Burzynski: harming without care?

A guest post by Keir Liddle^

Skeptics and critics of Dr Burzynski’s antineoplaston treatment have been scratching their heads of late at the removal of all references to ANP on the clinics website.

Why did a reference to Dr Burzynskis miraculous brain cancer cure suddenly disappear? Was it because of an FDA letter regarding inappropriate and inaccurate promotion of the treatment?

That seemed the obvious explanation until @medtek on twitter discovered that the FDA had been doing a lot more than simply sending the clinic letters.

According to a Burzynski patient blog*, the clinic has been undergoing an FDA audit.

From the blog:

The Burzynski Clinic is going through some issues right now. They are in the process of getting audited for the past month by the FDA. The FDA has also gotten approved to continue their audit for another month.

But why has the clinic been prevented from taking on new patients? The answer is truly shocking and raises very serious questions over the standards of medical care being provided at the clinic. Again from the patients blog;

The FDA stopped new pediatric patients because a child had went into a tumor related coma and did not get enough water during treatment, thus spiking the sodium level to a fatal level

The risk of hypernatraemia arising from ANP treatment has been well documented during the investigations of skeptics and critics into the clinic. Concerns have been raised time and again about this potentially fatal side effect and the clinics response to it. I paraphrase slightly, but not much, when I state the clinic’s response to dealing with this side effect was to tell patients to “drink lots of water”.

That the clinic themselves, if this patient blog is to be trusted, cannot advise in more detail the amount of water required for patients and thus risk a child’s life is horrifying.

Here we have evidence that ANP treatment can and does cause harm. To the extent the FDA has had to step in and prevent more patients receiving the treatment. Prior to this all critics could conclude is that the weight of evidence did not support ANPs as a treatment or cure.

Now we can see there is a very real danger from ANP treatments and one that is not mitigated by any medical advice or treatment offered by the clinic.

One would hope this is finally the end game for Burzynski and that after 35+ years of abject failure to show ANPs are anywhere near useful as a cancer treatment he may now be forced to stop selling false hope.

In the late 90′s Quackwatch failed and despite the best efforts of many skeptics and scientists it looked like Dr B would be free to continue.

It’s a tragic shame that it may have taken the threat to a child’s life to finally stop Burzynski.

*The link to the blog has been removed to respect patient anonymity.

^ Keir usually posts at The 21st Floor, which has been offline following a complaint by the live blood analysis quack, Errol Denton. They came back online on 13th February and this post now also appears there.

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