[ExI] Burzynski the Movie The Great Cancer Hoax

[Jeff Davis]

On Wed, Jun 22, 2011 at 4:52 PM, Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote:
> On 6/22/2011 5:19 PM, Jeff Davis wrote:
>
>> Then, as the movie shows, he ran into two of the biggest buzz-saws
>> around: ambitious regulatory "cops" who kept getting snake-oil-ripoff
>> complaints from citizens
>
> Hang on. I don't recall seeing that.

No, you didn't.  It's not there.  But my web search found some folks
who complained he was a crank, that their father died, after some very
expensive treatment.  I extrapolated.

In the film, we see the Texas Board of Medical Examiners go after him
with like four or five grand juries.  There's got to be a political
push behind  that.   Either pharma guys trying to squash him, or the
survivors of patients who DIDN'T get the miracle cure (so dramatically
shown in the movie), who felt they'd been scammed.  Naturally those
folks aren't going to be shown in the movie.  But there have to be
lots of them, don't you think?  I'm not saying that they had indeed
been scammed, just that in the inevitable course of things, Dr.
Burzynski is going to be "the doctor who gives the bad news".  In his
uniquely chosen line of work that is going to end up being a large
part of his responsibility.  That's his job when he's not the miracle
healer.  Many people will not take it well.

Then after the unhappy ones complain, the grateful ones come forward
to testify, in support of the good doctor, as the movie shows.

Did I miss the focus of your question.  Was it more about whether the
treatment worked or not?

> Indeed, the impression the film left on
> me was that citizens *didn't* make such complaints;

If enough grieving "victims" made complaints, the regulatory folks
would have to investigate. But surely the identity of the citizens
would have been kept confidential, on a claim of privacy rights
(medical, personal, evidentiary, whatever), at least until trial.  And
they wouldn't have been shown in the movie, as it would have run
counter to the case the movie-makers were trying to make.

> on the contrary they
> rallied around but went unheard because the case against him was explicitly
> independent of whether his cure, you know, cured.

Seemed odd, didn't it?  Outrageous even, given what was at stake.
Relevance, in the narrow legal sense,  seems quite constricted(and
here I run the risk of making a fool of myself, as you have a genuine
legal scholar there at home to vet my amateur notions.  Hope you are
all well,...or fascinated,...or both.)

Jeff