Cancer Is Serious Business ,,, 2010 film, Burzynski – Cancer is Serious Business directed, written, edited, and narrated by Eric Merola, an art director of television commercials, describes Burzynskis use of antineoplastons and his legal clashes with government agencies and regulators. The Village Voice commented that the movie violates every basic rule of ethical filmmaking and that by interviewing only Burzynskis supporters, the films producer is either unusually credulous, or doesnt understand the difference between a documentary and an advertisement. Variety described the film as having the qualities of a paranoid conspiracy theory and likened it to the National Enquirer, adding that the films explanatory diagrams are simplistic to the point of idiocy. The review concluded that despite its infotainment look, Burzynski ultimately proves convincing. Prior to the debut of Burzynski, Houston Press correspondent Craig Malisow mocked the films lack of objectivity, characterizing it as a puff-piece paean that cherrypicks facts and ignores any criticism, and criticized the project for presenting only Burzynskis side of the story. The Burzynski Clinic is a clinic in Texas, United States founded in 1976 and offering unproven cancer treatment. The clinic is best known for the controversy surrounding its antineoplaston therapy, a chemotherapy using compounds it calls antineoplastons, devised by the clinics founder Stanislaw Burzynski in the 1970s. The clinic has been the focus of much criticism due to the way its unproven antineoplaston therapy is promoted, the costs for cancer sufferers participating in trials of antineoplastons, significant problems with the way these trials are run, legal cases brought as a result of the sale of the therapy without board approval, and for other causes. There is a scientific consensus that antineoplaston therapy is unproven and of little promise in treating cancer. Clinical trials initiated in 1993 and sponsored by the National Cancer Institute were closed due to inability to recruit qualifying patients, and a Mayo Clinic study found no benefit from antineoplaston treatment. Some sixty phase 2 clinical trials and one Phase 3 trial have been registered by Burzynski since the mid-1990s, but no results have been published. The Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center has stated: Bottom Line: There is no clear evidence to support the anticancer effects of antineoplastons in humans. Since 1998 Burzynski has only been been permitted to prescribe his antineoplastons as part of a registered clinical trial. Over sixty trials have been registered, only one has completed and that has not been published. The trials have been described by Burzynskis former lawyer as a joke and an artifice. Trials were paused (no new patients allowed) following FDA inspections which found (for the third consecutive time) significant issues with his Institutional Review Board, and, according to papers published in November 2013, substantial issues with the conduct of both the clinic and Stanislaw Burzynski as principal investigator. Since 2011, the clinic has also been offering personalised gene targeted cancer therapy and Burzynski claims to have originated the field. However, the use of chemotherapuetic agents by the clinic has been characterised as random and their use of unapproved combinations with no known benefits but clear harms by the Texas Medical Board, which regulates and licenses physicians in the state of Texas, led to a case against Burzynski by the Texas Medical Board. Burzynski was acquitted because he had not personally written the prescriptions. In June 2012, antineoplaston trials were paused following the death of a child patient. In January and February 2013, the FDA inspected Burzynski and his IRB in Houston. In December 2013, the FDA issued its findings in warning letters to Burzynski, expressing concerns about subject safety and data integrity, as well as concerns about the adequacy of safeguards in place at your site to protect patients [...].
Posted on: Mon, 03 Feb 2014 07:01:47 +0000
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