors. They did, however, give her cortisone and started 28 radiation sessions, which seemed to slow the growth of the tumor.

The family found a real clinical trial in North Carolina (“a chemotherapy with painful side effects without promise of success”) and they found Burzynski, whose treatment, antineoplastons (ANP), they believed, gave Laurye a 50% chance of a cure.  No published studies of ANP exist to substantiate that number, or any number for that matter. In fact, the FDA recently observed Burzynski (as investigator, the subject of a recent inspection):

 “failed to comply with protocol requirements related to the primary outcome, therapeutic response […] for 67% of study subjects reviewed during the inspection.” This means that several patients who were reported as “complete responses” did not meet the criteria defined in the investigational plan, as were patients who were reported as having a “partial response” and “stable disease.”

This means that his outcomes figures for these studies are inaccurate. Given these findings, there is no basis for any percentage given by anyone about the efficacy of antineoplastons to be believed.

The parents describe their rationale:

“The name of the treatment is antineoplastons. [It is] nontoxic, the side effects are very minimal and do not affect the quality of life: excessive thirst which increases the volume of urine, no pain for Laurye. After many confirmations with patients who received treatments from Dr. Burzinski successfully, we chose this option believing that this is the best opportunity available to children with this type of tumor.”

Sadly, this is another case of the Burzynski Patient Group luring another person into Burzynski’s exam room. In August, the family goes on vacation, and Laurye is still well enough to learn to fish with her dad.

They outline their plan. On Nov 24, the family will leave Quebec for Houston. The intravenous treatment will cost them $7,200 for the first year and in the second year, capsules will cost $2,000/month for as long as Laurye is on treatment. Medicare does not cover the treatment, so the family sets up a foundation to fund Burzynski’s treatment.

In Houston, on the first of December, Laurye has a port installed in her chest where she will receive the antineoplastons, which will be pumped nearly continuously for months at a time. Laurye has an MRI the next day, and the family passes the next few weeks, like all other caregivers who come to Houston for ANP, learning how to administer the antineoplastons:

learning

This practice, having patients’ families administer the drug, may have contributed to the over 100 overdoses in the last few years. It does not explain, however, this observation by the FDA:

“You failed to protect the rights, safety, and welfare of subjects under your care. Forty-eight (48) subjects experienced 102 investigational overdoses between January 1, 2005 and February 22, 2013, according to the [trial number redacted] List of Hospitalizations/SAE (serious adverse events) [redacted]/ Overdose [redacted]/Catheter Infection report. Overdose incidents have been reported to you [….] There is no documentation to show that you have implemented corrective actions during this time period to ensure the safety and welfare of subjects.” (emphasis added)

The family returned to Quebec on December 18th. The family reports:

Since December 3, Laurye is on intravenous injection. She must wear a backpack with 2 medication bags in it 24 hours a day. A small pump, connected by a pipe to the catheter, is programmed every four hours (6 doses per day ). We have to change the bags and reprogram the pump daily. In addition, Laurye has a healthy diet to follow and an MRI every two months. The only side effects are excessive thirst, fatigue, and frequent urination.

The unquenchable thirst and urination are caused by the high sodium load that ANP patients carry. According to the FDA’s findings, one patient experienced 12 episodes of hypernatremia (high sodium), none of which was reported.

The family’s new foundation very quickly holds numerous fundraisers, mobilizing the entire community. According to the numbers on the family’s website, no fewer than 18 fundraisers were planned. Additionally, first nine raised $31,520.75 for Burzynski. It is an outrage that the immeasurable kindness and generosity of entire communities has been squandered on Burzynski’s apparently unpublishable studies.

In February (presumably), we get another update.

Her current situation is stable. Every day is an uphill battle against this deadly disease for the whole family, for friends and especially for Laurye. This unique method of treatment [demands] a exceptionally big commitment of time, energy and courage from us. Currently, Laurye is doing very well. […] The first months were difficult; before her body adjusted to the treatment, she was tired and irritable but the best is yet to come for our Laurye.

We got the results of the January 30, 2004 [MRI], encouraging news for our daughter. The tumor did not progress. She remained stable.

While this does mean that the tumor is not growing quickly, periods of tumor stability are not unexpected even without treatment.

Laurye has not had a winter like other children. We always had to be careful that she did not fall ill. Also, the pump does not react well to cold temperatures so we had to limit her outdoor activities. Laurye changed physically (weight gain and swelling) due to cortisone medication to be given in addition to the current treatment. This is to [prevent?] pain during treatment because [when] the tumor is attacked it can cause a lot of pressure in the head. After the good MRI results, we could reduce the cortisone.

This sounds a lot like a line that patients have been repeating throughout this project, that symptoms of getting worse (in this case, swelling in the brain stem) are often described by patients as if they were signs of getting better. Parents of sick children grasp anything at all that would suggest that their child is getting better, even when it is getting worse. We’ve seen a disturbing pattern of patients reporting that getting worse was getting better. We’ve seen it at least 10 times.

We don’t hear much, honestly, until 2005. A mysterious spot appears on the January MRI and disappears on the Feb 22 MRI. Another MRI is scheduled for April 5. The news is not good:

Laurye past a MRI on April 5 and the tumour increased of 3% and there are 3 spots (8mm, 4mm, 1mm).

Doctor Jurida asked [for] a pet scan to see if there is some activity in the spots. We are very worried. We are waiting for on appointment for the pet scan and with the results we will know more. But what we find weird is that in january there was a spot. Febuary it was gone and know there are 3 of them. […]

Laurye eyes restarted to cross and her legs are hurting. Can someone tell if they ever have any spots like us and what happened.

We don`t know what to think? Doctor Jurida says that as long as we have some spots we cannot disconnect Laurye? It is going to be 17 months on the I.V. treatment and Laurye is starting to be tired of it.

By May, Laurye is off ANP. On May 22nd, she goes on Temodar, which seems to be a standard treatment for this type of tumor. Laurye’s mother reports in June:

Doctor Burzynski told us that it doesn’t do any good to keep Laurye on the treatment. He is suggesting the capsules of antineoplastons all alone or another possibility, capsule of sodium phenylbutyrate (PB) with a soft chimio.

I would like to know if you heard of the sodium phenylbutyrate capsule and what do you thing of them.

Laurye is loosing her ability`s a little bit every week but the clinic can`t tell me if it is necrosis or other tumours. The only way to know would be a biopsy and it is too dangerous, so we will never know.

They do mention that her only side effects from the chemotherapy is constipation and tiredness. In the same post, we see this:

We would like to take the best decision for Laurye. We decided to start oral chemo (TEMODAR) on may 23, 2005 hoping to stop the tumours if its the case for an undetermined time because we would like to go back to the antineoplaston capsules to prevent the increasing again. What if it is not the tumour increasing and it is necroses due to radiation. She is going to have done chemo for nothing, it doesn`t take the necrosis away. the only way to stop necrosis would be hyper-bar oxygene (HBO).

There is a question i’m asking myself and 2 doctors say 2 different things. Do you think chemo increases [radiation necrosis?]

Laurye’s flame is flickering in these final months. On September 8, an update from a family friend:

A few weeks ago [Laurye] was unable to walk or stand. She was unable to do much but lay on the couch and drink through a straw. Her doctors in Canada said it was due to a bleed, but could not confirm it. Her Decadron was increased and she got up and went to school. She had a PET and we are still awaiting the results. Unfortunately, the increased Decadron dose is no longer working.  Depending on the results of the PET, as to whether or not she will qualify for Hyperbaric treatment. She will have to go to a private clinic because the local MD’s have told her parents to let her go (pass away) and will not authorize any further treatment.

On September 10th, in Le Soleil, we hear:

The battle of the little Laurye [L] against the brainstem glioma, a rare and incurable cancer, is nearing completion. The girl who has awakened the sympathy of the population during two years of valiant struggle now living his last moments.

“Let yourself go, Laurye, I’m ready to let you go.” The voice full of distress, Sonia [C] courageously facing the imminent death of his daughter. “I asked her if she was ready to go to heaven. She said nodding,” tells the mother, experiencing immense pain.

Although Laurye’s awareness is intact, her physical condition has deteriorated significantly in recent days. She first stopped walking and talking and can now no longer eat.

[Her mother] [was] torn from the bedside of her 5-year old daughter for a brief press conference yesterday afternoon to announce that a few hours, maybe a few days, remained in Laurye’s life. She [thanked] all those who supported the family morally and financially throughout his illness.

In the same article, we hear what the total amount that went to the treatment:

Founded in 2003, the Laurye [L] Foundation has raised approximately $235,000. The director of the Foundation insisted that the remaining approximately $ 10,000 cash will be used to fund research on glioma or will be routed to other foundations that assist sick children.

A staggering sum.

Laurye died on September 10th.

Usually, this is where we would put an appeal to donate to St. Jude’s. You may still do that, if you like, but we are now actively campaigning for an investigation into how the FDA decided to allow Burzynski not only to continue his ridiculous trials, but to actually get a phase III trial after a decade of abominable site visits. Go to thehoustoncancerquack.com and you will find the resources you need to put primary documents–the FDA inspection notes–into the hands of your representatives so they can conduct an investigation. All appeals to understand this made to the FDA have failed, so now we need to press the issue onto the committees that oversee the FDA. Please help us uncover what went wrong so we can fix it and so this never happens again.

Burzynski Patient Briannah O.’s Story

At four months of age, after seizures and becoming rigid and immobile, Briannah O. was diagnosed with a exceedingly rare brain tumor, a juvenile pilocytic astrocytoma. The tumor was inoperable and eventually the size of a grapefruit. It’s typically slow growing and while usually benign, it occupies valuable real estate. In the first two months after diagnosis, Briannah had two shunts put in to relieve pressure from fluid accumulating in the brain and had a very, very brief trial with chemotherapy. According to one of Briannah’s websites, in early 2007, the family was interested in going to the Burzynski Clinic.

Almost immediately, the family started to run into troubles with the Clinic. Brianna’s mother left a post on a message board on May 10, saying that she was unable to get any of her local doctors to agree to work with the Burzynski Clinic, whereas the “B. Clinic people are making me feel very pressured like it’s my problem.”

The antineoplaston treatment can only be administered, per an agreement with the FDA in the mid-1990s, under the auspices of a clinical trial. Burzynski opened over 60 clinical trials and in the nearly two intervening decades has only finished one and published zero.

One of the problems is that after the training period of a few weeks in Houston, Burzynski shifts the burden of administering the treatments for months onto the caregivers. The fact that the administration of the treatment is in the hands of well-meaning amateurs may have contributed to a finding the FDA made earlier this year:

“You failed to protect the rights, safety, and welfare of subjects under your care. Forty-eight (48) subjects experienced 102 investigational overdoses between January 1, 2005 and February 22, 2013, according to the [trial number redacted] List of Hospitalizations/SAE (serious adverse events) [redacted] Overdose [redacted]/Catheter Infection report. Overdose incidents have been reported to you [….] There is no documentation to show that you have implemented corrective actions during this time period to ensure the safety and welfare of subjects.” [emphasis added]

Because people are administering this treatment at home, they need local physicians to take over the routine tasks of blood work and other local monitoring. It is not at all surprising to see that a patient would have a difficult time finding a knowledgeable physician refusing to work with Burzynski. When she says no doctor is going to “sign any documents that legally bind them to the clinic and that legally links them to be a  FDA co-investigator,” it is ironic, since according to an argument by which Burzynski managed to cling to his medical license last year:

“Respondent’s ownership of the clinic and his self-designation as the clinic’s chief physician on some forms, his ability to hire and fire everyone, and even that the forms which state that he is in “charge of treatment” (as stated in the informed consent forms for patient A) is only evidence of responsibility under vicarious liability theory, given the fact that the medical records detail exactly what doctors provided services to these two patients and who was involved in the delivery of medical care to these patients.”

It sure sounds like someone knows it’s a bad idea to take responsibility for patients at that clinic.

The same day as that previous post, Briannah’s mother posted that the “Barbara T.” at the Clinic explained that the family needed a FDA form 1572 to proceed. “Barbara T” was likely Barbara Tomaszewski, who was Burzynski’s business manager. According to Burzynski’s lawyer, during the period when Burzynski was indicted, she kept the clinic afloat:

“As the patient numbers started to decline, she came up with dozens of ways to cut costs and increase income. Some of the services that had been farmed out, like pharmacy supplies, were brought inside the clinic, and buildings were refinanced. She did whatever she had to do to squeeze or save every dollar she could.” (108)

I wonder how much of the current “everything but the squeal” business model of the clinic is a legacy of this woman?

Later that same day still, she heard the same message from Dr. Weaver. Dr. Weaver, by the way, was sanctioned in May 2014 by the Texas Medical Board for his behavior at the Burzynski Clinic, including:

Weaver1

Weaver2

Sure I could go into the problems that the FDA reported about how Burzynski’s institutional review board works, but who has the time? Luckily, there’s an entire Form 483 covered with numerous observations that suggest the board is unable to oversee a trial.

On the 17th of February, Briannah’s story hits the papers, as the family desperately scrambles for funds for Burzynski:

The [O family] and their friends and family are seeking financial help to get Briannah to Houston for the experimental therapy, which uses synthetic organic compounds called antineoplastons.

Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski originally developed the treatment more than 30 years ago, and has treated more than 3,000 patients with the intravenously injected compound, which essentially reprograms the brain tumor cells to die off and stop growing.

The procedure is considered experimental because Food and Drug Administration trials that have been ongoing since the 1990s are still under way. That also means it is a private treatment that insurance won’t reimburse. Just starting the treatment costs $20,000, and it can add up to as much as $200,000 over time.

Preliminary FDA trials show that of 226 brain tumor patients treated, 29.2 percent showed complete disappearance or more than 50 percent shrinkage of the tumor, 35.8 percent showed stabilization, while 35 percent had continued tumor growth, according to the clinic.

One wonders where these numbers came from and if they can be said to represent anything real. It’s hard to know since the FDA observed that 2/3 of the outcomes that they examined during an inspection were inaccurate, finding:

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

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

At the end of April, Briannah has a shunt revision. The next week, she is up and bubbly, apparently healthy enough to travel to Houston:

The gift of little Briannah’s health comes at the perfect time, following a $22,000 anonymous donation to help start an experimental treatment at the Burzynski Clinic in Houston. Another $2,200 has been donated into an account established for Briannah.

But the struggle the [O family] began almost a year and a half ago, when their daughter was diagnosed with an inoperable and life-threatening brain tumor, is not over.

They need a local doctor to agree to be the “co-investigator” for Briannah while she is home from her treatments in Houston. And, in future months, they will need an estimated $7,600 per month to maintain the treatments.

Tammy said she is not a desperate mother grasping at straws, but a mother who has no other options for treating her baby’s condition.

The treatment is considered controversial in some medical circles.

This passage is simultaneously heartening and infuriating. The generosity of strangers is often amazing, and this is one of the biggest anonymous donations that we have seen since we started this website. Nonetheless, I am baffled that hundreds of patients have been looking for media attention to raise money for decades, and not one reporter has gotten off their backside to investigate whether or not their coverage of the issue would be a positive thing for the community until Liz Szabo put in months of legwork for her USA Today report, which appeared a few weeks ago. She and her editors should be congratulated for their brave decision to look more deeply into the Clinic, a courage that was recently honored with high praise from William Heisel on the Annenberg School blog: “Her story in USA Today, Doctor accused of selling false hope to families, is one of the best medical investigations I have read.”

On June 6th, a gallery of the family’s trip to Houston goes up.

On June 11, 2007, Briannah’s mom sent an email to a member of a now abandoned antineoplaston support group, who reposted it. The family had some connections in Houston (I think they lived there before), and after they flew down, spent some time reuniting with friends. Then they visited the Clinic. I turns out that while the staff was “delightful and helpful,” Briannah had not had the appropriate type of head scan prior to coming to Houston:

I was never told by the clinic in all the times that I spoke with them over the phone that it had to be a specific kind of MRI. I was just told that I had to have an MRI with in 2 weeks of our appointment.

At this point, I imagine that the family spends a couple of weeks learning to be independent caregivers for their daughter. Learning how to use the pump and prepare the bags. They stay with a couple who live near the clinic.

According to the local paper on 16 June:

[Briannah’s father] will return to Gilbert on Father’s Day, leaving his wife and their two other daughters in Houston for the first three weeks of the treatment, which could last an undetermined period of time.

“We don’t doubt that the medicine is going to work on her,” [her dad] said.

The treatment begins the same day that article runs. A scan posted in July shows the sheer size of this tumor. It dominates the center of the scan and is a terrifying monster. In August, the family is having a hard time keeping Briannah’s electrolytes under control. Her sodium levels are all over the place, and she’s experiencing the known side effects of antineoplastons. The Clinic claims they have never seen sodium plummet like this before.

At about the same time the Baby Briannah Foundation is incorporated.

On August 31 she had a scan. Two weeks later, the results are in:

This is the first MRI that we have had done since we started the Antineoplaston Therapy in June 2007. The report also stated that the ventricles remain dilated and have “minimally” improved since the previous study!!! […].

I am so grateful for Dr. Burzynski and his awesome discovery of the Antineoplaston Gene Therapy! I sincerely believe that because of these treatments Briannah is with us today and doing as well as she is.

One wonders how much of the improvement is due to the shunts that were fixed in April and how much this is to be expected from a slow growing tumor. There is also the question of how tumors grow–sometimes periods of stability just happen. Notice that it is not shrinking.

The local paper notes on Oct 8:

But since Briannah began experimental treatment in June in Houston, Texas, the youngest of Tammy and Mark [O]’s three daughters has experienced a lessening in the swelling and gained a lot of baby fat. For the first time, her MRI shows no growth in the tumor.

At this point, we’re going to guess that the improvement that we are seeing is related to steroids. Reduction in swelling? Gaining weight (for a baby that was failing to thrive before)? We’re guessing steroids. Burzynski’s patients are often treated with large doses of steroids, according to the FDA, and as reported in USA Today, patients were found to be on 5 to 65 times the anticipated dose of steroids. As the Clinic is basically a one-trick pony, there is no reason to suspect they changed their tune here.

Among the other revelations in this article, we learn that the treatment is costing $6,400 a month and that the little girl’s birthday in mid-October will double as a fundraiser. Also given the completely expected toxicities we saw above, the reporter still manages to open a sentence with the line: “The treatment, considered nontoxic….” I don’t think that the journalist did anything wrong, I just think that the family has a distorted view of what toxicity means.  

On the 11th of December, following another MRI, we are informed that the tumor has shrunk by 9%. It’s hard to take anything the Clinic tells a patient seriously when the FDA observed two-thirds of the reported clinical trial outcomes were apparently inflated. I’m not even sure how clinically significant that would be if it is an accurate result, especially as, according to the Szabo story, experts (which Burzynski is not) will disagree 40% of the time when when interpreting rare brain tumors. These results were reported uncritically in the local paper on 28 Dec. There is something of a vicious feedback cycle here. One must be completely and totally up front about the prognosis at all points with patients. They deserve that, especially when they are as vulnerable as parents as a child with a brain tumor. They have never had good news. ANY change, even “not getting worse,” is a HUGE victory, and expectations need to be managed. Yet the family reports:

“Right now, little Briannah is going to live a normal and a full life,” said [Briannah’s dad]. “We’re just really overjoyed.”

This is, of course, what everyone wants. But is it likely? And when it is reprinted in a paper, it’s difficult to see how that hope could not be massively reinforced, making what comes later all the more devastating.

In Feb 2008, Briannah seems to be having a crisis related to her sodium levels. She may be experiencing salt wasting, which can happen when there is injury to the brain. Via a friend of the family, we learn on Feb 7th:

“Baby Briannah was moved to PICU yesterday because her sodium levels dropped dangerously low. My daughter told me last night that Briannah was on IVs and her sodium level had come up some. Tammy and her husband, Mark, have made what was a difficult decision for them; they have decided to insert a peg (g-tube) for Brianna’s feedings. She has been getting her feedings with an NG tube for about 2 years now. Providing her Sodium level rises to normal today, the Broviac (Catheter) and Peg surgeries are scheduled for 2 PM this afternoon. That will be 3 PM Texas time.”

That night, we get an update on what is happening from Briannah’s mother. The catheter needed to be replaced and a gastric tube has been put in. At the same time, when she goes off of ANP, her sodium plummets. It may be the first time that ANP has actually pushed someone’s sodium in the right direction.

This child is clearly not on the path to the full normal life that everyone hopes for. And despite this trip to the PICU, the local paper reports in May:

Since the treatment began, mom Tammy [O] said the youngest of her three daughters has been happier and healthier than ever.

“We’ve been able to enjoy this year,” [her mom] said. “It’s been wonderful. No trauma. No injuries.”

Further, and perhaps not surprisingly, Briannah’s development has been arrested, though by all accounts she is a happy little girl:

Due to the tumor and a surgery when it was first discovered, she still can’t walk but she actively interacts with her parents and sisters, kicks, sits up and speaks baby talk.

We also learn that the father is turning his DJ business into a fundraising vehicle for Burzynski’s treatment, and in early June, another fundraiser is held at a farm where guests pick peaches to raise money.

In August, we get another optimistic assessment from the local paper, as well as this description of the treatment:

Briannah’s tumor has shrunk 20 percent since she began the nontoxic gene therapy treatment at Houston’s Burzynski Clinic.

The definition of gene therapy that makes this description of antineoplastons accurate would also redefine eating a banana as gene therapy. While the family did share some scans, I can’t find any of the results of this treatment. Further, she is still having some serious issues:

While she’s beginning to briefly sit by herself, doctors don’t know how much Briannah can see, and she also has been having seizures.

It looks like the family took a two hour trip to Sedona right before Christmas.

On January 26, a post goes up on another patients’ website:

An optic glioma, the type of tumor that James has, is considered a “benign” tumor. How deceiving that word can be. Too many believe that it means that this tumor will/can do no harm. Yet, I write tonight with tears flowing and a heavy heart because sweet Baby Briannah lost her life tonight to an optic glioma.

(In fact, it looks like she may have died on the 24th.)

As the family described her passing, the family were with their pastor at Phoenix Children’s when Briannah died.

The local paper described the last hours in more detail:

The fight included shunts placed in her skull to reduce swelling in her brain and, beginning in June 2007, an experimental gene therapy in which she was administered a synthetic organic compound through a tube.

It seemed to be working. The tumor was shrinking, and the once-emaciated Briannah had reached a normal height and weight, though she was unable to walk or talk.

Everything changed last week, when Briannah’s sodium level plummeted, causing her kidneys to shut down. She went into cardiac arrest twice.

“She left her body twice, and they brought her back after 22 minutes, and the second time after 18 minutes,” [her mother] said. “That in itself is a miracle, I’m not kidding you.”

But eventually, [Briannah’s parents] had to make the decision to take her off life support. “When I got to watch Briannah’s body deteriorate, it got to the point where it was easy to let her go,” [her mother] said.

It is difficult to reconcile the idea that the treatment seemed to be working and the poor little girl’s progression and death. We can say, however, that lot of patients have celebrated their fortunes while on Burzynski’s treatment when they in fact were progressing. One of the most scary things that we have found here is a pattern of descriptions of tumors breaking up on the inside and patients rejoicing, when the fact of the matter is that it is far more likely to be a sign of a tumor outgrowing its blood supply. And we’ve seen this for decades:

On February 2, the family celebrated the life of Baby Briannah, as she was known to the community that rallied around her. Her mother bravely posted an image from her daughter’s services on her website. This makes all the more galling the following post on the website:

staff

Usually, this is where we would put an appeal to donate to St. Jude’s. You may still do that, but we are now actively campaigning for an investigation into how the FDA decided to allow Burzynski not only to continue his ridiculous trials, but to actually get a phase III trial after a decade of abominable site visits. Go to thehoustoncancerquack.com and you will find the resources you need to put primary documents–the FDA inspection notes–into the hands of your representatives so they can conduct an investigation. All appeals to understand this made to the FDA have failed, so now we need to press the issue onto the committees that oversee the FDA. Please help us uncover what went wrong at the FDA so we can fix it and so this never happens again.

Burzynski Patient Ryan W.’s Story

*An appeal to encourage Congress to investigate this follows Ryan’s story*

In August 1989, Ryan W. was diagnosed with a thalamic glioblastoma, a grade IV tumor right in the middle of the brain. His prognosis was grim; his doctors estimated 6-9 months, perhaps, maybe a year with the standard therapy. (When patients exceed these estimates on Burzynski’s treatment, they are often touted by supporters as “successful treatment”, however the actual speed of progression falls on a bell curve, and outliers are to be expected.)

Beginning in October, Ryan was treated with 5 weeks of radiation. That treatment seems to have not had any effect on the tumor, at least according to an MRI in January. At the beginning of the new year, we learn that Ryan seems to be undergoing another trial of radiation and has had some complications, according to an announcement in a regional paper:

1/3/1990

MIDDLETOWN
The Fred Villari Studio of Self-Defense will hold a “kick-a-thon” Friday to raise money for the family of a 10-year-old Marlboro child diagnosed in August with a malignant brain tumor.
Students at the Route 35 studio as well as the Morganville branch are encouraged to attend with family members and friends, according to Anthony Russo, chief instructor at the Middletown studio. The goal is to perform the self-defense style kicks 100 times, and everyone participating is encouraged to solicit pledges of at least 10 cents a kick. Pledges will be recorded on a tally sheet provided for each participant.
Proceeds go to the Ryan [W] Fund and will assist the Werthwein family with medical expenses for their son, an identical twin who is currently undergoing a six-week radiation therapy treatment.
Complications from a surgical procedure caused Ryan to lapse into a coma lasting two days, and although he regained consciousness, he suffers from short-term memory loss, according to information prepared by the studio.
The surgical procedure, I am told by Ryan’s mother, was a biopsy, not meant to treat the tumor. In Richard Walters’ 1993, Options: The Alternative Cancer Therapy Book, which slathers unearned praise on Burzynski’s antineoplaston treatment and is the most complete record of Ryan’s treatment, Ryan’s mother describes what can be the severe effects of radiation on the developing brain:
“The radiation burnt out most of Ryan’s pituitary gland, stunted his growth, and hurt his mental functioning,” according to Sharon [W.], the boy’s mother.”
He was significantly shorter than his identical twin brother. If the radiation had such a profound effect on Ryan’s development, I’m at a loss as to how explain how/why the tumor would be unaffected. According to Walters:
After reading up extensively on alternative therapies, Ryan’s parents decided to forego chemotherapy and take their son to Houston for treatment by Dr. Burzynski. “The doctors really beat us up over not doing chemo. We were discouraged at every turn from pursuing a safe, nontoxic alternative. They also told us Burzynski was a quack,” recalls Sharon.
Antineoplastons are neither safe nor non-toxic, nor can you really consider them to be alternative therapies to chemotherapy, as they are basically derivatives of sodium phenylbutyrate and are chemotherapy by any reasonable definition.
The known toxicities can be found on this recent patient consent form, a central part of any research protocol:
consent1consent2consent3
A recent inspection found that toxic events have often been reported by Burzynski’s patients, but that the Clinic has been slow to act on that information. For instance:
  1. Patients who had Grade 3 or 4 [severe or life-threatening] toxic effects were supposed to be removed from treatment. One patient had 3 Grade 3 events followed by 3 Grade 4 events. Another patient had 7 disqualifying toxic events before he was removed from the study.
  2. Burzynski did not report all adverse events as required by his study protocols. One patient had 12 events of hypernatremia (high sodium), none of which was reported. There are several similar patients.
  3. The FDA told Burzynski: “You failed to protect the rights, safety, and welfare of subjects under your care. Forty-eight (48) subjects experienced 102 investigational overdoses between January 1, 2005 and February 22, 2013, according to the [trial number redacted] List of Hospitalizations/SAE (serious adverse events) [redacted]/ Overdose [redacted]/Catheter Infection report. Overdose incidents have been reported to you [….] There is no documentation to show that you have implemented corrective actions during this time period to ensure the safety and welfare of subjects.” [emphasis added] Further, patient records show that there were many more overdoses that were not included in the Hospitalization/SAE/Overdose list.
 Ryan’s mother reported at the onset of treatment:
“The American Cancer Society said they have an arrangement with the Hilton to keep rooms available for cancer patients’ families, but when we mentioned Dr. Burzynski’s name, they said to ‘forget it.’ The Corporate Angel Network, which boasts in TV ads how it flies young cancer patients around the country for free, refused to fly our son because the National Cancer Institute won’t let them fly Burzynski’s patients. The system is a disgrace.”
For at least 23 years, top cancer charities in the country have refused to participate in what is happening in Houston. More recently, Burzynski patient Kassidy M. was similarly denied a place to stay at Ronald McDonald House because of her intended course of treatment.
According to Walters’ book, Ryan began antineoplastons in mid-April 1990.
One month after the intravenous infusions were started, there was a major breakdown of the tumor mass, and from then on, it steadily shrank as the therapy continued. “It felt as if a miracle had occurred,” says Sharon. An MRI scan of the brain on May 15-after four weeks of treatment-showed only barely visible tumor remnants.
In June, they are fundraising for Burzynski:
RyanW
What is endlessly frustrating is that these drugs were called “experimental” in 1990 and are still “experimental” 23 years later. A major red flag, especially when Burzynski’s lawyer said of Burzynski’s first trial:

[W]e decided to hit the FDA with everything at the same time. All of his current patients would be covered in a single clinical trial which Burzynski called “CAN-1.” As far as clinical trials go, it was a joke. Clinical trials are supposed to be designed to test the safety or efficacy of a drug for a disease. It is almost always the case that clinical trials treat one disease.

The CAN-1 protocol had almost two hundred patients in it and there were at least a dozen different types of cancers being treated. And since all the patients were already on treatment, there could not be any possibility of meaningful data coming out of the so-called clinical trial. It was all an artifice, a vehicle we and the FDA created to legally give the patients Burzynski’s treatment. The FDA wanted all of Burzynski’s patients to be on an IND, so that’s what we did.

Walters reports:
On November 1, 1990, Ryan displayed complete remission.
Yet, in 1993, when Walters publishes his book, for some reason, Ryan
continues to receive antineoplaston treatment, but the dosage is gradually being reduced. He wears a miniature infusion pump, carried in a waist pack, that injects antineoplastons through a catheter in his chest twenty-four hours a day. There is no pain or discomfort.
It seems after his remission, he went back on ANP, at least according to his mother. It’s hard to say what caused the initial remission, because there were at least two interventions that would have affected the tumor before Burzynski was in the picture, a biopsy and radiation. Ryan died in 1994 at the age of 14. This was 20 years ago. Antineoplaston treatment is still considered experimental.
Usually, this is where we would put an appeal to donate to St. Jude’s. You may still do that, if you like, but we are now actively campaigning for an investigation into how the FDA decided to allow Burzynski not only to continue his ridiculous trials, but to actually get a phase III trial after a decade of abominable site visits. Go to thehoustoncancerquack.com and you will find the resources you need to put primary documents–the FDA inspection notes–into the hands of your representatives so they can conduct an investigation. All appeals to understand this made to the FDA have failed, so now we need to press the issue onto the committees that oversee the FDA. Please help us uncover what went wrong so we can fix it and so this never happens again.

Burzynski Patient Sharie M’s Story

In October 2009, medical administrative secretary Sharie M., a wife and mother of four, was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, a devastating brain cancer with a very high mortality rate. Initially, Sharie underwent conventional treatment, including three surgeries to reduce the size of the tumor (debulking) in the months immediately following the diagnosis. This kept the tumor at bay. In July of 2010, however, Sharie’s tumor was returning.

It seems that at this time, they started looking into the Burzynski Clinic and because the treatment is so expensive, they started raising money through the local paper:

“Dr. Burzynski has developed a series of peptides that attach to a sodium molecule and they reconfigure the DNA of cancer cells so that it allows the cancer cells to live a normal life and die, as opposed to living and spreading,” said Mike [M].

“They’ve got a track record of 74 percent of brain tumor success,” he added. “That means it’s either eliminated or stopped the growth for years.”

Mike [M] said the results Dr. Burzynski has achieved are encouraging.

“The statistics from this clinic where we’re at, many times, are three and four times better than the statistics you get from normal oncology,” he said. “But statistics are statistics and that’s why it’s a clinical trial. The proof is in the pudding, they say.”

74% brain tumor success? I want to know where they got that number. It’s inflated above even the ludicrous number that Amelia S.’s story received. In an interview with their local newspaper, Amelia’s mother said that the number they were given was a “complete lie“:

The parents of Pride of Reading Child of Courage winner, four-year-old Amelia [S] who died in January, say they were told she had a 54 per cent chance of survival with the clinical trial in Houston, Texas.

However mum Chantal [S], 36, believes the actual figure was just one per cent.

A BBC Panorama investigation shown on Monday questioned whether the Burzynski Clinic was “selling hope” to families.

In it, Mrs [S] said: “I think that’s wrong [54 per cent figure]. I think that’s a complete lie. I think one per cent is a more accurate figure.”

It sounds as if Sharie is on one of the antineoplaston trials:

Sharie […] began the treatment over Labor Day weekend. And while it allows her to be at home, it requires her to be on an IV-drip 24 hours a day, seven days a week, as well as thrice-weekly blood drawings to monitor vitals — all for eight to 12 months.

Mike [her husband] said it’s “livable” and that it seems to be working.

“Since the treatment started”, he said, “MRIs showed reduction in tumor size, which is not anticipated by current standard treatment.”

While I am delighted that it sounds at this point Sharie is doing well, I wish I could see those MRIs. How big is the reduction? Is she on steroids? Is the center “breaking up,” a sign of progression–a likely indicator that a tumor has outgrown its blood supply–that has been consistently been reported by the Burzynski patients we’ve looked at as signs of improvement? This is just a reminder that we can’t take patient reports–especially the ones coming from Burzynski’s patients–as reliable evidence of efficacy. Sadly, such patient reports are the sandy foundation of Burzynski’s entire practice.

They have already been to Houston at this point. Sharie would have gone through the multi-week training course at the clinic in Houston because Burzynski made patients fend for themselves. During this time the family is separated, spending the little time they have together apart.  Worse, their insurance is only of limited help:

“They typically will cover medical expenses, traditional blood testing, MRIs — those kinds of things. But the treatment won’t be covered,” Mike [M] said. “The clinical trials may cover the cost of the medication, but the pump, the office calls, the staffing, the supplies — those things are at our expense. So it should be somewhere in the $7,000- to $8,000-a-month range, with a $20,000 initial payment to get started.”

A legitimate researcher would not demand payment up front at all. This family is putting their mother’s life on the line for what will, if successful, make Burzynski a unfathomably rich man. They should not be paying a nickel to be his lab rats. Of course, hundreds of patients have been in his over 60 trials trials, and because every single one of those patients expected their doctor to publish his results, I consider every one of them personally betrayed by Burzynski, as their suffering and generosity has led to exactly zero completed, published trials.

In anticipation of the heavy expenses, the family starts raising money for Burzynski. They sponsor a pancake breakfast at the beginning of November 2010. According to a local television report, Sharie was too sick to attend the event. Nonetheless, some 1500 people showed up to support her. The Burzynski Clinic does not only capitalize on the vulnerable, but exploits the generosity of entire communities. The family’s expenses to date were met at this time.

In September of 2011, her son reports that she is “doing better.” I have no information about what happened to her in the intervening time. I do know, however, that the family opened their farm to local schoolchildren to teach them about agricultural science, an ongoing project that the family continues in honor of Sharie.

Sharie died on Jan 1, 2012. Her passing was commemorated by 600 friends a few days later at St. Boniface’s Catholic Church, where her life was celebrated.

The trial Sharie participated in, the one she and her community paid to participate in, was never published. Indeed, no more patients are being accepted into the trials as of last year, following an investigation into a child’s death. That was followed by a series of devastating findings about the Institutional Review Board (charged with independently reviewing and overseeing trials) by FDA inspectors, which peeled back any pretense of genuine research. Among the findings:

  • “The IRB [Institutional Review Board] used an expedited review procedure for research which did not appear in an FDA list of categories eligible for expedited review, and which had not previously been approved by the IRB. Specifically, your IRB routinely provided expedited approvals for new subjects to enroll under Single Patient Protocols.” [2 adults and 3 pediatric patients are mentioned]
  • “The IRB approved the conduct of research, but did not determine that the risks to subjects were reasonable in relation to the anticipated benefits (if any) to subjects, and to the importance of the knowledge that might be expected to result. Specifically, your IRB gave Expedited Approval for several Single Patient Protocols (SPP) without all the information necessary to determine that the risk to subjects are minimized.” [4 examples follow]
  • “The IRB did not determine at the time of initial review that a study was in compliance with 21 CFR Part 50 Subpart D, ‘Additional Safeguards for Children in Clinical Investigations.’ Specifically, an IRB that reviews and approves research involving children is required to make a finding that the study is in compliance with 21 CFR Part 50 Subpart D, ‘Additional Safeguards for Children in Clinical Investigations.’ Your IRB approved research involving children without documentation of the IRBs finding that the clinical investigation satisfied the criteria under Subpart D.” [3 examples follow and there is a note that this is a repeat observation that had been found in an Oct 2010 Inspection.]
  • “The IRB did not follow its written procedure for conducting its initial review of research. Specifically, the IRB is required to follow its written procedures for conducting initial and continuing review. Your IRB did not follow your written procedures for conducting initial and continuing review because these subjects received IRB approval via an expedited review procedure not described in your Standard Operating Procedures. If your IRB would have followed your own SOP for initial and continuing review, the following subjects would have received review and approval from the full board rather than an expedited review.” [2 adults and 3 pediatric patients are listed.]
  • “The IRB has no written procedures for ensuring prompt reporting to the IRB, appropriate institutional officials, and the FDA of any unanticipated problems involving risks to human subjects or others. Specifically, your current SOP-2012 v2-draft doc does not describe the requirements on Investigators on how unanticipated problems are reported to the IRB, Institutional Official, and the FDA, such as time intervals and the mode of reporting, or otherwise address how the prompt reporting of such instances will be ensured.”
  • “The IRB has no written procedures [in the SOP-2012 v2-draft doc] for ensuring prompt reporting to the IRB, appropriate institutional officials, and the FDA of any instance of serious or continuing noncompliance with theses [sic] regulations or the requirements or determinations of the IRB.”
  • “A list of IRB members has not been prepared and maintained, identifying members by name, earned degrees, representative capacity, and any employment or other relationship between each member and the institution.” (BurzynskiForm483Feb2013)

For a complete list of the massive number of violations in the last decade at the Burzynski Clinc, click here (warning, enormous pdf.)

For reliable information about clinical trials, visit to clinicaltrials.gov. Please contribute to St. Jude’s Children’s Hospital, which cares for sick children even if they can’t pay. Unlike Burzynski.

Burzynski Patient Cody G.’s Story

In Oct 1994, Cody’s parents, Dawna and David, noticed that Cody was developing a lazy eye and was losing control of his left side. An MRI discovered a tumor on his brain stem.  (At this point, honestly, I feel like these stories are following a script.)  He had 3 weeks of chemotherapy and radiation treatment. Around Thanksgiving, a friend told them about Burzynski’s Clinic.

Cody’s story came to light on 1 Dec 1994, after residents raised $15,000 for the Burzynski Clinic. They were clearly warned about his reputation, which is, according to the article, that of a “clown” and “kook.”

A perplexing statement in that article comes from a local philanthropist who started raising money for the trip:

When local philanthropist Kostas Kalogeropoulos, founder of Dream Come True charity, heard about the possible cure for Cody, he held a press conference on Thanksgiving Day and made an impassioned plea for money to help pay for the expensive therapy.

“Even if this doctor is a kook, at least he’s giving the family hope,” Kalogeropoulos said Tuesday night when told about the controversy surrounding the Burzynski Clinic.

This is bad thinking. False hope is “doing harm,” in my opinion.

I give the paper credit for actually seeking out comment about this story:

It’s false hope, said Saul Green, a biochemist and retired cancer researcher in New York. Green wrote a lengthy article in the Journal of the American Medical Association in June 1992, blasting Dr. Burzynski’s cancer treatments.

“I found no reason to believe his therapy works or even why it would work,” Green said yesterday. “If this family is religious, I would recommend they go to church. They’ll find more hope there.”

The trials manager at the Burzynski Clinic, possibly the worst trials manager in the world, given his lab’s results (no published peer reviewed papers demonstrating efficacy in a journal worth sneezing at), gives a typically flaccid defense, invoking the appeal to novelty and a conspiracy theory:

Burzynski was not available for commment yesterday, but Dean Mouscher, the clinical trials director at the clinic, said Green’s article is “full of lies and distortions.” He said the therapy has saved several children.

“This is a case of the old against the new. The medical establishment is against this dramatically new treatment,” Mouscher said. “The drug isn’t going to hurt Cody, and it may help. It has helped others.” 

Of course the clinic is, at the same time, administering ANP as a treatment for HIV.

The expenses that will accrue for the family are really remarkable, especially given how much ANP costs to manufacture:

The therapy can cost as much as $685 a day. The Michaels family said it’s running them about $10,000 a month and their insurance only recently started to pay for some of it. But the medicine isn’t the only cost. Patients must purchase their own catheter, IV equipment and pumps and pay for all blood and urine tests, X-rays, CT scans, housing, transportation and meals.

Green criticized the cost in his article, saying the chemicals that make up the drug canbe purchased “from any chemical supply house for about 9 cents a gram.” (emphasis added)

Monstrous behavior.

Three days later, the paper announces that Cody will be getting the treatment after all. The horrible bind that the parents have been put in is clear, further illustrating why only the highest ethical standards are acceptable when experimenting on cancer patients:

“We have no choice. We either take him there or sit back and watch him go and we don’t want to do that,” said David [G].

About two weeks later, we hear that Cody and his mother go down to Houston to learn how to administer the treatment, while David stays with Cody’s sister. By this time, the community back home has raised some $30,000 for Burzynski’s treatment.

On the February 1st, we hear that SAME DAMNED STORY AGAIN! That the tumor is “breaking up on the inside,” which the family apparently believes is a good thing:

Cody [G]’s brain tumor appears to be deteriorating.

The 4-year-old Pennsville boy has been receiving an experimental cancer treatment in Houston. After two visits to the Burzynski Clinic, and around-the-clock treatment for almost six weeks, his parents say a recent MRI shows the tumor has not grown and its core appears to be breaking up.

“We want to thank everyone in the Lehigh Valley for giving Cody the chance he needs to fight this,” said Cody’s mother, Dawna.

The Gerharts held a news conference yesterday at the Sheraton Inn Jetport. Cody, dressed in purple Batman sweat pants, wobbled out to the crowd and gestured for his father, David, to hold him. Cody has limited movement on his left side because the treatment sometimes causes the tumor to swell, putting pressure on his brain stem, his parents said.

The boy is partially paralyzed and unsteady on his feet, and yet the parents who want to believe still see him as improving. It is positively unbelievable that an ethical humane physician would let the family leave their clinic not understanding the implication. To do so is unfathomably cruel, since the pattern of a tumor dying on the inside is more likely to be a sign that the tumor has outgrown its blood supply than it is of a treatment working. It turns out that an MRI in March confirmed that the tumor was in fact growing.

Cody celebrated his 5th birthday that March, but on April 20th, news breaks that Cody had breathing problems and was rushed to the hospital.

“When we got him to the hospital we tried to stabilize his breathing,” said Donald [G], Cody’s grandfather. “The theory is that the tumor is affecting his condition right now.”

This is not progress, and the parents are baffled, as you might expect, as they believed that things were improving:

“In the beginning, he responded really well to his treatment,” Gerhart said.

That seems unlikely.

On May 19th, Cody’s story was on Nightline, but at this point, Cody is dying in hospice and off the ANP, which was clearly useless, costly burden:

Cody received several treatments at the clinic. “Nightline” interviewed Cody and his family at their home several weeks ago about their experience with the clinic.

Cody recently discontinued treatments after doctors at the clinic told the [G family] the treatment would not help Cody. Cody’s condition is deteriorating. He’s at home, under Hospice care, said his grandfather, Donald [G].

Cody died at home on May 29th.

A further complication to this story is something that the grandfather reports:

Nevertheless, the family believes in the treatment’s ability to cure cancer.

“They said Cody’s tumor wasn’t cancer and that’s why they couldn’t cure it,” [Donald] said.

The implications of this are nothing but damning for the Burzynski Clinic. What was all that talk earlier about the tumor “clearing up” and “breaking down on the inside” because of the miraculous ANP if the cancer wasn’t cancer? Or, as all evidence suggests in this case, does ANP simply not work on cancer? I would suggest that the family and media who covered this family, missed some important red flags about what was really going on here.

This must end. This was almost 20 years ago. Just a few weeks ago, a family whose beautiful daughter has a similar tumor was told by the same Clinic that the same pattern of necrosis in her tumor was a good sign. This relentless cycle must end. These patients need to be protected.