old news - part 2 - history of the medical establishment

[Guest guest]

Old news

 

03:00 AM Jul. 18, 2000 PT

 

 

Despite the treatment, the tumor is still growing, which means the

Navarros may be looking at surgery in the near future. But for now,

Donna says she has no choice.

 

" We've jumped through every FDA hoop, we demanded hearings. Why are

they so biased against Stan? They've tried everything to quash him. "

 

 

 

In fact, there are a number of critics who say Burzynski should be

kept out of practice.

 

Saul Green, a retired biochemist from the Sloan Kettering Institute

in New York, has made something of a career debunking Burzynski and

other nontraditional doctors and caregivers. But he admits it's a

near-impossible task, given the wide acceptance of alternative care

today.

 

" The alternative medical community has a huge Internet presence, "

Green said. " There's no way to get them to toe the line. Somebody has

to die first. "

 

Green, who serves as a member of the American Cancer Society's

Alternative and Complementary Methods Advisory Group, has questioned

Burzynski's medical background, and disputes the Houston doctor's

claim of a Ph.D., based on his own communication with the Ministry of

Health in Warsaw.

 

Burzynski shrugs off the claim, and paints a different picture of his

Polish education. He said Green got in touch with members of the then-

Communist controlled ministry, who regarded Burzynski with contempt

and fed lies to Green.

 

" I was perhaps the best student in the history of this medical

school, there's no doubt about it, " Burzynski said.

 

He said he defended his Ph.D. thesis publicly when he was 24,

generating quite a stir in his country at the time, partly because of

his young age.

 

" This was a remarkable story and it made all the papers, " he said.

 

His credentials notwithstanding, Burzynski has a long -- and, some

would say, sordid -- past in the United States.

 

In 1995, a federal grand jury indicted Burzynski for mail fraud and

marketing an unapproved drug. The indictment charged that he had

billed insurance companies for chemotherapy, a treatment he did not

provide. Burzynski was tried in 1997 but acquitted.

 

He's made it to the pages of QuackWatch.com and is a subject of

fierce debate on several cancer-related message boards.

 

But none of it is enough to diminish the support of the families of

his patients -- even ones whose children have died.

 

" My daughter was treated by Burzynski, " said Ric Schiff, a San

Francisco police officer whose 4-year-old daughter was diagnosed with

an inoperable brain tumor in late 1993. After receiving radiation for

six months, Crystin Schiff's tumor remained, and her parents took her

to see Burzynski.

 

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