The controversial cancer treatment figure Stanislaw Burzynski, MD, PhD, has been at the center of numerous investigations and legal proceedings, and is currently in the midst of a Texas Medical Board hearing.
His treatments, persona and legal history are the subject of a recent Newsweek piece. Here are eight things to know about Dr. Burzynski, his practice and the current allegations against him.
1. The Texas Medical Board is accusing Dr. Burzynski of misleading his patients, overcharging them, making voluminous medical and record-keeping errors and for prescribing untested and unsafe drug combinations under the guise of "personalized cancer therapy."
2. Dr. Burzynski developed atineoplaston therapy to treat cancer in the 1970s. Though he's not a trained oncologist, he has treated over 2,300 cancer patients with these drugs. The FDA approved clinical trials for antineoplastons in the 1990s. At least six participants died in the trials. One was a 6-year-old boy. Afterwards, the FDA put a partial hold on the trials, prohibiting him from enrolling children. The FDA has not approved anitneoplastons for the prevention or treatment of any disease.
3. Many believe the clinical trials for atineoplaston were unsound. The National Cancer Institute states in its guidelines for healthcare professionals, "No randomized controlled trials showing the effectiveness of antineoplastons have been published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature."
4. In his book "Galileo's Lawyer," Dr. Burzynski's former attorney Richard A. Jaffe writes, "As far as clinical trials go, it was a joke... It was all an artifice, a vehicle we and the FDA created to legally give the patients Burzynski's treatment."
5. In the Newsweek piece, Joseph Paul Eder, MD, an oncology professor at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., contended that the FDA's influence is limited in regards to clinical trials. "Typically, whoever's funding [the trial], the institution, NIH, or somebody else, would say, 'You're not meeting your goals. We're going to need to stop the study," said Dr. Eder. Dr. Burzynski funds his own trials, partly through patient fees.
6. Most of Dr. Burzynski's patients no longer qualify for atineoplaston therapy. He now also employs "personalized medicine" that utilizes wide variants drug combinations including chemotherapy. These drug cocktails are suspected to be dangerous.
7. Dr. Burzynski supporters adamantly believe he is the victim of an austere and corrupt medical establishment. In a two-part documentary film "Burzynski: The Movie," Dr. Burzynski is portrayed as a visionary whose drugs and treatments are lifesaving, but the scope of his benevolence is limited due to the corruption and greed saturating the government and medical community.
8. After Dr. Burzynski was diagnosed with a heart condition, his attorneys successfully pushed the remainder of the trial to May when the battle, now stretching over four decades, between Dr. Burzynski and the medical community will continue.