Stanislaw Burzynski has been “curing” people with cancer for the last 35 years using alternative medicine. One problem: he doesn’t cure them. In fact,
The Texas-based “alternative cure practitioner” fails to liberate patients from cancer, but has a remarkable talent for liberating them from their money.
Today we find out that:
Stanislaw Burzynski, the Houston cancer quack who charges exorbitant amounts to the most desperate terminal cancer patients to enroll in bogus clinical trials, retains his medical license in Texas (PDF) and is free to continue to do what he has been doing for 35 years. On Tuesday, the Texas Medical Board decided to discontinue its prosecution of Burzynski. This comes on the heels of the judges’ decision that Burzynski was not liable for the actions of the physicians in his employ. According to the Motion to Dismiss: “[the judges] reaffirmed in Order No. 16 that [the law in question] did not address civil liability for physicians other than surgeons working in operating room settings or stand for the proposition that the actions of a licensed physician may create administrative liability for the license of another physician. The Honorable [judges] concluded they would not consider evidence of administrative vicarious liability.”
While the alternative medicine folks will likely declare this vindicates his treatment, it doesn’t.
He still, after 35 years, does not have a single clinical trial to back up the claim that his treatments work, a fact reinforced recently by an order from the FDA to Burzynski (PDF) to stop promoting his treatment, antineoplastons (ANP), as if it were safe and effective.
Cancer is a terrible disease and it’s unconscionable that that Burzynski will continue to offer false hope and worthless treatments to some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
Link courtesy of the ever awesome Ben Sweatervest Blanchard
