But instead of dying as told, Ingrid went to Burzynski and told him about her experiences at NIH after which he treated her for free. Whilst at Burzynski’s clinic, Ingrid and Lon met a woman who had been part of the NCI’s failed phenylacetate trial. Ingrid told the lady about Dr. Thibault’s overjoyed reaction that antineoplaston was not working. The woman said that that this was not his reaction when he “told me that phenylacetate wasn’t working on me, he was very sad.!” (p367) Although Ingrid died about six months later, it wasn’t from the tumor. Surprisingly, this time Ingrid responded to antineoplastons. Lon wondered “why, if she was in fact getting full strength antineoplastons at NIH, she didn’t respond there, when she did respond at Burzynski’s clinic.”(p367) The success of antineoplastons is dose related and the correct protocol must be strictly adhered to. The NCI knew from there own experience when visiting Burzynski in 1991 that lower dosages of antineoplastons have no effect. In 1995 the NCI canceled its trials of antineoplastons. In February 1999, the Mayo clinic published a review of the NCI trials and included the level of antineoplastons in patient’s blood after treatment. It was 53 times less than the concentrations found in Burzynski’s patients blood when he tests them. The NCI was either guilty of gross incompetence by failing to follow a simple protocol, or they purposely under dosed the patients in order to make certain that antineoplastons failed.

In January 1996, the FDA wanted to stop Burzysnki from treating any patients that didn’t meet FDA rules for being treated with antineoplastons, which usually meant radiation and chemotherapy first. Because they have such a devastating effect on the immune system, there is far less chance that antineoplastons (or anything for that matter) will work. Burzynski said that patients would die, to which the FDA attorney responded that any harm brought to patients as a result was “irrelevant.” (p373) I wonder if he would be that cavalier with people’s lives if it were his loved ones that needed the treatment? Shawn and Desiree McConnell were despairing for their young son Zachary who was very sick after chemotherapy and radiation treatment for his brain cancer. They heard about Burzynski and went for treatment in March 1996. Two months later Zac’s MRI was clear. When they tried to obtain more medicine in May they were told by the FDA’s Dr. Robert De Lap that Zac could only take more antineoplastons after the tumor returned. Furthermore, De Lap required a report from a radiation therapist stating that the tumor could not be treated with radiation. The McConnell’s testified at a Senate hearing about what the FDA was doing to them. This initiated publicity and letters to congressmen. On July 2, De Lap wrote to Burzynski telling him to resume Zac’s treatment. As Shawn McConnell said, “Between those two letters, the only things that happened were political and media pressure. Now we know these FDA decisions aren’t based on science or the welfare of the patient. They’re based on power and politics.” (p376)

Eventually in 1997, the FDA managed to bring Burzynski to trial. The charges were engaging in interstate commerce as well as insurance and mail fraud. From 1977 Burzynski was well aware that he could was not allowed to send antineoplastons across state lines. But patients could come to his clinic from another state and take antineoplastons back home with them. This was legal and the FDA was well aware of it. But the FDA had become so desperate after 3 previous grand juries failed to bring an indictment, this time they managed to convince a grand jury that this new interpretation did constitute interstate commerce. During the trial, patients were not allowed to testify about antineoplaston efficacy. The defense tried to introduce a report by Dr. Robert Burdick, oncologist and professor at the University of Washington Medical School. Burdick based his report on 17 cases of brain cancer that were treated with antineoplastons as of April 1996. He writes,

As a rough estimate, neurosurgeons do well to cure one in every 1,000-brain cancer patients they operate on. Radiation therapy slows the growth of adult tumors, gaining perhaps one month of life, and may result in a cure of only one in 500-1,000 patients. Similarly, chemotherapy, despite 30 years of clinical trials, has not resulted in the development of a single drug or drug combination that elicits more than an occasional transient response in primary brain tumors.’

After reviewing Burzynski’s cases Burdick wrote “I am very impressed with the number of complete and partial responses…compared with the number of responses that I have seen in my personnel experience. The responses here are far in excess of any prior series of patients published in the medical literature…the response rate here is an astounding 81%, with an equally astounding 35% complete remission…It is very clear the responses here are due to antineoplaston therapy and are not due to surgery, radiation or standard chemotherapy.” (p379/80) Judge Lake ruled Burdicks report irrelevant. On March 3, 1997, Lake declared a mistrial. The Jurors were deadlocked 6 to 6. Lake threw out 34 counts of mail fraud. The FDA scheduled another trial for May, eventually only charging Burzynski with contempt of court. The trial lasted three days and Burzynski was acquitted. Commenting on Burzynski’s treatment by the government, Congressman Richard Burr said it was “one of the worst abuses of the criminal justice system” (p380) he had ever witnessed.

I’ll conclude the Burzynski saga with one final piece of information.

Burzynski discovered that Dvorit Samid had applied for a patent on phenylacetate in 1991 putting herself as sole discoverer. This is totally false, as Burzynski had known about phenylacetate since the early 1980’s and mentioned it in his first patent (not claiming it as a cancer treatment) in 1984. Burzynski did not bother patenting phenylacetate because it was far inferior at treating cancer than his other antineoplastons. Samid was issued three patents in 1997 that were assigned to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which contains the NIH. The NIH contains the NCI where Samid was working in 1991. Burzynski found out in 1998 that in actual fact the NCI owns the patent on phenylacetate and they were licensing the patent to Elan Pharmaceutical. It seems the NCI worked a particularly devious and convoluted scheme to obtain the patent on phenylacetate.

Now we have all the information, I think it becomes fairly obvious why antineoplaston patients were massively under dosed during the NCI trials; because it was competing with the NCI’s own patented drug phenylacetate. In January 1998, the FDA’s Mary Pendergast, who was the boss of Robert Spiller (the FDA’s front man in its vendetta to get Burzynski), became Executive Vice President for Governmental Affairs for Elan Pharmaceutical.

E-mail this sites address to someone and help spread the word

Return to the top of the page

E-mail me: cancerinfo11@yahoo.com

Please sign my guestbook