Stanisław Burzyński claims that he has developed an effective therapy, but the scientific community considers his research unprofessional.
Stanisław Burzyński is a biochemist and doctor of medical sciences from Lublin. At the end of the 70s, he settled permanently in the USA, where he makes a staggering career. In 1977, Burzynski opened his own clinic, and seven years later a research institute.
In the scientific world, the doctor is known mainly for his controversial postulates. For several decades, he claims to have discovered an effective cure for cancer. According to Burzynski, the secret of effective anti-cancer therapy lies in antineoplastons. What are these mysterious relationships? Unfortunately, they don’t have a strict chemical definition. The doctor coined this term to describe the peptides that he uses in his treatment. It is known that these are compounds contained, inter alia, in human saliva and urine. The name comes from the word neoplasm, meaning cancer, so antineoplastons are simply anti-cancer compounds.
Burzynski first shared his theory with the world in 1984, but due to the lack of sufficient evidence for the effectiveness of the therapy, the FDA did not allow the drug to be used. However, this did not discourage the patients who from all over the world come to the Burzynski clinic every year since then in the hope of being cured. BBC journalist Richard Bilton estimated that charities raise several hundred thousand pounds each year to send sick Britons to a clinic in the United States for treatment.
It could be assumed that due to the lack of consent to the use of antineoplastons in treatment, Burzynski would cease his activity. Nothing could be more wrong. Patients who come to his center receive the drug as part of a clinical experiment. Drugs administered as test preparations do not need to be approved by the FDA. Burzyński’s research center produces about 300 liters of a preparation containing antineoplastons daily. In the past, this process was based on extraction from human urine, today the drug is produced by synthesis.
What is the actual state of knowledge about the effectiveness of antineoplastons? Phase II of the clinical experiment was conducted under the supervision of the National Cancer Institute. Six patients with brain tumors participated in it. The patients were given the drug for two years. During this time, progression of the disease was observed in all of them. Five patients had side effects from the nervous system. All the sick died. In a publication summarizing this stage of the research, the researchers wrote: The effectiveness of A10 and AS2-1 antineoplastons remains unproven. We were unable to see any improvement in any of the six patients. Moreover, in 2004, the American Cancer Society stated that the treatment developed by the Pole was a therapy with disproved efficacy.
Despite such devastating results, Burzyński maintains that many patients he treats at the clinic recover. The doctor says, however, that these results cannot be made public for the time being. The scientific community states that if Burzynski did discover something, but refuses to provide accurate data for fear of losing the drug monopoly, his behavior is simply unethical.
One of Burzynski’s patients was Mrs. Petagine’s daughter, Lena. Lena died in August last year, but her mother does not regret the fact that she sought treatment. I think that gave us an extra year, Petagine said in an interview with the BBC. If I had not come for treatment, I would have been wondering all the time, ‘God, if I had only tried’. Hope cannot be put to a price.
source: BBC
text: AG