Fwd: [BurzynskiSupport] Letter to NY Times on Antineoplastons for Childhood Brain Cancers

[Guest guest]

The FDA and other governmental agencies have been trying to put Dr. Burzynski

out of business for about 20 years now.

There are links to his site and the patient support site on our links page.

Also there is a book out called " The Burzynski Breakthrough " by Thomas D. Elias.

gettingwell group.

 

 

[burzynskiSupport] Letter to NY Times on Antineoplastons for Childhood

Brain Cancers

 

To The Editor:The article " young Survivors of Cancer Battle Effects of

Treatment " by Mary Duenwald and Denise Grady in the January 8,2003 sadly

recounts the difficult long term effects of standard chemotherapy and radiation

given in the most reknown cancer clinics in the country. The real tragedy is

that you did not inform your readers of the more effective and safer treatment

of Dr.Stanislaw Burzynski using antineoplastons for these same cancers.

Dr.Burzynski has reported excellent results in his FDA approved clinical trials

for serious brain cancers. He has been using this treatment on young children

for over 15 years. Some of his early patients are now attending colleges or

getting ready to apply to colleges at this very time. It is indeed rare to find

an optimistic, high spitited group of cancer patients, former patients and their

families as can be seen and interviewed at the Burzynski Patient Group. These

grateful patients stand as polar opposites to the debilitated patients who are

" lucky enough " to have barely survived the grueling effects of conventional

cancer therapy. If your reporters were to go to their website at

www.burzynskipatientgroup.org they would be able to make contact with these

truly inspiring children and their families.I hope a story can be done on them.

This is indeed news that is " fit to print. "

Sincerely, Arnold Gore

Consumers Health Freedom Coalition New York City

212-795-6460 This article from NYTimes.com

has been sent to you by arnoldgore.

 

 

 

Young Survivors of Cancer Battle Effects of Treatment

 

January 8, 2003

By MARY DUENWALD and DENISE GRADY

 

 

 

 

 

 

PHILADELPHIA - Handing a deck of cards to Sarah Ludwig, the

psychologist said, " I want you to put the cards in order by

suit, but keep in a separate pile those cards with the

letter T in their names. "

 

Sarah, 15, planned her strategy and, as the psychologist

clicked a stopwatch, began sorting.

 

Ten years ago here at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia,

Sarah was treated for leukemia, receiving an intensive

two-year course of chemotherapy and steroids.

 

Today, she is free of the disease, but, possibly as a

result of the treatment, she has an impaired attention span

and other learning disabilities. Her work with the

psychologist is part of a 20-week experimental program

intended to help improve her concentration and performance

in school.

 

Many other patients who, like Sarah, were treated for

cancer at a very young age have found that the cure may

come at a price: chemotherapy and radiation given early in

life can have effects on both body and mind.

 

Often, the physical problems are treatable. Now, doctors

and psychologists are also starting to address the learning

difficulties, as increasing numbers of young cancer

survivors worry about school grades, college admissions and

career prospects - concerns about a future that would have

seemed an unimaginable luxury a generation ago.

 

" Survival from childhood leukemia - the most common

malignancy of childhood - is something of a medical marvel

that I think the average person doesn't appreciate, " said

Dr. Robert Butler, a psychologist at Oregon Health and

Science University who created the program in which Sarah

is enrolled. " In the 1960's and early '70's, cancer was a

death sentence. There was a 90 percent probability that the

child was going to die. Now, there's about an 80 percent

chance that the child will be cured. It's turned around

practically 180 degrees, " Dr. Butler said.

 

Survivors of childhood cancer number about 250,000 in the

United States, and their ranks are growing steadily because

of aggressive and effective treatments. Doctors are able to

cure most cancers diagnosed in children and teenagers,

11,000 to 12,000 cases a year, Dr. Butler said.

 

Over all, cure rates in adults are considerably lower, with

only 62 percent living 5 years or more. Dr. Paul A. Meyers,

vice chairman of pediatrics at Memorial Sloan Kettering

Cancer Center in Manhattan, cited several reasons why

children with cancer fared better than adults.

 

For one, he said, since the 1950's, 85 percent of children

with cancer - as opposed to only 2 percent of adults - have

been treated in clinical trials, which have been proved to

offer the best care.

 

In addition, Dr. Meyers said, the types of cancer that

affect children tend to be more treatable than those in

adults, and children are better able than adults to

tolerate intensive treatment.

 

But the treatments can have lingering side effects. Doctors

have known for about 20 years that chemotherapy and

radiation administered early in life can cause health

problems, post-traumatic stress and learning disabilities.

 

Dr. Charles A. Sklar, director of a program for childhood

cancer survivors at Memorial Sloan Kettering, said that the

physical ailments confronting the young survivors might

include stunted growth, low thyroid function, kidney

problems, infertility, heart and lung disorders and even

new cancers.

 

Most of those illnesses can be treated, he said. But

treatments for the learning disorders remain experimental.

 

The likelihood that a childhood cancer survivor will

develop such disorders depends on the child's age at the

time of treatment and the intensity of the treatment,

according to Dr. Pim Brouwers, a pediatric

neuropsychologist at Texas Children's Cancer Center in

Houston.

 

Patients younger than 5 seem most vulnerable. Dr. Butler

said: " We used to think they would be the most likely to

recover, because their brains have greater plasticity. But

the youngest children actually take a bigger hit from the

treatments. "

 

Children who have brain tumors - the second most prevalent

form of childhood cancer, after leukemia - are at greater

risk than those with other cancers. The tumor can damage

brain tissue, Dr. Brouwers said, and the treatment,

typically radiation directed at the head and spinal cord,

can damage neurons.

 

Doctors can minimize the damage by using only the lowest

possible doses of radiation, said Dr. Anna T. Meadows, a

pediatric oncologist at Children's Hospital of

Philadelphia.

 

Dr. Butler estimated that as many as 90 percent of children

who had received radiation to the brain and spinal cord had

some degree of impairment. Young patients like Sarah with

acute lymphoblastic leukemia are often treated with

chemotherapy alone. The drugs are often injected into the

space containing the brain and spinal cord. Many of these

children do not develop any cognitive problems, Dr. Meadows

said. And those who do, studies show, are likely to be less

impaired.

 

About 30 percent of children who have received this

chemotherapy end up with learning or concentration

problems, Dr. Butler said. Such problems are also found

among an undetermined number of children who have not had

cancer, he noted.

 

Sarah's problems were relatively mild compared with those

of children who received radiation. And though experts

cannot say for certain that chemotherapy caused her

problems, Sarah's experience follows the pattern of other

patients in her age group, according to Dr. Anne E. Kazak,

the director of psychology at Children's Hospital of

Philadelphia and a researcher in Dr. Butler's study.

 

Radiation and chemotherapy can damage the cells of the

basal ganglia, a section of the brain involved in attention

functions, Dr. Brouwers said. The problems often do not

show up until three years after the children have finished

treatments, studies show, because the brain cells die off

slowly.

 

" It's tough on the kids and tough on parents, " Dr. Brouwers

said. " They're told the disease is gone, and then after

five years, the kid is failing in school. And it just seems

like it's never over. "

 

The trauma of cancer itself can contribute to the problem,

many doctors and parents believe.

 

" Sarah repeated kindergarten because she missed a lot of

school for her treatments, " Sarah's mother, Mary Ludwig,

said. " It's always seemed as if she just never caught up. "

 

Throughout elementary school and middle school, Sarah had

noticeable difficulty paying attention and comprehending

concepts that other children picked up easily, Mrs. Ludwig

said: " There was just always something that she couldn't

grasp. "

 

Dr. Butler's program, which consists of 20 two-hour

sessions, tries to teach techniques for focusing and

organizing thoughts - skills other children use without

realizing it. The teaching methods are borrowed from

programs created to help people recover from strokes and

other brain injuries.

 

At the session that Sarah sorted the cards, the

psychologist, Dr. Merritt M. Jensen, asked her, " How can

you help yourself concentrate on this? "

 

" I could make a key, " Sarah suggested, consulting the list

of strategies that she and Dr. Jensen began compiling in

their first five sessions. Sarah picked up her pencil and

wrote the list of " T " cards on a nearby pad: 2's, 3's, 8's

and 10's.

 

Dr. Jensen started a stopwatch as Sarah began sorting. In

less than two minutes, she was finished.

 

" I could do a better job than that, " Sarah said, her

shoulders dropping. " I was trying to go too fast. "

 

Dr. Jensen examined the piles. " You caught 12 of the T

cards and only missed 4, " she said. " To me, that's good

work. "

 

By playing the card game, Sarah was practicing simple

concentration techniques and learning to think about

strategies, like making written keys and monitoring her own

speed and attention.

 

" If she can practice and talk about the skills she needs to

develop, I'm hoping they can become ingrained, " Dr. Jensen

said.

 

Children in the program are instructed to work with pencil

and paper on number problems and word puzzles. They play

games like Uno and Mastermind that require concentration

and memory skills. Homework is also incorporated into the

training.

 

Dr. Butler and his colleagues at seven hospitals across the

country have been testing the program for almost three

years. To be eligible for the training, children must be at

least a year beyond their cancer treatment, and they must

demonstrate problems in perception and concentration.

 

The researchers intend to use the techniques with more than

100 children by midyear. These subjects will be compared

with a somewhat smaller group of cancer survivors who

receive no training for six months. The children in the

control group are tested at the start and the end of the

six-month period, and then are also offered a chance to

take the training.

 

At best, however, the problems that the young cancer

survivors experience with concentration and learning will

diminish, not disappear, Dr. Kazak said. And other learning

problems are likely to persist. A pilot study of the

training Dr. Butler conducted in 1995 showed that while the

children improved their concentration, their math skills

remained about the same.

 

Ideally, Dr. Butler said, the training would help the

children build new brain circuitry to replace what was

damaged. This process, called functional reorganization, is

known to occur in adults, he said, but is only

theoretically possible in children.

 

After Sarah's session was done, Dr. Jensen worked for two

hours with Danny Clark of Schwenksville, Pa. Danny, 12, had

received chemotherapy for acute myelogenous leukemia when

he was 3. Like Sarah, he had had trouble in school,

especially after he reached the sixth grade.

 

" They kept saying `Pick up the pace,' and it was hard to

get him to do that, " his mother, Virginia Clark, said.

 

Danny had only two weeks left in the program, and seemed to

have learned to be more organized, to pay attention and to

work faster, she said. Mrs. Clark plans to keep practicing

with him at home. " I really want to see this work, " she

said.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/health/08CANC.html?ex=1043081198 & ei=1 & en=277d7\

a61d345b131

 

 

 

 

 

Gettingwell- / Vitamins, Herbs, Aminos, etc.

 

To , e-mail to: Gettingwell-

Or, go to our group site: Gettingwell

 

 

 

 

Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now