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Ed Dr. Burzynski's antineoplastons cancer treatment?

quarky

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A brief search here found no mention of this subject. If I'm mistaken, please merge with existing thread(s).

I recently saw the documentary film "Bursynski" (available on streaming Netflix), which was rather disturbing to me, as I couldn't spot the woo. The alternative to finding the woo in this film is to accept a conspiracy, involving U.S. government agencies including the FDA and the National Cancer Institute.

Dr. Bursynski patented some combinations of peptide-like substances he calls "antineoplastons", derived from human blood and urine, which he later synthesized and used in treatment of profound cancers of the sort that were basically hopeless, quick death sentences. His treatments demonstrated remarkable results according to the documents and testimonies...enough so that the use of the treatment was approved...yet, the inventor was continually persecuted and eventually robbed of his invention.

If anyone has seen this film or knows of the legal battles surrounding Dr. Bursynski's work in oncology, I'd be interested in your take on the matter.

I'm not sure which link to provide other than the movie itself, which seems rather thorough in its coverage of the case.

http://trustmovies.blogspot.com/2010/06/seek-out-bursynski-documentary-and.html

That should get you started.
 
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Great article considering it's local press and you usually expect them to bend over to give a break to a "local story".


http://www.houstonpress.com/2009-01...imself-as-a-crusading-researcher-not-a-quack/


You'll have to tell us what those "fair points" are from the movie. We haven't all had a chance to see it. I do believe, however, that you'll find that Eric Merola(the director) is the brother of Peter Joseph Merola (Zeitgeist).

I'd look for the Mark of Woo before taking this "documentary" seriously.
 
Foolmewunz said:
Great article considering it's local press and you usually expect them to bend over to give a break to a "local story".


http://www.houstonpress.com/2009-01...imself-as-a-crusading-researcher-not-a-quack/


You'll have to tell us what those "fair points" are from the movie. We haven't all had a chance to see it. I do believe, however, that you'll find that Eric Merola(the director) is the brother of Peter Joseph Merola (Zeitgeist).

I'd look for the Mark of Woo before taking this "documentary" seriously.
Click to expand...

Well, that's why I started this thread: I was looking for the mark of woo in the film. It certainly was on the side of Bursynski...yet his case is quite compelling. He's been in court a lot; even federal. No indictments; mostly harangue. He seems to be a scientist without funding, which makes rigorous study impossible.He (evidently) encouraged further study and funding, but was instead essentially robbed of his research and legitimate patents.

It might come off as big pharma paranoia, but its certainly not the garden variety. Try to catch the flick, if possible.
 
The Health Professional Version of the Antineoplastons PDQ of the National Cancer Institute at the NIH gives a fairly detailed, and seemingly objective history of the topic.

Some Phase I and Phase II studies have been done but no Phase III studies. At first glance a survey of the studies shows mixed results. The problem is that most of the studies were performed by Burzynski himself and other researchers have not been able to duplicate his results. The conclusion of the NCI, and I would agree, is that the results are inconclusive. If somebody were more cynically minded however they could be pushed in one of two directions. Either Burzynski fabricated his results, or there is a conspiracy to suppress the effectiveness of the treatment.

From the point of view of cytology and biochemistry the idea is at least plausible. A wide range of hormones are peptides or modified amino acids so it is possible that these antineoplaston compounds function hormonally. I could see them triggering signal transduction pathways that either suppress or enhance the expression of various genes that would result in tumor suppression, such as oncogenes or also genes coding for various enzymes required for relevant metabolic pathways. I could also see them enhancing or suppressing membrane transport. Some of this is discussed in the pdq. I don't see how any of these processes could normalize cancer cells as Burzynski claims but in theory it makes sense how specific peptides could be used to either kill cancer cells or at least block them from undergoing mitosis.

So from my reading of the pdq, it looks like theoretically the idea has some plausibility but the proposed mechanisms have not conclusively been demonstrated experimentally and that the clinical trial results have been inconclusive.
 
Orphia Nay said:
I came across him at a woo forum, which set off my alarm bells, as you'd expect.

Here's a 2006 article from Quackwatch to get you started:

http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Cancer/burzynski1.html
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The analysis of the biochemistry in your link sums up the objections cited in the NCI pdq and is probably the reason the compounds he uses are not the subject of much study by anyone by himself. Overall it looks like his claims were actually subject to legitimate scrutiny and found wanting. There doesn't seem to be much of a conspiracy here.
 
The movie is convincing because that is what it is designed to be. If I wanted to sell an idea, and knew the critique points those damn smart annoying skeptics had/would make, then this is the way I would make such a promotional movie.

But the fact remains, that

1) Research isn't being suppressed
2) Independent trials have not demonstrated any effect.

Take for instance this preclinical study: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18224398
It is from Japan, and was published in 2008. It seems promising enough to proceed to clinical testing, but nothing of the sort has been presented by the group. Given the time frame, I think it is possible that it didn't work - which also was the conclusion from the Mayo-trial.
 
yeah, but

large firms are now employing his synthesized antineoplastons in 'legitimate' cancer treatments. As mentioned, this isn't garden variety woo.
there are huge bucks involved. huge.

That's a danger to legitimate science.
 
Quarky,
I started to watch, but as several reviewers have noted, it's like a Powerpoint presentation and not a movie.

The things I've heard mentioned in criticism of the film and its methodology leap off the screen in the first few minutes.

> Touching opening - but no evidence that what the cop is saying have been proved. "I killed her by letting her take chemo" is a bit extreme. I'd think they could've found someone to discuss this from an oncologists perspective.

> No information from anyone but supporters. No counter-arguments. No interviews with scientists who disagree or who have questions.

> Dubious "experts' like Dr. Julian Whitaker of Whitaker Wellness.


And that's just in the first few minutes.

And I'd give some credence to the birds of feather broad-brush bias that I was using. His brother, Peter Joseph (PJ Merola or Peter Joseph Merola) put together an almost identical treatment of a different subject (with much the same boredom factor going for it) in making Zeitgeist I and II. Evidently Eric did the animation sequences and some editing on Zeitgeist, using the name Eric Clinton.

As one reviewer pointed out, if he's on the verge of getting FDA approval for a cure for cancer, why's he dabbling in anti-aging creams and huckstering them around the world? (Someone else's line: "I guess he was concerned that we'd want to get rid of all those wrinkles from worrying about cancer.")

As CosmicDP mentioned, there were some promising results from the first and second phase tests, but no one's been able to duplicate them other then Bryzynski, himself. That sort of smacks of the coldwater fusion and over-unity free energy "researchers".
 
We have seen similar things before.

Back in the 90's (if I recall correctly) the idea that very high dose chemotherapy combined with stem cell transplantation was a big hype. A south African MD (Bezwoda) became highly respected among oncologists because of his (alledged) success. It turned out that it couldn't be replicated anywhere else, and he was later on exposed as a fraud.
 
Foolmewunz said:
Quarky,
I started to watch, but as several reviewers have noted, it's like a Powerpoint presentation and not a movie.
Click to expand...
I found a movie version here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0ibsoqjPac
It is a bit lenghty, but they claim that all the "evidence" is given in the first 30 minutes.

Just for the fun of it let's take a closer look at a few of the examples.

The first one is a woman diagnosed with a grade III astrocytoma. At the time of diagnosis the lesion measures 2,2 cm. Most of the pathology report is blurred, but it says that enough tumour tissue was removed to make a smear and sections. Not just a section but sections as in more than one. A new MRI scan taken 2 weeks after the "biopsy" reveals an enhanced area measuring 0,5 mm. We don't really know if this enhancement is just a reaction to the surgical (biopsy) procedure or residual tumour tissue. So I don't think this example proves that it was the antineoplastons that delivered the cure.

The second example is a brainstem glioma diagnosed through MRI only. One should remember that MRI is not a foolproof method of making such a diagnosis. See for instance this study: http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/80/10/1134.abstract where they looked at the histology of 46 lesions diagnosed as gliomas on MRI. Only in 28 of the cases were the glioma diagnosis correct. In 6 of the cases the lesions were benign.

I haven't gotten around to look at the rest of it, but the above is really more than enough (for me).
 
quarky said:
Well, that's why I started this thread: I was looking for the mark of woo in the film. It certainly was on the side of Bursynski...yet his case is quite compelling. He's been in court a lot; even federal. No indictments; mostly harangue. He seems to be a scientist without funding, which makes rigorous study impossible.He (evidently) encouraged further study and funding, but was instead essentially robbed of his research and legitimate patents.
Click to expand...
Here's one review that's less inspiring:
Eric Merola, a former art director of commercials, is either unusually credulous, or doesn't understand the difference between a documentary and an advertisement, or has an undisclosed relationship with the subject of his allegedly nonfiction first film. Consciously or not, Merola is shilling madly for Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, a Polish-born physician who has run afoul of federal authorities and shown up on several quackometers for his claim to have cured scores of patients of a lethal brain cancer with a treatment derived from human urine. Burzynski's smooth patter and bad dye job don't clinch the case against him—though how he gained the trust of desperate patients is anybody's guess—but neither do they mitigate the powerful stench that rises from his plaintive cries of victimization by "jealous" government agencies. Narrated in a weirdly robotic voiceover, Burzynski violates every basic rule of ethical filmmaking: Merola interviews only Burzynski's supporters, produces no patient records other than the doctor's own, and offers no credible proof of the drug's success and no data about its side effects, even as he slams chemotherapy and radiation. Who's the bigger charlatan—Burzynski or Merola—and why is this conspiratorial rubbish being released into theaters?
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Then there's this:
Texas Attorney General Dan Morales announced that Texas has obtained a court agreement that requires a Houston physician to stop soliciting cancer patients for treatments with unapproved drugs he calls "antineoplastons.z" Morales has obtained a Final Judgment against Houston physician Stanislaw R. Burzynski and his corporation Burzynski Research Institute (BRI), which was filed Tuesday in State District Court in Travis County.
Under the agreement, Burzynski and BRI agree to abide by probation terms he was placed under by the Texas State Board of Medical Examiners.
Click to expand...
Here is a review of Burzynski and his antineoplaston therapy reprinted from The Cancer Letter in 1998. It's not good for Burzynski. The Office of Technology Assessment report (included here) is also unconvincing of any value to the treatment.


ETA: Here is the American Cancer Society take on antineoplaston treatment:
Most cancer specialists believe there is insufficient evidence to recommend use of antineoplastons except perhaps in the context of clinical trials that will provide reliable information on the safety and effectiveness of this treatment.
Click to expand...
 
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Foolmewunz said:
As CosmicDP mentioned, there were some promising results from the first and second phase tests, but no one's been able to duplicate them other then Bryzynski, himself. That sort of smacks of the coldwater fusion and over-unity free energy "researchers".
Click to expand...

Those are good analogies. In those two cases as in this, the relevant scientific subcommunities took the initial claims seriously and investigated them. In all three cases the original observations were never successfully repeated by anyone else. In and of itself there is nothing wrong with this. Surprising results happen all the time in experiments. Assuming all attempts have been made to exclude problems of procedure or equipment, the correct thing to do is publish them along with a proposed mechanism. Further study will show if the results were spurious or substantial and thus if further study is warranted, it will be conducted. On a related note, the proposed mechanism of the original study in cases like this that do lead somewhere is often incorrect but nobody in the field ever cares about that, it is really a formality. The important thing is the replication of the results, correct explanations of them can be figured out later.

In the case of Bryzynski and the two analogous cases Foolmewunz mentioned, the problem is that these people just keep going. They continue to generate "results" that no one else can ever replicate. They accuse the rest of the field of being in collusion with some entity having a major financial stake in the matter. In this case the pharmaceutical industry is either trying to steal his idea or stifle it for their own profit. In the case of cold fusion it was the energy corporations trying to protect their profits.
 
CosmicDP said:
Those are good analogies. In those two cases as in this, the relevant scientific subcommunities took the initial claims seriously and investigated them. In all three cases the original observations were never successfully repeated by anyone else. In and of itself there is nothing wrong with this. Surprising results happen all the time in experiments. Assuming all attempts have been made to exclude problems of procedure or equipment, the correct thing to do is publish them along with a proposed mechanism. Further study will show if the results were spurious or substantial and thus if further study is warranted, it will be conducted. On a related note, the proposed mechanism of the original study in cases like this that do lead somewhere is often incorrect but nobody in the field ever cares about that, it is really a formality. The important thing is the replication of the results, correct explanations of them can be figured out later.

In the case of Bryzynski and the two analogous cases Foolmewunz mentioned, the problem is that these people just keep going. They continue to generate "results" that no one else can ever replicate. They accuse the rest of the field of being in collusion with some entity having a major financial stake in the matter. In this case the pharmaceutical industry is either trying to steal his idea or stifle it for their own profit. In the case of cold fusion it was the energy corporations trying to protect their profits.
Click to expand...

I mostly agree, yet there are serious conflicts of interest within the industry and the research.
 
quarky said:
I mostly agree, yet there are serious conflicts of interest within the industry and the research.
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No question those do arise, as do conflicts of interest between different research groups. You hope that everybody involved is ethical enough to not take advantage of the situation but human nature being what it is, this is not always the case. I experienced this first hand as a graduate student.

We submitted a paper to a journal with the first experimental measurements of certain reaction cross sections. Oddly one of the referees rejected the paper for very vague reasons. My faculty advisor however was considered one of the leading researchers in the field and he had connections so he contacted the editor of the journal. After some investigation it turned out that said referee after reading our submission went out and booked time on a cyclotron to study the exact process of our paper. The real reason he rejected our paper was because he saw the impact it would have and he decided he wanted to be the one to get credit for it. Obviously our paper was immediately published by the journal and his reputation took a major hit. This is not at all normative, and it shows the system usually works, but it does also show sometimes there are nefarious goings on in science.
 
There are, no doubt, many people that would be very upset if a cancer cure was discovered, especially if it was something inexpensive.
Illness is a goldmine, in a way.
As is crime.
And war.

When the stakes are so high, corruption is likely.
 
quarky said:
There are, no doubt, many people that would be very upset if a cancer cure was discovered, especially if it was something inexpensive.
Illness is a goldmine, in a way.
As is crime.
And war.

When the stakes are so high, corruption is likely.
Click to expand...


Seriously?
I think that the jubilation of people finally able to stop running/walking/wearing ribbons for "the cure" would be enough to offset the financial interests of anyone.
 
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