Case Dismissed! Texas Ends 15-Year Fight Against Cancer Doctor Burzynski
By Dr. Mercola
Story at-a-glance
After a 15-year long battle, the Texas Medical Board has officially ended its crusade to revoke Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski's medical license in an effort to end the use of his pioneering personalized gene-targeted therapy for cancer
Evidence has shown in the past that the FDA has pressured the Texas Medical Board to revoke Dr. Burzynski's medical license—despite the fact that no laws were broken, and his treatment was proven safe and effective
The Texas Medical Board (TMB) has a long history of harassing doctors. The entire Board was sued by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) in 2007, citing an “institutional culture of retaliation and intimidation.” Legislation was also drafted in 2009 in an effort to clamp down on the abuses by the TMB, but the bill failed to be passed into law
Dr. Burzynski’s treatment also includes antineoplastons, which are peptides and derivatives of amino acids that act as molecular and genetic switches. They turn off oncogenes that cause cancer, and activate tumor suppressor genes
Once they've determined which genes are involved in the cancer, after extensive third-party genomic testing on both the cancer tissue obtained during biopsy as well as the patient's blood, a custom formulation of FDA-approved gene-targeted drugs are then meticulously chosen to target that patients genes specially related to their cancer. Antineoplastons by themselves work on nearly 100 cancer-causing genes, while traditional gene targeted oncology agents like Avastin, are only proven to target a single gene. Typically, patients who participate in Burzynski's personalized gene-targeted regimen also receive Phenylbutyrate, a metabolite of Burzynski's original Antineoplaston invention.
After a grueling 15-year long battle, the Texas Medical Board has officially ended its crusade to revoke Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski's medical license in an effort to end his use of Antineoplastons, as well as his combination gene-targeted therapy for cancer.
The Texas Medical Board’s case against him was dismissed1 on November 19, 2012, just in time for Thanksgiving. According to Dr. Burzynski’s attorney, Richard A. Jaffe, Esq:2
“Early on, two medical board informal settlement panels found that the use of these combination drugs on the advanced cancer patients involved was within the standard of care.
However, the Texas Medical Board refused to drop the case and instead filed a formal complaint3 against Dr. Burzynski alleging the same standard of care violations previously rejected by the board settlement panels.
After two years of intense litigation, the case was set for trial in April 2012. However, a week before trial, the administrative law judges dismissed most of the charges against Dr. Burzynski which forced the Board to seek to adjourn the case to do some reevaluation.
After the judges denied the Board’s attempt to reverse the previous partial dismissal of the case, the Board did more reevaluation and moved to dismiss the entire case.”
In 2010, Texas Medical Board staff charged4 Dr. Burzynski with prescribing and administering drugs not yet approved by the FDA for the treatment of cancer in two patients. They also claimed he had overcharged for the drugs, and, in one case, that he had failed to inform the patient that the treatment was having an insignificant impact on her cancer, delaying her ability to make an informed decision about whether to continue her treatment.
On both counts, the Board determined that the treatments did not violate the standard of care, and that patients had been appropriately billed. They did however agree he failed to inform the patient that the treatment was ineffective, and in the other case, they determined he had failed to maintain adequate medical records.
Dr. Burzynski to Make History Yet Again
Dr. Burzynski received much-needed publicity two years ago with the release of Burzynski — The Movie, a documentary about Dr. Burzynski’s remarkable cancer discovery, and how he won the largest and possibly the most convoluted and intriguing legal battle against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in American history.
This year, a second film detailing his continued struggles, and victories, is scheduled to be released. As announced in the trailer (see above), Dr. Burzynski is now doing the unthinkable... He is “the first and only scientist in United States history to enter the federal drug approval process for a proprietary cancer therapy without any financial support from the American government, the pharmaceutical industry, or the cancer establishment.”
After it was revealed that the FDA had pressured the Texas medical board to revoke Dr. Burzynski's medical license — despite the fact that no laws were broken, and his treatment was proven safe and effective — the obvious question was “why?” In 1982, Dr. Richard Crout, Director of the FDA Bureau of Drugs, wrote:
"I never have and never will approve a new drug to an individual, but only to a large pharmaceutical firm with unlimited finances."
The answer to this has to do with money. Lots and lots of money... See, Dr. Burzynski owns the patent for this treatment, and should it actually gain FDA approval, not only would it threaten conventional chemotherapy and radiation, it would also result in billions of dollars of cancer research funds being funneled over to the one single scientist who has exclusive patent rights — Dr. Burzynski.
When Medical Harassment Becomes Standard Practice
As Burzynski — The Movie revealed, it became clear that ever since 1977, when Dr. Burzynski first tried to get antineoplastons approved, the FDA had begun scheming to eliminate the threat he and his discovery posed to the cancer industry. With that in mind, the mistreatment dished out by the Texas Medical Board (TMB) against Dr. Burzynski becomes easier to understand.
The situation becomes even more enlightening once you take into account the fact that, for years, the TMB has cultivated intimidation and harassment of doctors to the point that the entire Board was sued by the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) in 2007, citing an “institutional culture of retaliation and intimidation.” The suit specifically pointed out misconduct by then Board president, Roberta Kalafut, who was accused of enlisting her husband to file anonymous complaints against targeted doctors, including her own competitors, who then faced losing their license and other punitive disciplinary actions based on fraudulent charges. (She resigned from her post in December 2008.)5
The situation was so bad that legislation was drafted in 2009 in an effort to clamp down on the abuses by the TMB.6 Unfortunately, the bill, HB3816, failed to get a House vote and didn’t make it into law. The bill would have prevented anonymous, unsworn complaints from ruining the careers of doctors, and given physicians a right to jury trial before license revocation, among other things. It seems not much has changed in the years since. In an AAPS blog dated September 22, 2011, Jane M. Orient, MD, Executive Director of AAPS stated:7
“Complaints from our members have identified the TMB as probably the worst in the country. It’s bad for patients when their doctors are afraid that doing the right thing could result in licensure action.”
Summary of Dr. Burzynski's Cancer Treatment
Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski, a Polish immigrant, was trained as both a biochemist and a physician. He's spent the last 35 years developing and successfully treating cancer patients suffering with some of the most lethal forms of cancer at his clinic in Houston, Texas. The treatment he developed involves a gene-targeted approach using non-toxic peptides and amino acids, known as antineoplastons. I personally interviewed Dr. Burzynski about his treatment in the summer of 2011.
Texas Med. Bd. vs. Dr. Burzynski - Gene-Targete...
0:00 / 21:36
His strategy includes studying the patient's entire cancerous genome; analyzing some 24,000 genes in each cancer patient, in order to identify the abnormal genes. Once they've determined which genes are involved in the cancer, drugs and supplements are identified to target those genes. Antineoplastons work on approximately 100 cancer-causing genes, but traditional oncology agents (including chemotherapy) may also be used, typically in combination with antineoplastons.
Antineoplastons are peptides and derivatives of amino acids that act as molecular switches. However, as genome research blossomed and science progressed, Dr. Burzynski discovered that antineoplastons also work as genetic switches. They turn off the oncogenes that cause cancer, and turn on or activate tumor suppressor genes — genes that fight cancer. The antineoplastons were initially obtained from blood. For a time they were then extracted from urine, but they've now been using synthetic antineoplastons since 1980.
Burzynski — The Movie features several case stories of people who were successfully cured of cancer, and reveals for example clinical trial data of conventional therapies versus antineoplastons in Phase II FDA-sanctioned clinical trials for a type of brain cancer called Anaplastic Astrocytoma, Grade III. When stacked against each other, the benefits of antineoplastons become quite obvious:
Radiation or Chemotherapy Only
Antineoplastons Only
5 of 54 patients (9 percent)
5 of 20 (25 percent)
were cancer free at the end of treatment
were cancer free at the end of treatment
Toxic side effects
No toxic side effects
Gene Targeted Cancer Therapy is the Future
In recent years, the focus for cancer therapy has increasingly shifted toward individualized gene-targeted cancer treatment — such as that provided by Dr. Burzynski for the past 10 years. A description of how the patient’s individualized treatment plan is devised is given in the second video above, starting three minutes into the video. So, is it any wonder the industry wants to get rid of him in order to protect their own profits and access to research funds?
As an example, in January 2011, the Khalifa Foundation gave a $150 million grant to the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center8 “to support genetic-analysis based research, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer.” In short, personalized cancer treatment is the future of oncology, and the US government has spared no expense in trying to make eliminate Dr. Burzynski from the race — including patent theft...
In October 1991, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) conducted a site visit to Dr. Burzynski's clinic and verified that "anti-tumor activity was documented by the use of antineoplastons."9 Seventeen days after this visit, the United States of America as represented by "The Department of Health and Human Services," filed a patent for antineoplastons AS2-1 — one of the two antineoplastons Dr. Burzynski had already patented. The inventor listed on the copycat patent was Dr. Dvorit Samid, a former research consultant of Dr. Burzynski’s. The patent states:
"The invention described herein may be manufactured, used and licensed by or for the government, for governmental purposes, without the payment to us of any royalties thereon."
In November of 1995, the US Patent office approved the first US Government patent for antineoplastons. Between 1995 and 2000, the US Patent office approved 11 copycat patents on antineoplastons AS2-1. Incredibly, In August of 2012, America's National Cancer Institute has begun to finally acknowledge and cite some of Burzynski's peer-reviewed Antineoplaston studies, as well as Japan's studies who have been independently reproducing Antineoplaston clinical trials studies since the 1980's. One of the most remarkable admissions by The National Cancer Institute is where they quote10:
"A Phase II study also conducted by the developer and his associates at his clinic reported on 12 patients with recurrent diffuse intrinsic brainstem glioma. Of the ten patients who were evaluable, two achieved complete tumor response, three had partial tumor response, three had stable disease, and two had progressive disease."
A brainstem glioma has simply never been cured before in the history of medicine — Antineoplastons hold the first cures ever. Kudos to the National cancer Institute for finally giving credit where credit is due!
Is the Cancer Industry Really Interested in Finding Cancer Cures?
To summarize Dr. Burzynski’s story: He developed a cancer treatment that surpassed all other treatments on the market, and the FDA and the pharmaceutical industry knew it. They also knew he was the sole owner of the patents for this therapy, and these two facts combined, threatened the entire paradigm of the cancer industry.
So they decided to steal his invention. The problem is, they cannot actually use the stolen patents as long as Dr. Burzynski walks free and has the ability to defend his rights to them.
So, for the past 15 years, they’ve thrown everything but the kitchen sink at him in an effort to tuck him away in jail for the remainder of his life, or at the very least, make sure he doesn’t have a license with which to practice any kind of medicine. Without a profitable career, making and raising the needed cash for patent defense would be tricky. Sadly, you and I have all been paying for the brutal opposition to his cancer treatment this whole time. The US government spent $60 million on legal fees for just one of his trials alone...
Still, Dr. Burzynski has prevailed against enormous forces so many times it’s enough to make one believe in a higher power. Certainly, many of his patients would call him a God-send. Now, with the TMB finally dismissing their case against him, let’s hope that’s the end of the absurd witch hunt against Dr. Burzynski.
Part 2 of the documentary will be released sometime this year. Until then, you can show support for Eric Merola and his film by purchasing the first one, Burzynski: The Movie.