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Good Housekeeping Magazine, Dr. Burzinszki and Yuk, Saul Green

 

 

Golden Duck Winner

 

Good Housekeeping's

" Desperate Measures "

 

January 1996

 

-----------------

" Desperature Measures " , by Molly Glentzer

Good Housekeeping Magazine, January 1996

 

" My discovery will save millions of people, " says Dr. Burzynski, who

nearly

lost his medical license recently.

 

Scores of cancer patients call this Texas doctor a miracle worker.

The medical

establishment calls him a quack. Who's right? You be the judge.

These days, Lorraine Stude answers the phone tentatively. She's been

receiving calls from someone who won't identify herself. The woman

says that

Stude has God's grace, then recites a litany of personal problems as

if He

might be listening and hangs up. In her small farm community of

Garfield, KS,

Stude has become a minor celebrity. Everyone has heard that medical

experts can't explain why she's still alive. Obviously some people

think that

since she has been granted a miracle, others might be in store.

 

Stude, 35, her husband, and their two sons raise cattle, wheat, hay,

and

soybeans. They, like their neighbors, are used to unexpected

challenges from

nature. But the family wasn't prepared for the blow that came in

October 1992.

Lorraine Stude had been depressed, with severe headaches for several

months, when her family doctor finally ordered a CATscan. The results

came

on her thirty-second birthday: She had an aggressive, incurable brain

cancer.

 

Ask anyone who has ever struggled with a cancer prognosis: You want

to

know immediately whether you'll recover; and if not, how long you

have to

live. No matter how delicately your doctor avoids absolutes, your

thoughts are

already in chaos. Mortality breathes down your neck like a monster

with a

stopwatch. If you have young children, the urgency is amplified a

thousand

times.

 

Stude's cancer is a glioblastoma multiforme, entwined through her

brain stem

like tiny branches. Most people with this cancer live less than two

years, even

with treatment, so she knew it was highly unlikely that she'd live to

see her

boys, 8 and 12, grow up. But the Studes were determined to fight.

Their

treatment odyssey took them to hospitals 20 miles away in Great Bend

and 85

miles away in Hays. There was surgery to remove as much of the tumor

as

possible, followed by two months of radiation and four courses of

chemotherapy. Stude lost her long brown hair, and became nauseated,

farigued, dehydrated. Swelling in her brain caused intense headaches.

To

curb them, doctors prescribed steroids that added 64 pounds to her

once

willowy 5'9 " frame. She often felt that the treatments made her more

sick than

the tumor.

 

By the summer of 1993, two more tumors had appeared in her brain, and

they

were growing as fast as if she'd had no treatment at all. She lay

helplessly in

bed while her mother-in-law ran her house and drove her boys to band

practice and ball games. When her oncologist suggested one more round

of

chemotherapy, admitting it would only extend her life by a few

months, Stude

declined. " I was so sick, it wasn't worth it, " she says. One of the

last things the

doctor told her was, " There's nothing else out there. "

 

Mike Stude refused to let his wife give up. He found an experimental

gene

therapy study in Iowa, but the program wasn't yet ready for patients.

The

Studes were considering a trip to Mexico to try some kind of " miracle

water "

when Lorraine's brother called to say he'd seen a doctor on TV who

had a

medicine made for her kind of cancer. Former patients said they'd

been cured.

It was expensive, but it was nontoxic, so there'd be no serious side

effects

apart from farigue. The Studes were frantic to meet the doctor.

 

For 18 years, Stanislaw Burzynski, M.D., Ph.D., has treated patients

with a

drug he created that doesn't have FDA aproval. In the process, he's

been

called a quack and a scofflaw, been served more court summonses than

he

can count, and earned a prominent spot on the American Cancer

Society's

" unproved methods " blacklist. Now he's under grand-jury

investigation; while

the details are still being kept secret even from Dr. Burzynski, he

suspects the

issue at stake is whether he is illegally shipping his medicines

across state

lines. (He maintains he has never done this.)

 

Dr. Burzynski's controversial medicines, called antineoplastons, are

derived

from peptides, which are fragments of protein. In the early days of

his

operation, the peptides were isolated from blood. When that became

too

expensive, he switched to deriving them from urine, which was drained

from

urinals at public parks. Now the antineoplastons are synthesized

chemically

in a laboratory. Two years' treatment can run up a tab of more than

$100,000 -

- a cost seldom covered by insurance. None of this seems to matter to

his

desperate patients.

 

Lorraine Stude first visited the Burzynski Clinic in Houston in

August 1993.

Within two weeks of beginning antineoplaston treatment, she was free

of

headaches and able to wean herself off the steroid. She sits now near

the

sliding glass doors of her dining room, surveying her family's wheat

fields.

After two and a half years on the treatment, she feels more normal

than she

has in a long time, except for the stroller at her side. She wheeled

her sons in

it when they were babies: now it holds an IV pump that sends

antineoplastons

to her veins through a chest catheter 24 hours a day. Like all of Dr.

Burzynski's patients, she changes her own IV bags at home. At her

latest

checkup in October, no signs of the tumors were found. Stude is lucky

in other

ways, too: although she and Mike spent about $21,000 at the start of

the

treatments, their insurance company began covering the antineoplaston

therapy after her scans showed improvement. She hopes to be off the

IV

soon; then she'll take antineoplaston capsules for a few months to

complete

the therapy.

 

Stude's family doctor, Nasreen Shah, M.D., is uncertain about how to

explain

the tumor's disappearance. " It's very tricky, " she says, " because

tumors

regress spontaneously, too, sometimes. "

 

Could spontaneous remission also explain the case of Pamela

Winningham,

43, of Skillman, NJ, a former patient of Dr. Burzynski, who is now

cancer-free?

These days, Winningham is doing exactly what an oncologist suggested

in

1987, after surgery and high-level radiation hadn't stopped the

growth of her

anaplastic astrocytoma (another form of brain stem cancer). " He said,

'Eat,

drink, and be merry,' " she recalls. " I was confused. I said, 'Excuse

me, what do

you mean?' And he said, 'You have about six weeks to six months to

live.' "

 

Like Stude, Winningham discovered Dr. Burzynski through TV. She began

antineoplaston treatments in June 1988, when they still required

sitting with a

nonportable IV drip for eight hours at a time. Within three months,

her tumor

stopped growing. Winningham recalls, " My radiologist was skeptical,

but

astounded. " By January 1989, her brain scan was clear. By March,

after

completing ten months of daily tretment, she was in full remission.

Her MRIs

have now been clear for seven years. (Most cancers are considered

cured

after they've been in remission for fiveyears.)

 

Winningham still copes with the lingering side effects of radiation

and surgery:

One side of her face is partially paralyzed; she sees double, has

poor

balance, and can't feel heat or cold in her left fingers and toes.

But she's

philosophical. " Those are just things you live with, " she says

cheerfully.

 

Ellen Trocchio of Lubbock, TX, has been in remission for 16 years.

One of Dr.

Burzynski's earliest patients, Trocchio, 52, was only 26, with a

husband and

two young sons, when she was diagnosed with papillary mesothelioma, a

rare cancer caused by asbestos exposure. Surgeons at Memorial Sloan-

Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, removed the polyps, along

with six

feet of her intestines. Nine years later, after she and her family

had moved

from New York to Texas, the cancer returned in her ovaries and lower

abdominal cavity. This time, doctors said there wa nothing more they

could do

for her.

 

They gave me two years to live, and that was it, " she says. " I sent

letters to the

Mayo Clinic and all over the country. Everybody said, 'We're sorry

you have

that, but we can't help you. " Her brother-in-law had seen Dr.

Burzynski on a

TV show. She called him; he made no promises , but agreed to treat

her.

" Nine months later, the cancer was dissolved, " Trocchio says. " For

ten years, I

was on two hundred and fifty or more pain pills a month. After the

first two

weeks of antineoplaston treatment, I was able to go off them. Even I

couldn't

believe it. "

 

Dr. Burzynski 's clinic provides potential patients with the phone

numbers of

more than a dozen former patients who have compelling stories about

remission. Winningham and Trocchio sometimes receive several calls a

week

from people frantic for a cure, but they dont mind. " You hear stories

and it

brings you right back, " Winningham says. " If I can give anyone hope,

I'm glad

to. "

 

But there isn't a happy ending for everyone who goes to Dr.

Burzynski.

Joylene Moellering of Fredericksburg, TX, was upbeat and optimistic

last

March after two weeks of antineoplastic treatment. In fact, she

looked

glowingly healthy, especially considering that surgeons in Austin had

reoved

a glioblastoma multiforme the size of an egg from her brain only the

month

before. Over their objections she opted for antineoplaston therapy as

a

followup rather than radiation or chemotherapy. Moellering, 54, died

in early

May.

 

How many patients are being fed false hope? Dr. Burzynski can't say;

nor

does he even know what percentage of his patients have gone into

remission.

He claims high " response rates " for noncurable brain and prostate

cancers;

as well as good response rates for -- in descending order --

non-Hodgkin's

lymphoma, pancreatic cancer, and breast, lung, and colon cancer. But

response rate doesn't mean " cure rate. " " Some patients relapsed and

died

soon, " Dr. Burzynski admits. But he argues that's because many

patients

come to him too late and too weak from chemotherapy; that

antineoplastons

are not a magic bullet; and that " there are some types of cancers

where we

don't see any response at all. "

 

Patients see this kind of talk as straightforward and frank, but it

makes some

medical professionals angry. " Response rates " are only anecdotal

evidence

and can't take the place of rigorous scientific studies, which are

generally

required for FDA approval.

 

But in spite of improvements in cancer treatments, about a half

million people

still die of the disease every year. This has created a huge market

for

alternative therapies for frustrated and desperate patients.

According to a

landmark New England Journal of Medicine study, nearly one fourth of

Americans who try unconventional therapies are cancer patients. The

dizzying array of options -- all unproven -- includes everything from

nutritional

supplements and special diets to non-FDA approved drugs and such

herbal

and folk remedies as eating shark cartilage or drinking tea derived

from tree

bark.

 

Unlike some alternative practitioners, Dr. Burzynski has an air of

credibility

that either makes him more real, or more dangerous, depending on your

outlook. He earned an M.D. with a Ph.D. in biochemistry in his native

Poland.

In 1970 he fled to the United States and worked for several years at

Baylor

College of Medicine in Houston, where he did research and at the same

time

passed the exam for a license to practice medicine in Texas. His

problems

began when he opened his clinic in 1977. He was already using his

drugs on

patients. This wasn't illegal; in Texas, doctors can prescribe " any

drugs,

remedies, or clinical supplies as are necessary to meet the patient's

immediate needs. " But it was a flagrant violation of accepted

scientific

protocol. This is why, for nearly 20 years, the FDA and the Texas

State Board

of Medical Examiners have tried to shut down his operation.

 

As for Dr. Burzynski's successes, Saul Green, Ph.D., a New York

City-based

private cancer researcher, suggests, " If it's the least bit possible

that previous

treatment could have caused a remission, then there's no evidence

that his

treatment works. " Results of radiation and chemotherapy can manifest

themselves months after treatment has ended. But Dr. Burzynski has

also

successfully treated patients who haven't had any chemotherapy or

radiation -

- to which doctors argue that the stage and aggressiveness of the

cancer, and

the patient's age and general health, also influence his or her

survival.

 

" The world is full of people whose doctors told them they're going to

die, " says

Martin Raber, M.D., physician in chief at M.D. Anderson Cancer Center

in

Houston. About half of all patients given a cancer diagnosis this

year will be

" cured, " he says. And while spontaneous stabilizations are rare and

" very

much a mystery, " they do happen. Likewise, there is anecdotal

evidence that

a positive attitude plays a role in a patient's recovery.

 

Dr. Raber doesn't see harm in patients seeking alternative treatments

-- if they

are a last resort, if they work, andif they don't leave families

penniless. But

he's concerned about patients with a better medical prognosis who

make

unproved therapies a first choice. " When I think about patients I've

treated, " he

says, " the ones I remember were the tragedies in which people with

good

prognoses threw away a really good chance to cure their cancer. "

 

Such patients may be tempted to try alternatives because they fear

the

debilitating side effects of mainsteam therapies. Chris McDonald, 44,

of

Occidental, CA, was terrified when, in 1990, she was given a

diagnosis of

non-Hodgkin's lymphoma throughout her lymphatic system, bone marrow,

and spleen. Lymphomas are considered treatable with bone marrow

transplants or chemotherapy. but McDonald, a lawyer and a single

mother

with young children, agonized over both options. " My take on what

they meant

by 'treatable' was life extension, not a cure, " she says.

 

A bone marrow transplant, although it had a good success rate, would

have

required two months in isolation, away from her children, Evan and

Lucy, then

3 and 4 years old. " They basically give you a high dose of

chemotherapy and

then insert bone marrow stems, " she says. " You can go through that

whole

procedure and then have the stems grow back with cancer. "

Chemotherapy

didn't seem much better; increasingly stronger and more debilitating

doses

would have given her about a 13-year life expectancy. " " You have a

life witing

for the cancer to come back, " she says. It didn't help that her

mother had died

of lung cancer while undergoing chemotherapy. McDonald didn't rule

out

conventional treatment entirely, but she decided to save it for a

last resort

only.

 

Her oncologists at Stanford University Medical Center monitored her

CAT

scans while she tried a strict macrobiotic diet, acupuncture,

" colonic

cleansing " (enemas), and yoga. The regimen was so time-consuming and

stressful that she had to phase out her legal practice; and by May

1993, her

cancer had begun to spread. At the rate it was progressing, she was

about six

months shy of needing chemotherapy. " I figured I'd give Dr. Burzynski

three

months and if that didn't work, I'd have another three months to try

something

else, " she says.

 

McDonald began taking antineoplastons in December 1993. She was

queasy

at first about the chest catheter and IV bags, but appreciated that

she could

live a close-to-normal life. The cancer has slowly regressed. She no

longer

sees an oncologist, and she hopes to soon be off the ten-pound pump

she

carried in a fanny pack.

 

Mary Jo Siegel, a 45-year-old mother from Pacific Palisades, CA, also

opted

against conventional treatment. She was close to undergoing a bone

marrow

transplant at th Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston when she

visited Dr.

Burzynski's office and changed her mind. She has been in remission

from

non--Hodgkin's lymphoma for two years since completing his therapy.

Says

Siegel, " I thank God every day that I had time to at least try it. "

 

You wouldn't guess from looking at Dr. Burzynski that he could incite

so much

controvery. His lab coat bears a motto taken from the Hippocratic

oath that

translates, " First, do no harm. " A solid, small man with beady eyes,

he's hardly

a commanding presence. His bushy mustache hides his upper lip and

makes

it difficult to understand his heavily accented monotone voice. In

his waiting

room, he displays a photograph of himself and his wife with Pope John

Paul

II. But he also makes known his feelings about the establishment,

with a

poster of Albert Einstein that reads, " Great spirits have always met

with violent

opposition from mediocre minds. "

 

In Dr. Burzynski's war against the medical mainsteam, this room has

become

command central. Waiting for appointments, patients from all corners

of the

country swap anecdotes that spread like brushfires. They are

comrades,

survivors not only against the odds, but also against a system that

doesn't

give them the answers they want to hear.

 

It's difficult not to get swept up in their enthusiasm. Mark O'Neal

Speight, M.D.,

a family practitioner in Charlotte, NC, who brought his 64-year-old

mother to

Houston for antineoplaston treatment, was moved by the people he met.

" With

the exception of only one person who was just getting started, the

half-dozen

people in that waiting room were better, " says Dr. Speight. " One guy

had lung

cancer and it was completely gone. He'd done nothing but undergone

treatment with Dr. Burzynski's medicine -- no chemotherapy, no

radiation, no

surgery. You see people like that, and you just have to pay

attention. "

 

Dr. Speight's mother had brain-stem glioblastoma multiforme;

radiation

treatments failed to slow it. Within eight weeks of anti-neoplaston

treatment,

however, the tumor had decreased in size by 20 percent. Because of

complications, the dosage had to be decreased and the tumor grew

back. In

May, she died of complications, but Dr. Speight feels the $10,000

spent on the

four-month treatment was well worth it, since his mother lived nine

months

longer than her doctors first predicts.

 

Dr. Speight had brought hs mother to Houston on the advice of

Portland, OR,

actuary Bob Maver, who had made more than a dozen site visits to

confirm

the long-term remissions patients claimed. Dr. Burzynski's own

studies

weren't formal enough to satisfy Maver's need for statistical

certainty, but he

lobbied the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to examine them further.

" If these

kind of results ever happened out of Memorial Sloan-Kettering, it

would be

plastered all over the front page, " says Maver.

 

The NCI reviewed seven of Dr. Burzynski's case studies and launched

its own

antineoplaston trials, starting in 1993, at Memorial Sloan-Kettering

and the

Mayo Clinic. But because Dr. Burzynski, who provides the

antineoplastons,

squabbled so much over the protocol governing patients, the trials

came to a

halt in August 1995, before any conclusions could be drawn.

 

Former NCI researcher Dvorit Samid, Ph.D., has also been studying a

compound called phenylacetate, which is a main ingredient in one of

the

antineoplaston preparations Dr. Burzynski uses. Dr. Samid, now an

associate

professor of Medicine at the University of Virginia in

Charlottesville, is

optimistic. In Phase I trials, she says " activity was seen in

conditions that had

none of the classical side effects of toxic therapy. " But Phase I

trials are meant

to determine only whether a drug is toxic; not whether it works.

Although it's

too early to evaluate her Phase II and Phase III results, which would

answer

that question, Dr. Samid maintains, " the drug deserves attention. "

 

Dr. Burzynski also conducts his won clinical trials, but they're not

associated

with the NCI; and although they're periodically audited by the FDA,

they are

not, in a strinct sense, supervised. For years, he has tried

unsuccessfully to

get FDA approval for his drugs. Greed may be part of the problem. Dr.

Burzynski has patents on antineoplastons that make them too expensive

to

interest drug companies. Although he says his clinic barely makes

ends meet,

he seems to be thriving personally: He drives a Lexus and frequents

posh

restaurants.

 

That could change at any time. In February 1995, he almost lost his

Texas

medical license. A busload of supporters, including a half-dozen

patients with

IV bags in their fanny packs, filled a courtroom last February at his

appeal.

Television crews were there to record the drama. His case had dragged

on for

years, but within 15 minutes of the finished arguments, the judge

declared the

Texas State Medical Board of Medical Examiners had been " arbitrary

and

capricious " in its action against him. The gasp in the courtroom was

audible;

all of Dr. Burzynski's patients stood up, applauded, and cried.

 

But just days later, the FDA and U.S. postal officials raided his

Houston clinic

for evidence that he had shipped his medicines illegally across state

lines.

The grand-jury investigation is ongoing, with records of dozens of

patients

seized and subpoenas issued to several patients, employees,

pharmaceutical

companies, and even authors of books that mention Dr. Burzynski. It

is the

fourth time he has been investigated by a grand jury; to date, no

indictments

have been made. He insists he's done nothing wrong. " I don't

understand

what I'm doing, " he says. " My discovery will save millions of people

once it's

accepted. It will turn medicine upside down. "

 

Meanwhile, a whole new world of therapies is working its way through

mainsteam research. The NCI has more than 160 drugs in clinical

trials and is

almost as desperate as patients for non-toxic treatments. But the sad

fact is,

cancer researchers simply can't work fast enough for patients already

looking

at a drained hourglass. Indeed, in what may prove to be Dr.

Burzynski's best

hope yet for respectability, a House of Representatives' committee is

investigating FDA abuses, including its slowness to give approval to

potentially lifesaving treatments, using antineoplastons as a central

example.

 

WHETHER ANTINEOPLASTONS OR SOMETHING ELSE is saving some of

Dr. Burzynski's patients is still impossible to say. Lorraine Stude

is a woman of

strong faith, but she is certain that the drugs, not miracles, are

the reasons she

is still alive.

 

Indeed, many of Dr. Burzynski's most ardent supporters are mothers

who are

desperate to survive to raise their children. Could this motivation

play some

part in affecting cures? Pamela Winningham can barely contain her

excitement over her daughter's basketball victories and dean's list

honors.

" When I was diagnosed with the tumor, she was in second grade. Now

she's

fifteen! " She says. McDonald's early goal was to see her daughter

grow up;

now its to see her children grow up. Thanks to Dr. Burzynski, she

says, she

may get to do just that.

 

-----------------

----------------------

Zol Consultants, Inc.

December 14, 1995

 

 

Saul Green, Ph.D.

President,

Zol Consultants, Inc.

340 West 57th Street, Suite 8J

New York, NY 10019

(212) 957-8029

 

Alan M. Waxenberg

Publisher

Good Housekeeping Magazine

959 Eighth Avenue

New York, NY 10019

 

Dear Mr. Waxenberg,

 

I am writing to express my outrage at the article " Desperate

Measures " that

was published in the January 1996 issue of Good Housekeeping. The

author

of the article, a Ms. Glentzer, contacted me several months ago

asking for an

interview on the subject of Stanislaw Burzynski and his

antineoplaston

treatment for cancer when she learned that I had published on the

subject

and had a complete factual understanding of the validity of the

claims made

for this treatment.

 

I asked if her intent was to present an objective account of the

situation or to

promote Burzynski's treatment. I told her I wanted no part of it if

it was

intended to be a promotion because, in my view, all of the quackery

miracles

we see in the U.S. today are a result of the tear-provoking tales of

medical

miracles that fill our magazines and TV screen. Ms. Glentzer assured

me that

she only wanted to present the whole truth and I believed her. I

answered all

of her questions and gave her all the information I had on

Burzynski's

credentials, theories, published proofs. I also gave her my evalution

of the

scientific validity of his claims.

 

Mr. Waxenberg, you have only to read the article to recognize that

Glentzer's

intent was anything but to tell the whole story about Burzynski's

treatment.

Instead of presenting the facts she had, she focused on the anecdotes

of

medical miracles. She made no effort to speak to the patients

doctors, the

families of patients who died miserably as a result of the treatment

or patients

who suffered because they believed the media hype about Burzynski and

opted to forego effective treatment.

 

I don't usualy write letters like this because I know they are

quickly disposed

of in the " round file " under the desk. But the guranteed consequence

of this

article has me greatly disturbed, for I know it will produce a new

flood of

scared, desperate patients, who can ill afford it, to rush to his

clinic, seeking

the miracle cures Glentzer wrote about. When that happens, the

responsbility

will rest entirely on your shoulders as well as on those of Ellen

Levine and

Diane Salvatore because you could have stopped it and you didn't.

 

Saul Green, Ph.D.

 

CC:

 

William Jarvis, NCAHF

Elizabeth Whelan, Sc. D, M.P.H., American Council On Science and

Health

Davis Kessler, M.D., Commissioner, FDA

Victor Herbert, M.D., J.D., Mt. Sinai School of Medicine

Steven Barrett, M.D.

 

-----------------

----------------------

 

Good Housekeeping

December 26, 1995

 

Good Housekeeping

959 Eighth Avenue

 

 

 

 

 

 

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