On April 11, Les replied to Tom:

I'd suggest that one reason is that he's being sold a "miracle cure."
Aka "alternative medicine." One can find a lot of that in Tijuana.

Burzynski (correct spelling) sells "Antineoplastons" made in part from
human urine. Reminds me of a fellow, known to others on this group, who
was so sure that drinking his own urine would cure his prostate cancer
(PCa) that he continued to do so until his PCa killed him. A true
believer......

Here is an assessment from the American Cancer Society publication CA
Cancer J Clin 2004;54;110-118 entitled "Alternative Cancer Cures:
'Unproven' or 'Disproven'?" by Andrew Vickers, PhD, who is Assistant
Attending Research Methodologist, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center:

"Stanislaw Burzynski treats patients at a pri-
vate clinic using what he terms antineoplastons,
mixtures of peptides, amino acids, and other
simple organic substances that are said to pro-
mote the body’s natural defenses against cancer.
Although he has published several studies of his
own*, these are of a rather unclear design. A
Phase II trial in glioma conducted under the
auspices of the National Cancer Institute was
halted due to poor accrual, after Burzynski
failed to agree with the investigators on possible
expansion of the eligibility criteria. Nine
patients were accrued, six of whom were able
to be evaluated for response. There were no
objective responses, and all six showed evi-
dence of tumor progression after treatment du-
rations of between 16 to 66 days. The mean
time to treatment failure (progression or dis-
continuation due to toxicity) was 29 days. All
nine patients died before the study closed, all
but one death being due to tumor progression.
Although the authors of the article claimed that
the small sample size precluded 'definitive
conclusions,' the results of the patients in the
trial are clearly extremely disappointing."

*In "alternative medicine" magazines

NOTE "no objective responses"
NOTE the time to tumor progression.

If those nine poor souls who were killed by their tumors had been
treated at MD Anderson, perhaps they would have had a better outcome.

The abstract is at
http://caonline.amcancersoc.org/cgi/content/abstract/54/2/110
There, one will find a link to the PDF file of the entire article.

My advice for Tom's friend: Run, do not walk, to the nearest exit.

Regards,

Steve J

"There is nothing sadder than the brutal murder of a beautiful theory by
a gang of ugly facts."
--Francois, Duc de la Rochefoucauld