[ExI] Burzynski vs the FDA

[The Avantguardian]

----- Original Message ----
> From: Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com>
> To: ExI chat list <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org>
> Sent: Tue, June 14, 2011 9:35:26 AM
> Subject: Re: [ExI] Burzynski the Movie The Great Cancer Hoax
> 
> On 6/13/2011 6:12 AM, The Avantguardian wrote:
> 
> > Here are some quick and dirty facts I gleaned from a perusal of study 
>abstracts
> > that I separated from the spin:
> 
> Thanks for this response, Stuart. But--
> 
> > The
> > Mayo Clinic study was deemed inconclusive by the investigators due
> > to insufficient sample size but had several other problems such as
> > only enrolling patients with cancers so nasty that all conventional 
>treatments
> > had already failed and stopping treatment of 5 out of the 9 patients due to
> > "side effects".

> Damien wrote:
 
> The movie makes a pretty good case (showing documents that are available for 
>scrutiny on the site) that this was astoundingly--perhaps maliciously--bungled; 
>that Burzynski's explicit and empirically based protocol was repeatedly 
>violated, and that he protested and made repeated efforts to have it reinstated 
>*during* the study, so this is not a post facto attempt to explain away the 
>failure.

Granted the Mayo Clinic Study was bungled and seems likely to me to have been 
set up for failure at the outset. Perhaps due partly to overconfidence on the 
part of Burzynski in writing the protocol for such hopeless cancer cases 
to begin with and partly due to the prejudice of the researchers in abandoning 
the protocol at the earliest possible opportunity. But really there are 
two separate issues at stake here, Damien. One is the scientific question of 
whether there is any validity to using antineoplaston therapy for cancer. The 
other is political as to whether the FDA and pharmaceutical companies are trying 
to marginalize Burzynski and his research.

In my previous email, I addressed the first question as objectively as 
possible.I focused on the Japanese studies because they seemed to be the least 
biased in either direction. Based on the Japanese studies, I concluded that 
there *was* therapeutic value to antineoplasmon treatment but I wasn't convinced 
that it was as large as Burzynski himself or the makers of the movie would lead 
you to believe. They make it sound like a magic bullet and it isn't. But that 
isn't important. What is important is whether it is better than chemotherapy and 
it sure seems to be but that isn't hard because chemotherapy is largely crap. 
Here is a free copy of a study reported by Aussies in "Clinical Oncology" 
that demonstrates that except in testicular cancer and hematopoietic cancers 
like leukemia, lymphoma, and multiple myeloma chemo is crap:

http://www.burtongoldberg.com/home/burtongoldberg/contribution-of-chemotherapy-to-five-year-survival-rate-morgan.pdf 


To truly evaluate the effectiveness of antiplasmon treatment you would need a 
randomized and controlled clinical trial of sufficient size to be statistically 
meaningful where some patients recieved antineoplasmon and some patients 
recieved the best available chemotherapy, and the doctors who evaluated 
the outcomes were not the same doctors who administered the treatments. I 
heartily endorse that such a study be conducted but who is going to pay for it?

That brings me to the second issue which is regulatory capture of the FDA by the 
pharmaceutical companies. Yes it is a huge problem. Yes, the movie does do a 
good job of exposing it when it isn't trying to be an infomercial for 
Burzynski's Clinic. But regulatory capture is certainly not unique to the FDA 
and most major industries engage in it to greater or lesser extent. The Pentagon 
is in bed with the defense industry, the SEC is in bed with Wall Street, the Fed 
is in bed with the banking industry, and the MMS is in bed with the oil 
industry. When the watchdogs consort with the wolves, the sheep are largely 
fucked. It almost makes one want to buy some machine guns and move to Somalia.


Stuart Laforge

"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things bought 
and sold are legislators." - P. J. O'Rourke