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Bbc1 03/06/2013 Panorama, 20:30 Hrs.
Not a question as such - more a heads up for anyone interested.
Dr. Burzynski is based in the US, and offers a somewhat controversial "treatment" for cancer patients.This has resulted in several quite high profile fundraising drives to raise cash for kids to attend the clinic for treatment, but many criticize him for "selling hope".
Personally, I am astounded that this man is allowed to practice, but you make up your own minds :)
Dr. Burzynski is based in the US, and offers a somewhat controversial "treatment" for cancer patients.This has resulted in several quite high profile fundraising drives to raise cash for kids to attend the clinic for treatment, but many criticize him for "selling hope".
Personally, I am astounded that this man is allowed to practice, but you make up your own minds :)
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Well I've looked at his website and he does prefix things so:
http://
In some cases conventional therapy is the most appropriate treatment for a patient. Our Clinic offers customized combination therapies consisting of conventional and other therapies to maximize effectiveness while minimizing the impact of traditional therapies.
it also says
//Targeted medications are drugs that selectively block the growth and spread of cancer without affecting the healthy cells. Targeted therapies interfere with cancer cell growth differently than cytotoxic chemotherapy and at various points during the development, growth, and spread of cancer.//
Which to me sounds like drugs like Avastin
Maybe there's a gulf between the website and practice but it doesn't sound too crazy to me.
What are the accusations?
http://
In some cases conventional therapy is the most appropriate treatment for a patient. Our Clinic offers customized combination therapies consisting of conventional and other therapies to maximize effectiveness while minimizing the impact of traditional therapies.
it also says
//Targeted medications are drugs that selectively block the growth and spread of cancer without affecting the healthy cells. Targeted therapies interfere with cancer cell growth differently than cytotoxic chemotherapy and at various points during the development, growth, and spread of cancer.//
Which to me sounds like drugs like Avastin
Maybe there's a gulf between the website and practice but it doesn't sound too crazy to me.
What are the accusations?
a "taster" was on the 6 o'clock news - not sure that a news programme is an appropriate place to run a trailer for other shows but there you go.
Apparently none of his offered treatments are licenced, and his patients have been treated under what is effectively a "trial" regime. These trials have been going on for more than 20 years. The accusation is that DR Burzynski is peddling hope, and stripping large sums of money from those who have pinned their hopes on him.
Apparently none of his offered treatments are licenced, and his patients have been treated under what is effectively a "trial" regime. These trials have been going on for more than 20 years. The accusation is that DR Burzynski is peddling hope, and stripping large sums of money from those who have pinned their hopes on him.
You are possibly reading a somewhat sanitised version of his site, since the FDA stepped in. His raison d'etre has been the treatment of terminal cancer cases with a proprietary treatment, called "anti-neoplastins". Despite using these for decades, he has produced no clinical trials.
His presentation has been that his treatment with AntiNeoplastins is not like conventional chemotherapy treatment - this despite using conventional chemotherapy treatment alongside the ANPs, at a hugely exorbitant cost.
http://
Myself, I believe he is at best unethical.... as I say though, if interested, watch the show, and form your own conclusions..
His presentation has been that his treatment with AntiNeoplastins is not like conventional chemotherapy treatment - this despite using conventional chemotherapy treatment alongside the ANPs, at a hugely exorbitant cost.
http://
Myself, I believe he is at best unethical.... as I say though, if interested, watch the show, and form your own conclusions..
I just so happen to have heard him being talked about on the skeptics guide to the universe.
They were put on trial for fraud too.... but there was a hung jury I may add.
Basically, if it works why isn't everyone using it? If its an experiment then why isn't free? The treatment involves extracting antineoplastons ( i think he discovered these) from the patients urine and using these to target cancer cells. He's being doing this for over thirty years! I think you guys may change your mind a bit if you watch tonight's program.
They were put on trial for fraud too.... but there was a hung jury I may add.
Basically, if it works why isn't everyone using it? If its an experiment then why isn't free? The treatment involves extracting antineoplastons ( i think he discovered these) from the patients urine and using these to target cancer cells. He's being doing this for over thirty years! I think you guys may change your mind a bit if you watch tonight's program.
£200,000, this isn't complimentary indian head massage.
This is exploiting very vulnerable people.
http://
This is exploiting very vulnerable people.
http://
I'm not suggesting that the NHS should not pay for the treatment of cancer sufferers, I'm suggesting that something that is marketed as experimental should be free not charged 200,000 quid for. That's how this guy gets away with doing what he does, but he's been exploring this for 30-40 years. Like I said, if it was really beneficial then everyone would have been doing it. This hasn't been trialed by his peers and although he has reported to some negative drug interactions they have no idea to the extent of these. Everything he has reported has been in best case scenario, not a "proper" medical trial.
Of course there's an average you add up the cost for all the cancer patients and divide by the number - Whether that is meaningful you can debate!
As for 'experimental' treatments, they are common in cancer treatment and there are many trials going on all the time and people go on them - they are strictly regulated.
Some drugs even merge the boundary a bit - there is a mistletoe derived one that is quite the rage - and there have been a number of trials around that - last I looked at it it seemed to provide better results than not getting any chemotherapy but when used in conjunction with chemotherapy drugs like carboplatin it did not seem to provide additional benefit.
Then you have drugs like Avastin which NICE have rejected because the benefits are too marginal to justify the costs.
Seems Mistletoe and Avastin are both marginal but one is alternative because it wasn't developed by a drugs company!
From the sounds of it this antineoplastins stuff has not undergone any proper trials.
Maybe there is something in it but unless there are proper randomised double blind trials we'll never know.
Good neutral write up from the American Cancer society.
http://
One of the cancer forums my wife's on is always raging between alternative therapy proponants and chemotherapy proponants - she got fed up with the 'nutritionists' the other day and posted 'Why don't you dig up Steve Jobs and ask him if he thinks he made a good decision'
That stopped the thread :c)
This alternative stuff is very contraver
As for 'experimental' treatments, they are common in cancer treatment and there are many trials going on all the time and people go on them - they are strictly regulated.
Some drugs even merge the boundary a bit - there is a mistletoe derived one that is quite the rage - and there have been a number of trials around that - last I looked at it it seemed to provide better results than not getting any chemotherapy but when used in conjunction with chemotherapy drugs like carboplatin it did not seem to provide additional benefit.
Then you have drugs like Avastin which NICE have rejected because the benefits are too marginal to justify the costs.
Seems Mistletoe and Avastin are both marginal but one is alternative because it wasn't developed by a drugs company!
From the sounds of it this antineoplastins stuff has not undergone any proper trials.
Maybe there is something in it but unless there are proper randomised double blind trials we'll never know.
Good neutral write up from the American Cancer society.
http://
One of the cancer forums my wife's on is always raging between alternative therapy proponants and chemotherapy proponants - she got fed up with the 'nutritionists' the other day and posted 'Why don't you dig up Steve Jobs and ask him if he thinks he made a good decision'
That stopped the thread :c)
This alternative stuff is very contraver
I think the point that is being missed here - at least somewhat - is that, for 30 odd years now, Burzynski has been playing the "brave lone maverick" hero physician role, with a breakthrough and revolutionary cancer cure - note, not just a treatment, but a cure - which is how for at least 2 decades he marketed his controversial antineoplastin therapy.
And it was a cure with no discernible or plausible curative mechanism.
What he was actually doing was claiming a "non-toxic" curative therapy for terminal cancer sufferers, making wildly exaggerated claims for the odds of success for his therapy - offering such patients the hope of life, in other words, profiting by selling hope.
He has played cat and mouse for 30 years with the FDA by entering all attendees into his clinics into either stage 1 or stage 2 clinical trials. In all that time - 30 years - he has provided no peer reviewed papers, and only vague data from these many many trials.
For most types of cancer, and most types of treatment, be it chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or some combination thereof, conventional medicine can give you actual trial data, actual mean survival times, an overall assessment of the progression and prognosis of the disease, but Burzynski cannot, except in wildly exaggerated video claims.
No trial data, no proof of concept, no survival times.
In conventional medicine, it is highly unethical to place someone on an experimental treatment, unless you have genuine informed consent - and you are certainly not expected to pay for the privilege.
In actual fact, Burzynskis "revolutionary" antineoplastin therapy is administered in conjunction with cocktails of chemotherapy drugs, all of which are charged at a premium, and it is therefore likely that any benefit seen might be more due to the chemotherapy than the ANP.
He exaggerates his success rate. He charges over-inflated prices for the chemotherapy that is administered. His ANPs are unproven and in themselves have some fairly nasty side-effects. I think he is extremely unethical if not down right criminal myself.
This is not some sort of complimentary or alternative therapy being offered as an adjunct to conventional therapy. This is him gaming the system and living off the misery of patients, offering a "tailored" therapy without any evidence to support its benefit, sheltering from the authorities under the umbrella of patients being enrolled onto a clinical trial.
That raising of hope, these fundraising drives to raise thousands of pounds or dollars from local communities, those patients desperate to find another 30,000 to continue their course of treatment I find distressing, personally.
And it was a cure with no discernible or plausible curative mechanism.
What he was actually doing was claiming a "non-toxic" curative therapy for terminal cancer sufferers, making wildly exaggerated claims for the odds of success for his therapy - offering such patients the hope of life, in other words, profiting by selling hope.
He has played cat and mouse for 30 years with the FDA by entering all attendees into his clinics into either stage 1 or stage 2 clinical trials. In all that time - 30 years - he has provided no peer reviewed papers, and only vague data from these many many trials.
For most types of cancer, and most types of treatment, be it chemotherapy, radiotherapy, or some combination thereof, conventional medicine can give you actual trial data, actual mean survival times, an overall assessment of the progression and prognosis of the disease, but Burzynski cannot, except in wildly exaggerated video claims.
No trial data, no proof of concept, no survival times.
In conventional medicine, it is highly unethical to place someone on an experimental treatment, unless you have genuine informed consent - and you are certainly not expected to pay for the privilege.
In actual fact, Burzynskis "revolutionary" antineoplastin therapy is administered in conjunction with cocktails of chemotherapy drugs, all of which are charged at a premium, and it is therefore likely that any benefit seen might be more due to the chemotherapy than the ANP.
He exaggerates his success rate. He charges over-inflated prices for the chemotherapy that is administered. His ANPs are unproven and in themselves have some fairly nasty side-effects. I think he is extremely unethical if not down right criminal myself.
This is not some sort of complimentary or alternative therapy being offered as an adjunct to conventional therapy. This is him gaming the system and living off the misery of patients, offering a "tailored" therapy without any evidence to support its benefit, sheltering from the authorities under the umbrella of patients being enrolled onto a clinical trial.
That raising of hope, these fundraising drives to raise thousands of pounds or dollars from local communities, those patients desperate to find another 30,000 to continue their course of treatment I find distressing, personally.
Lazy...I have just watched your program that I recorded last night.
Difficult.......very ...very difficult.
I will just point out a few points that i think are relevant.
His work is very specialised in that it is about malignant brain tumours in children where the prognosis is measured in % survival at 2 years being about 10-15% following surgery and /or radiotherapy and chemo therapy.
So if he can keep 16-20% alive for more than 2 years, he is on a winner.
There is more to medicine than science in my opinion and emotion and hope when one is considering children come into play. The basis however must be well conducted scientific trials,but however these do not take into consideration "hope" which is taken up by "anecdotal evidence" for which you have scant regard.
His treatment is conventional in that it contains steroids and chemotherapy after the operative part is performed elsewhere. However his anti neoplastic therapy seems to be a bit of a mystery and yet is still accepted by the FDA and is regarded as a clinical trial............of 30 years duration.
So here we are Lazy....Science v Anecdotal evidence + personality.
As a doctor....I would agree with your comments.
As a parent.......I don't know.
Difficult.......very ...very difficult.
I will just point out a few points that i think are relevant.
His work is very specialised in that it is about malignant brain tumours in children where the prognosis is measured in % survival at 2 years being about 10-15% following surgery and /or radiotherapy and chemo therapy.
So if he can keep 16-20% alive for more than 2 years, he is on a winner.
There is more to medicine than science in my opinion and emotion and hope when one is considering children come into play. The basis however must be well conducted scientific trials,but however these do not take into consideration "hope" which is taken up by "anecdotal evidence" for which you have scant regard.
His treatment is conventional in that it contains steroids and chemotherapy after the operative part is performed elsewhere. However his anti neoplastic therapy seems to be a bit of a mystery and yet is still accepted by the FDA and is regarded as a clinical trial............of 30 years duration.
So here we are Lazy....Science v Anecdotal evidence + personality.
As a doctor....I would agree with your comments.
As a parent.......I don't know.
I watched it last night too and agree with sqads comments.
There was some lax logic in places - the doctor from the Childrens hospital saying she'd never seen one of his patients get better - well - duh they go to her when it's gone bad and they've lost faith in him.
The big question for me is why he's carrying on like this. Is it because he thinks people will steal his ideas? is it because he believes they don't work? is he paranoid in some other way.
I can't quite work out how he is being allowed to run trial after trial without publishing results.
In the worst case he's a charleton preying off of vulnerable people - at the best he's a paranoid preventing widespread access to new treatments
There was some lax logic in places - the doctor from the Childrens hospital saying she'd never seen one of his patients get better - well - duh they go to her when it's gone bad and they've lost faith in him.
The big question for me is why he's carrying on like this. Is it because he thinks people will steal his ideas? is it because he believes they don't work? is he paranoid in some other way.
I can't quite work out how he is being allowed to run trial after trial without publishing results.
In the worst case he's a charleton preying off of vulnerable people - at the best he's a paranoid preventing widespread access to new treatments
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