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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Burzynski Clinic | 1/6 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burzynski_Clinic | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:17:44.243805+00:00 | kb-cron |
The Burzynski Clinic is a clinic selling an unproven cancer treatment, which has been characterized as harmful quackery. It was founded in 1976 and is located in Houston, Texas, in the United States. It offers a form of chemotherapy originally called "antineoplaston therapy" devised by the clinic's founder Stanislaw Burzynski in the 1970s. Antineoplaston is Burzynski's term for a group of urine-derived peptides, peptide derivatives, and mixtures. There is no accepted scientific evidence of benefit from antineoplaston combinations for various diseases, and the Clinic's claimed successes have not been replicated by independent researchers. The therapy has been rebranded in various ways over the years to mirror fashions in medicine, for example as a kind of "immunotherapy". The therapy is administered through the ruse of running a large numbers of clinical trials, which long-time Burzynski lawyer Richard Jaffe described as "a joke". The clinic has been the focus of criticism primarily due to the way its antineoplaston therapy is promoted, the costs for people with cancer participating in trials of antineoplastons and problems with the way these trials are run. Legal cases have been brought as a result of the sale of the therapy without regulatory approval. Burzynski is also the president and founder of a pharmaceutical company, the Burzynski Research Institute, which manufactures his antineoplaston drugs.
== Stanislaw Burzynski ==
Stanislaw Rajmund Burzynski was born in 1943. In 1967, Burzynski graduated from the Medical Academy in Lublin, Poland. In 1968, he received another degree. Burzynski claims this degree was a Ph.D. in biochemistry, but cancer researcher Saul Green found evidence indicating he received a D.Msc. (Doctor of Medical Science) after a one-year project and passage of a test. Burzynski moved to the United States in 1970 and worked at Baylor College of Medicine until 1977. That year, he established the Burzynski Research Laboratory, where he began administering so-called antineoplaston therapy. Initially, the protocol was administered to 21 patients, but it was later offered more widely as an "experimental" therapy. This opened him up to "charges of unethical conduct and to the suspicion he had become a merchant of false hope", which led to several instances of media controversy. Burzynski incorporated his pharmaceutical company, the Burzynski Research Institute, in 1984. Reviewers of his scientific papers have disputed the design of the trials and scientific validity of the published results. In February 2017, following lengthy hearings, the Texas Medical Board recommended Burzynski's medical license be revoked, with the revocation suspended, and a fine of $360,000 for billing irregularities and other violations. Burzynski was married to Barbara Burzynski, also a physician, until her death in 2021. They had three children, including Gregory Burzynski, a physician. Both Gregory and Barbara became board members of the Burzynski Research Institute and worked at the Burzynski Clinic.
== Antineoplaston therapy == Antineoplaston is a name coined by Burzynski for a group of peptides, peptide derivatives, and mixtures that he uses as an alternative cancer treatment. The word is derived from neoplasm. A Reuters fact-check concluded that "Online claims that the drugs are a cancer 'cure' and that any of them has been FDA-approved, are misleading." Although the therapy is promoted as natural and benign, it is in reality a form of chemotherapy with harmful side effects including severe neurotoxicity. Though Burzynski first injected patients with his peptides in 1977, antineoplastons have never been approved for general use. The compounds are not licensed as drugs but are instead sold and administered as part of clinical trials at the Burzynski Clinic and the Burzynski Research Institute. Burzynski stated that he began investigating the use of antineoplastons after detecting what he considered significant differences in the presence of peptides between the blood of cancer patients and a control group. He first identified antineoplastons from human blood. Since similar peptides had been isolated from urine, early batches of Burzynski's treatment were isolated from urine. Burzynski has since produced the compounds synthetically. The first active peptide fraction identified was called antineoplaston A-10 (3-phenylacetylamino-2,6-piperidinedione). From A-10, antineoplaston AS2-1 was derived – a 4:1 mixture of phenylacetic acid and phenylacetylglutamine. The Burzynski Clinic website states that the active ingredient of antineoplaston A10-I is phenylacetylglutamine. Since 2011, the clinic has marketed itself as offering "personalized gene-targeted cancer therapy", which has stirred further controversy. David Gorski argues that the concept of "personalised cancer therapy" is "more of a marketing term than a scientifically meaningful description". According to Gorski, a research oncologist, it appears unlikely that the Burzynski clinic would indeed be able to actually personalise gene-targeting therapies, i.e., "identify who would benefit from specific targeted therapies simply from blood tests," as Burzynski claims, since there are no proven methods to achieve this. Consequently, many reject Burzynski's claim of offering personalized medicine, because in reality his patients are administered untested combinations of various approved and unapproved medications, without a sound rationale for a given combination and without "any concern for potential adverse reactions". As of 2023 the Clinic refreshed the branding of its offering to include the word "immunotherapy" in an attempt to leverage the popular excitement around cancer immunotherapy. The treatment however remains the same, using antineoplastons.
=== Clinical trials ===