The clearest example of where government overprotects people is its irrational insistence that terminally ill cancer patients should only use FDA-approved drugs or standard remedies, and can only use experimental drugs after the so-called “proven remedies” have failed. Everyone in the conventional medical community knows that there are certain kinds of cancer for which there are no curative treatments…. Dying patients should have the ultimate say as to what treatments they should be able to take, and their choices should include any experimental or unconventional treatment the patients can get their hands on.
–Richard Jaffe, Galileo’s Lawyer
Stanislaw Burzynski, M.D., was born in Lublin, Poland, in 1943 and is an internationally recognized physician and scientist who has pioneered the development and use of biologically active peptides (antineoplastons) in diagnosing, preventing, and treating cancer and other diseases since 1967.
The Burzynski clinic has effectively treated more than fifty types of cancer but has the most consistent successes with cancers of the brain, breast, head and neck, prostate, colon, lungs, and ovaries, as well as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Patients with aggressive brain tumors often qualify for FDA-controlled clinical trials and can receive antineoplastons. Others may be treated with personalized combinations of gene-targeted medications, some of them from the antineoplaston family with comparable results.
I met Dr. Burzynski at the American College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM) awards dinner in Las Vegas in November 2008—ironically, one week before the events I describe in the opening chapter of this book, when I was misdiagnosed with full-body cancer. There was a buzz about him, and I was told several times that evening, “You must meet Dr. Burzynski. He’s the doctor who’s curing cancer.”
Dr. Burzynski is to be celebrated for his accomplishments as a brave and courageous pioneer. No one has worked harder and no one has been more persecuted for his maverick approach. The proofs of his accomplishments are the successful treatments of so many patients. The government tried to take him down but he bounced back up and landed on his feet. His successes are a threat to the orthodox cancer protocols. His approach with targeted gene therapy and antineoplastons for so many kinds of cancer is working where traditional chemotherapy rarely does.
Those who want to discredit him ask the obvious question: “If this treatment is so good, why don’t other oncologists jump on board?” According to Dr. Julian Whitaker:
Here’s where it gets ugly. The paradigm that governs all conventional cancer treatment is that one must “purge the body of cancer cells.” Conventional cancer treatment is a search-and-destroy mission: find a tumor, cut it out, poison it with chemotherapy, or obliterate it with radiation.
If there is an approach to cancer that obviously isn’t working, this is it. In spite of dramatic advances in these invasive procedures (if one could call them advances), the death rate for cancer has not budged over the last fifty years. In fact, it has increased. Yes, you may hear about cancer patients surviving longer today, but the reality is that we’re talking months, not years, for most of the common types of fatal cancer.
Despite the fact that this approach doesn’t work, it is nevertheless firmly entrenched and almost universally accepted. One reason is because physicians are notoriously resistant to change. It is understandable. Oncologists spend three to five years in intensive training to ply their trade. Acceptance of Burzynski’s discovery would nullify those efforts.
One day, I believe, Dr. Burzynski will be a historic figure. But right now he is, as in the famous Schopenhauer quote about the three stages of truth, in “violent opposition.” Were there to be a cure, it would put an end to all the marches and the research dollars, and most of all a big huge chemotherapy business to the tune of $200 billion a year.
A cure would force all present protocols to halt, and those in the field would have to learn a whole new way to approach the management of cancer. And maybe that’s what we are talking about here. Some cancers, from my interviews in this book, appear to be “manageable,” just as diabetes is “manageable.” Dr. Burzynski’s patients do not see their cancer as terminal. They are living with it, managing it. Maybe that will make some more comfortable than saying the word cure. Semantics.
Dr. Burzynski has identified missing peptides in the blood and urine of people who have cancer. These peptides are just not there. Those without cancer have these peptides in their blood. This makes sense to me; as with bioidentical hormones: if it’s missing, put it back, and then everything normalizes again. I like simplicity. Because of politics, it’s not that simple. There are FDA requirements.
Dr. Burzynski fled the Iron Curtain in Poland, arrived in America with $15 in his pocket, and managed to create a life that dreams are made of—doing the work he loves and living free. With that freedom, Dr. Burzynski has devoted his life to solving what he believes is the riddle to cancer, and his answer is antineoplastons. But our government interfered and initially tried to put him in jail. Now they interfere once again and force him to alter his approach.
Dr. Burzynski is a biochemist who has invented drugs and maybe the most important and successful non-FDA-approved alternative cancer drug therapy ever in this country: antineoplastons. Unfortunately, he does not have a free hand to use antineoplastons because he is still limited by the FDA to clinical trials.
Nonetheless, he has worked around these limitations, and his patients speak about him with a kind of exuberant reverence. Even though there are some instances where he must now use low-dose, weak chemotherapy to perform clinical trials, his patients do not experience the horrible side effects normally associated with high-dose chemotherapy and many of them are living long, healthy, and productive lives.
We should be grateful for people like Dr. Burzynski with his tenacious nature. Without his passion he might have given up long ago. But passion is indefinable. In spite of everything, he has carried on, and the measure of the man is clear when you read his interview. The information that follows may one day save your life.
SS: Good evening, Dr. Burzynski. It is a pleasure and an honor to speak with you. Tell me, is this what you had planned for your life?
SB: Not exactly. Initially I thought I would study the aging process, but in Poland there were limited possibilities to do research in this area.
A few years into my studies I started working with peptides and amino acids in blood, relative to various illnesses, and I noticed substantial changes in the composition in the blood of patients who have cancer. In fact, there were several peptides which were deficient in patients who had cancer, and I thought that this could be important.
I am a curious person, and in spite of the fact that this was not what I had planned to pursue, I found myself studying cancer. Since I was about to finish I decided to do my doctoral thesis on peptides.
After graduation I really concentrated on cancer. I isolated the peptides that I found were deficient in cancer patients. But Poland was a very difficult country in which to live at that time.
SS: What do you mean by difficult? The politics? The war?
SB: Yes, politics and the war. When I was a kid, my father was arrested by the Nazis because he objected to the fact that Polish and Jewish children were forbidden to go to school. In the late forties the Iron Curtain descended over Poland and suddenly our home was no longer family property. It now belonged to the state, and the state divided our home into apartments and turned them over to workers left homeless by the war. Our family was allowed to remain in a small apartment of what was our former home, but now we were forced to share our bathroom and kitchen with all these strangers who were living with us. We also learned that one woman living in our house was a government spy. It all became very dangerous because my brother was in the anticommunist underground and already many of his friends had been killed in prison.
SS: Did your father ever get out of prison?
SB: Yes, eventually my father was released from prison, but he could never again get a proper teaching job. So when I realized I had few opportunities in Poland, I decided to come to the United States.
SS: Were you worried that you wouldn’t be allowed to leave Poland?
SB: Well, I didn’t know. I did know that the government was trying to suppress Polish science if research in any way threatened Communist principles. They wanted a completely docile population, where no one had an independent thought. Ultimately they wiped out the middle and upper classes, but the irony was that at the same time they wanted to keep the “thinkers” inside Poland, so they made it very difficult to get a passport.
I was not allowed to bring anything with me. When I left I had fifteen bucks in my pocket and chromatographic documentation of the thirty-nine peptides I had singled out. I had an uncle in the Bronx who said I could stay with him. A few weeks after I arrived, I got a message from the Lublin medical school that I was fired from my position as a researcher and that I could no longer have any position at any other Polish medical school. I now realized that I could not go back, so I started to look for a job here.
I was grateful to receive a faculty position at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, which was my first job interview. At that time there was a scientist named George Ungar working on brain peptides at the university’s department of anesthesiology; this department had large grants. George Ungar thought peptides might be important and agreed to allow me to have space in their laboratory to continue my research.
SS: What came out of your research?
SB: That there is a system of peptides which are deficient in cancer patients which can inhibit the growth of cancer cells, and that replacing these peptides kills the cancer cells without killing the normal cells.
In 1976, I presented this information at a conference attended by doctors from all over the world. It caught the attention of the news media, and the next day it was reported internationally by the Associated Press that a researcher at Baylor found peptides that are produced in humans which can kill cancer cells without killing normal cells. Since then my main effort has been to further study these peptides.
SS: How did you test, through animal studies?
SB: First we did animal testing, then, finally, our goal was to do phase I and phase II studies. We did that after I left Baylor. Now we are entering phase III studies and we hope to have FDA approval for marketing soon.
SS: You must feel very pleased with this progress.
SB: I feel lucky that Baylor gave me a job and allowed me to continue my research. We are also working on seeing what role peptides play in memory and what we can do to slow down the progress of Alzheimer’s disease.
SS: Tell me, what exactly is a peptide?
SB: A peptide is a molecule which is composed of two or more amino acids. If you combine two amino acids through a special chemical bond called a peptide bond, you have a peptide. Protein is simply a large peptide.
SS: Okay, let’s break it down even more. What is a protein?
SB: When you have more than fifty amino acids in a molecule, scientists call it a protein. A molecule with fifty or fewer amino acids is called a peptide. So peptides are up to fifty amino acids connected by peptide bonds.
SS: I’m piecing together here. Is insulin a protein?
SB: Historically, yes. Insulin has fifty-one amino acids. After the structure of insulin was discovered and insulin was obtained synthetically, everybody jumped on it and cheered because this was the first synthesized protein.
SS: I ask because I have written so many books on insulin, which I know is a protein, so I’m trying to understand. In breaking down the essence of what a peptide is, I am trying to find why you deemed them so important.
SB: Yes, well, we can’t live without amino acids. Eight of our amino acids are essential, and you’ll die if you don’t have them supplied from the outside. For instance, you need animal proteins to supply these amino acids, and then these amino acids are used as the building blocks of peptides and proteins. We know that proteins are the building blocks of life. Without proteins you don’t have any life except for some viruses, which are composed of nucleic acids and peptides.
SS: What do peptides do?
SB: We have found that peptides are extremely important molecules, in fact, very active in transferring information. By assembling various chains of amino acids you can encode practically any information which is necessary for the function of the human body. My thinking is that cancer is a disease of information processing. If you have the wrong information transfer, as in if you turn on a bad or wrong genetic switch, you activate something which would lead to cancer. But by the same token if you use the right molecular switch, the right peptide, you can turn off the cancer process and you will get rid of the disease.
SS: Kind of like pressing the wrong button on your computer and you mess things up, but if you know the right buttons to push you can correct it.
SB: Yes. Peptides also work as memory tags.
SS: Please explain.
SB: Let’s assume that memory is a circuit of neurons like a special CD in the brain. These molecular CDs have peptide tags and the brain can pull them out as a memory item and that information is further processed in the brain.
SS: Why do we care about this?
SB: Because peptides play an important part in information processing. The body has a defense system, which I call the biochemical defense system which is parallel to the immune system. The immune system consists of proteins and various types of cells, and it protects us against invasion from microorganisms and abnormal cells. The peptide system corrects the information inside the cancer cell. Simply by turning off what is wrong and turning on what is good inside cancer cells, those molecular switches can get rid of cancer cells.
SS: I understand, but I still do not get why peptides could kill cancer cells.
SB: The immune system works by releasing antibodies which attach to wrong proteins on the surface of the cells and they kill them, but the peptide system works through correction of the genetic information, so it is like a second immune system.
If you use the peptide system correctly by identifying the proper molecular switches, then you can work on the genes that cause cancer, and kill cancer cells without killing normal cells.
SS: And you do this through antineoplastons?
SB: Yes, this is the name I gave to these particular peptides that kill cancer cells. The components of the immune system are called antibodies, and antineoplastons are peptides that are the components of this parallel immune system in the body.
SS: So antineoplastons kill malignant cells or eliminate malignant cells and don’t harm normal cells. How do you test? I mean, if a patient has cancer, how do you know if your antineoplastons will be effective?
SB: Well, we used to test for the levels of antineoplastons in the blood. Then we found that all cancer patients are highly deficient in antineoplastons, so we abandoned this test and opted to devote our time and money on more efficient tests. Now we test for genetic compatibility. We know that antineoplastons work on human genes, and people and cancers differ genetically. So genetic compatibility helps us determine which genes antineoplastons work on and which genes they don’t.
SS: You mean which genes turn on the cancer and which genes turn off the cancer?
SB: Yes, the antineoplastons that we use now work on close to one hundred different genes, which cover a broad spectrum of cancers. This means they help numerous patients. For example, there are currently twenty-four FDA-approved gene-targeted drugs, and most of them work on a single gene. That is why these drugs have very little chance to really cure patients, because in the average cancer you have typically more than two thousand genes which are involved. So how can you really bring this under control if you work on a single gene? One of the bestselling cancer drugs, Avastin, works on a single gene, so really it has very little chance to bring the process under complete control, but it can decrease tumors.
SS: Well, that’s when everyone gets excited because “the tumor has shrunk,” but that doesn’t mean “cure,” and it most often comes back, and when it does it ravages the body.
SB: Right, shrinking a tumor is temporary. Antineoplastons work on about one hundred different genes, not just one single gene, which means that patients have a very good chance to be helped, but unfortunately not everybody. It depends on which combination of genes each patient has.
SS: So you know the genes your antineoplastons work on, and is that how you select patients?
SB: Yes, we select the patients who have the best chance to respond to our treatment based on genetic analysis. Also, from our research with numerous other patients we can determine who the best candidates for antineoplastons will be.
SS: If you encounter a patient with a different type of cancer, one in which you have not had good results with antineoplastons, what do you do?
SB: We treat them a different way. We treat them with a personalized cancer treatment using combinations of gene-targeted medications.
SS: What about Ashkenazi Jews? Many of them carry the BRCA gene [BRCA1 or BRCA2].
SB: They don’t have a treatment for this gene in traditional medicine, but antineoplastons [ANP] may work on such patients because BRCA may be one of the genes which can be affected with ANP.
SS: What about breast cancer?
SB: At the moment we use a different approach. We study which genes in individual patients are abnormal, trying to determine the genetic signature of cancer in these patients. With our methods, we can have answers for the patient in about three days based on blood tests. Once we identify the most important oncogenes involved in cancer for that individual, we select a group of four to six medications from those twenty-four which are now approved by the FDA, and use them to hit those genes which are causing the cancer to progress. This is like “boutique treatment” because for every patient we design a treatment plan. When we do this we have a very good chance to have positive results in most patients.
SS: How many respond?
SB: About 85 percent for whom we have the proper gene signature; about 15 percent do not respond. In our responders many of them have tumors which disappear completely and in others the tumors remain small. The problem is finding the genetic signature because for many of these different genetic signatures we don’t have the blood tests … yet.
SS: I like the “yet” part.
SB: We learn something new every day. We have a modern clinic and a workforce that includes more than two dozen people who have doctoral degrees. At present we also use a broad spectrum approach, using medications which work on numerous genes and the patients may respond. With antineoplastons, we have a broad spectrum of activity which work on close to one hundred genes, so we select patients often with the worst types of cancers, like brain tumors, and treat them with antineoplastons. And for others we use a combination of gene-targeted therapy, plus one member of the antineoplaston family which is given orally.
For the majority of Dr. Burzynski’s patients he does not use any chemotherapy, but for some patients the chemotherapy is used in lower dosages, which are below the threshold of significant side effects. Dr. Burzynski takes advantage of the synergistic effect of such combinations that have at least three advantages:
Quick reduction of the tumor bulk
A small chance of significant side effects
Reduced cost due to the fact that he uses substantially lower dosages of medicines
SS: When you talk about gene-targeted therapy, is that chemotherapy?
SB: No, this is not chemotherapy. Most of my patients have already had chemotherapy and it has not been effective for them. The beauty of antineoplastons is that they are natural compounds. They exist in our blood and form a protective system against cancer. You don’t expect to have toxic side effects from chemicals which are normal in your blood. And they cover a broad spectrum of genes, which means from the very beginning we have a much better chance to help this patient.
We use this on children who have the most common type of brain tumor, which is called astrocytoma, and around 93 percent to 95 percent respond favorably to the treatment. Of course, other malignancies might not have such good results because we don’t have sufficient activity against such malignancies. This requires different antineoplastons, and we know they exist, but obviously we can’t do everything at once.
SS: But you’ll get there, and that is the important thing. I admire the work you are doing and your dedication, and I guess I’m supposed to say that at the end of this interview, but I am compelled to say it right now.
But let me make this simple. If I am missing, in my blood and urine, these antineoplastons, these peptides, is this an indicator that I most likely have cancer? And if that is so, then why wouldn’t we test everyone for antineoplastons?
SB: Well, that’s a possibility. One obstacle is that the tests are quite cumbersome. We are developing an instrument that can give you proper answers very quickly. This instrument will tell us what we want to know.
SS: What are you trying to know?
SB: We want to know which genes are silent, and silent means which genes are switched off, because these are the genes that protect us against cancer. From a single drop of blood we will be able to find out which genes are switched off. Maybe this individual has twenty tumor suppressor genes which are not active, and this would mean that this person is highly vulnerable to developing cancer or perhaps he has cancer already.
SS: What causes genes to be switched off?
SB: Just by getting older many genes switch off. They become silent and these are the genes that used to protect you from cancer but now they are off. Once silent they don’t protect. We are also working on a chip which we would insert into the instrument to screen for Alzheimer’s and so on, in fact, any changes leading to disease. We want to find out genetic signals in patients who have cancer and select the proper treatment. In the future, we will find out the signature of the genes which are silent and then use proper prevention.
SS: What is prevention by your standards?
SB: Prevention could simply mean use the right supplements to activate the genes which are silent and then turn the switch on. In other words, activate the genes that protect you from cancer.
SS: Sounds so simple, but I know it’s not. What are the supplements?
SB: There are numerous supplements. We sell Aminocare supplements, which work on a large number of genes. Among others, the chemicals in green tea are also molecular switches which can activate some of the genes and can switch off oncogenes. These are natural ingredients which work on the genes as molecular switches.
Of course, when you have advanced cancer these supplements do not contribute very much. But at the beginning of the cancer process, using supplements and diet modification can help a great deal.
For instance, curcumin [turmeric] is a very good example. This natural substance works on some genes but not on others. If you can identify the genes that are involved, then logically you can regulate the activity of these genes and recheck again in about two months to see if the job was accomplished.
SS: I have written a lot about the benefits of turmeric. It is an amazing spice and it makes food taste wonderful, and it costs about a dollar. I use it in so many dishes. Nature has provided all these wonderful health benefits, but most Americans prefer a diet of chemicals. Sometimes, when I look at the cancer rates that are now out of control, I think, Well, what did we expect? We were never meant to ingest all these toxins. But I digress.
It seems to me that if we were able to test for these peptides and amino acids, and if we found ourselves deficient, that from a preventive standpoint we could change our diets, take nutrition seriously, and replace amino acids. Is it that simple?
SB: When dealing with patients with cancer, diet and supplements are extremely important because such people don’t have much time to lose from a nutritional point of view. With horrible cancers such as pancreatic or liver cancer, if you use the right regimen, if you select the right combination—and I’m not talking about chemotherapy; I’m talking about genetic medicine—we see tumors decreasing or disappearing even within two months. But very few doctors are doing this because they are concerned that if they use a combination of three or four medications, they may have side effects, and most of the doctors don’t really know how these medicines work. You need to have profound knowledge in the genomics of cancer and profound knowledge of these various medicines to make sure that the combination which you use will first of all not cause some adverse reactions and that the medicines will support rather than fight each other.
SS: And you have this profound knowledge?
SB: Well, this is my life’s work. But we don’t know everything.
SS: I find the present template of treating cancer barbaric. Because of the books I write, I get calls from people with cancer who have been through chemotherapy and radiation and now want to try alternatives. If a patient comes to you who has been ravaged by chemotherapy and radiation, does that make your job harder or is it hopeless?
SB: The majority of patients whom we see come to us after being told that there is nothing that can be done for them. These poor people have tried everything and we hear horror stories, where half the body is amputated by a surgeon and the cancer is still progressing throughout the body. For such people it is a very special art to treat them because you not only have to treat the cancer but also address the problems from the prior treatment. This makes the task extremely difficult. But that is our typical patient. What we try to do first is predetermine if the patient is a good candidate. Sometimes after we run our testing we find out that we cannot help. It’s not going to work. But other times after the results come back we say we think we can help. What we do know is to do things as quickly as possible. These people don’t have time to wait. Then we start treatment, which is a combination of gene-targeted therapies. We usually don’t see adverse reactions because by proper combinations we can substantially reduce the dosages of the medicines five, sometimes ten, times lower. This can be accomplished because we use medicines which increase the activity of each other and it helps balance their side effects.
SS: Are these medicines intravenous or are they in tablet form?
SB: By giving a tablet daily and a tablet every other day we don’t get the side effects. It is also substantially less expensive than if we used heavy dosages of all the medicines. We use a combination because it is easier for the patient.
SS: How long does the patient stay in Houston near your clinic?
SB: Usually a couple of weeks until he or she gets strong. We usually get answers about a patient’s response within one or two months. If we find the tumors are decreasing, which happens to most of the patients, we continue the treatment until the tumors are gone.
SS: Are you saying gone? As in the tumors haven’t shrunk, they are gone?
SB: Yes. The average time for tumors to be eliminated is three to four months. Then we switch the patient to maintenance treatment, which continues for about eight months to a year, and that’s about all. Of course we follow up with the patient to make sure the cancer has not come back.
SS: I have to ask again: You are saying the cancer doesn’t just shrink, it goes away?
SB: Yes, in many cases the tumors go away completely. That is, the tumor has completely disappeared. The average time for this phenomenon is about three months.
SS: How many patients would you say have had a complete response?
SB: Well, it depends on the type of cancer. For instance, for certain types of brain tumors we have had a 50 to 60 percent response. This is very high. If you are talking about other cancers, it varies.
An objective response means a complete disappearance of the tumor or substantial decrease of the tumor size.
SS: You told me earlier that 58 percent of breast cancer patients are showing substantial decreases in the size of the tumors or a disappearance of the tumor?
SB: Yes. If the disappearance of the tumor lasts more than five years, it is called a cure. This is the definition of a cure. Now, with pancreatic cancer, we don’t do so well. We see less objective response, probably around 50 percent, which is still better than traditional treatment. But this is a very difficult cancer to treat.
SS: What about melanoma?
SB: With melanoma we see somewhere around 30 percent objective response, which means substantial decrease of tumor size. If we see that tumors are growing, we try to change our treatment plan. We run our gene test again, find out what is going on, maybe remove some of the medicines and add some others, and again try for another month and see what happens.
SS: Now if a patient came to you with, let’s say, pancreatic cancer but had not had chemotherapy or radiation or any traditional treatment, should you expect a good response?
SB: Definitely. We have such patients and in about three weeks we will be presenting a series of such cases at a large congress in Paris. This is a conference organized by M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and the French government, and we will be showing patients who had pancreatic cancer and liver cancer who responded. These are horrible types of cancer where mortality rates are usually 100 percent. Amazingly, we have patients whose tumors have disappeared in two months—completely—with both pancreatic cancer and advanced liver cancer.
SS: Do you find Europeans are open to new treatment other than chemotherapy? In this country we don’t seem to want to know about anything other than chemotherapy.
SB: I must say, for pancreatic cancer, chemotherapy is doing practically nothing. Patients have horrible side effects, and in the best-case scenario it can extend life for one month!
SS: It is clear to me, having buried two friends last month with pancreatic cancer whose bodies were ravaged and degraded to looking like Holocaust survivors, that it most certainly doesn’t work. But it boggles the mind. Why are doctors still prescribing it?
SB: They are brainwashed. They have been successfully brainwashed in medical schools and their residency programs. Doctors in residency work tremendously long hours. My son is in a medical school residency program and he works like hell. By the time they come out of medical school, they just use whatever they have learned, which are old treatments. They just use chemotherapy. It is very well known that chemotherapy will do very little or nothing for pancreatic cancer.
SS: What if a patient came to you with stage IV pancreatic cancer who doesn’t want chemotherapy because they know it is not going to do them any good? What can you do for them?
SB: We treat them and even if they have tumors in different areas, they may be gone in two to three months.
SS: What about liver cancer?
SB: We now know that chemotherapy will speed up the progress of liver cancer! There is no reason to use it. Scientific works have proven beyond any doubt that chemo is completely ineffective, yet doctors are using chemotherapy for liver cancer over and over again. Practically all patients with advanced liver cancer will die. But with our treatment these liver tumors have disappeared in a matter of a couple of months, if you use the right combination of targeted therapy.
SS: If you are able to prescribe the right selection of medicines, these terminal patients have a chance even with horrible cancers like pancreatic, brain, or liver cancer? I mean this is pretty remarkable.
SB: Yes, but you have to know there are no miracles. Just because a cancer doesn’t respond to chemotherapy doesn’t mean it’s going to respond to the treatment which works on the gene. You have to find the right switch and then everything comes into place. What we need to do is get rid of the cancer stem cells. If we do that, the patient is cured. That’s the route to success.
SS: And getting rid of the cancerous stem cells by using proper medicines like antineoplastons will work on the genes that get rid of cancer?
SB: Yes.
SS: You mentioned the other day when we were speaking that liver cancer would be the next epidemic. Why is that?
SB: Right now, lung cancer is the main killer cancer. Last year there were about 1.3 million deaths worldwide from lung cancer, but about 600,000 deaths from liver cancer. This year we are expecting about 700,000 deaths from liver cancer. The main cause of liver cancer is hepatitis B. The virus of hepatitis B was discovered about thirty-six years ago. Right now it is estimated that about 2 billion people, about one-third of humanity, is infected with the hepatitis B virus. Now, most of these people live in underdeveloped countries, and out of these people, half a million will develop chronic disease. Right now in China, about 400 million people have chronic hepatitis.
SS: Where is it coming from? What are we doing wrong?
SB: The hepatitis B virus particle is one of the smallest of viruses and when it enters the body it embeds into the DNA and becomes like a gene in the body which may lie dormant for a long period of time.
In some patients the hepatitis virus is able to silence the genes which protect them against cancer. This virus can switch off as many as 150 genes that are protective. This is a huge number of genes. In the current population of people who are infected with chronic hepatitis B, 10 percent of them—50 million people—will develop liver cancer. That is a scientific estimate and there is very little we can do about it. The mortality of liver cancer is about 97 percent, which means you will see in the near future a huge segment of the population dying of liver cancer, the majority of them in Southeast Asian countries.
SS: Roll back for me a little bit. Where are we getting the hepatitis B?
SB: Infections. For instance, like HIV infection, it can be transmitted through sex, from mother to child, or simply from contaminated needles and blood products. Hepatitis B is more resistant than HIV. It can survive for a week in a drop of blood, whereas HIV will die very quickly.
So this means, for instance, if a woman goes for a manicure and pedicure and the tools used were not properly sanitized [sterilized], and a customer ahead of her had a hepatitis B infection, then she could get it through her manicure or pedicure.
A large segment of European women have contracted hepatitis B in this way.
Liver cancer can also be contracted by ingesting food contaminated with aflatoxins.
SS: What are aflatoxins?
SB: Aflatoxins are chemical toxins produced by fungi which like to grow on foods such as rice, peanuts, barley, and some meats. Aflatoxins can also be found in beer and water. They enter the liver and block a very important tumor-suppressor gene, p53. Many patients who have ingested aflatoxins will develop liver cancer. Worldwide, this is estimated to be about 10 million people.
SS: Is there any way to prevent this? Prevent hepatitis B?
SB: Well, the simplest prevention is through vaccination. When vaccination was introduced in countries like Taiwan it resulted in substantial protection of the population. Our institute studied animals that were given aflatoxins and later developed liver cancer. Another group of animals were given aflatoxins plus one of the supplements which we introduced, and they proved to be resistant to preventing liver cancer by using the proper supplements. Now, if liver cancer develops, it can be treated, but not with chemotherapy, which we know doesn’t work.
SS: So regarding hepatitis B, if we are fanatical about cleanliness, if we make sure when we have manicures and pedicures that the tools are properly sanitized, if we are conscious of washing our hands, and if we are all automatically vaccinated for hepatitis at childbirth, we can be protected?
SB: Certainly what you describe can help a great deal, and using some precautions can give you good protection. Now we have mandatory vaccinations for hepatitis B for children. Our dilemma is what do we do for the millions of people who already have hepatitis and are slowly developing cancer? The big problem is they need treatment which can be easily administered.
SS: And you are having success with treating liver cancer with supplements, with targeted gene therapy? It sounds too good to be true. We are accustomed to cancer treatment being torturous.
SB: We are achieving success, but we have only treated seven patients. In this country we don’t yet have a large number of patients suffering from liver cancer, but the numbers are increasing very rapidly. This year about twenty thousand deaths from liver cancer are expected, and in five years or so this may increase to fifty thousand people per year.
In another eight to ten years it will become the second killer after lung cancer. At our clinic we have treated seven patients, and two of them obtained responses very rapidly and they continue to do well. Three out of the seven did not respond. We are watching the other two. It’s a very difficult cancer.
SS: What do you tell your patients who are now achieving success through your treatment about prevention and preventing cancer recurrences?
SB: This is a very important part of our program. These patients have to take it seriously. First we need to get the cancer under control. Every patient has a dietary consultation, and every patient has a consultation regarding supplements—not only the supplements we want them to take but also about other supplements they are already taking, because some supplements may work against them. Some supplements can promote cancer. We can help them design what is best for their situation. We also talk with the family because most patients come with the entire family, and we give family consultations twice a week. We talk to them about the treatment itself and the proper use of the supplements.
SS: And how long does the patient stay on this regimen?
SB: The average patient takes treatment for about a year to a year and a half. Then obviously there is need for continued surveillance and the use of proper supplements, proper diet, proper lifestyle to make sure they don’t develop cancer again.
SS: Where is the weak spot? Or is there a weak spot?
SB: If the patient has had chemotherapy, they are at risk to develop another form of cancer, so following the regimen is very important.
SS: As someone who once had cancer, I’d like to know: What supplements should people take to prevent cancer or a recurrence?
SB: The basic supplements that will keep your genome in pristine shape.
SS: That is out of my realm of comprehension. I don’t understand the genome and its needs.
SB: The genome consists of about twenty-two thousand genes, and these genes are like books in a library. We use about 10 percent of our genes when we are young. The rest of the genes which were important for developing organs are placed, so to speak, in the “body library.” By the time we reach the age of twenty-five our bodies operate on 10 percent of our genome and the rest of the genes become silent, as though these pieces of DNA are covered with plastic shields, covering books—genes—which have never been read.
SS: I’m following you.
SB: When you age, you silence additional numbers of genes. When women go through menopause another number of genes are silenced, again like we put a piece of plastic over the genes and put them back on the library shelf. These genes are no longer active. For example, when people lose hair, they are getting bald because the genes that are necessary to replace the hair are silent. Ultimately you silence the genes which are there to protect you against cancer.
SS: Oh, so that is why aging is part of why we get cancer. Those genes are silenced.
SB: Yes. Like in liver cancer. There are about 150 genes that have been silenced which would have protected you against cancer.
SS: So back to my original question. How do we prevent cancer or a cancer recurrence?
SB: What you need to do is to keep the genes which are vitally important for you, like the genes protecting against cancer, turned on, and you accomplish this with supplements.
SS: So supplements will prevent silencing the genes in the body. We want to keep these genes turned on. Now, are you talking supplements that we take only if we have cancer? And can these supplements that you design and individualize for each person turn the switches back on?
SB: Right. This is for someone with cancer. We use antineoplastons to accomplish the task. We get rid of the cancer stem cells, which are leading to cancer. We activate the genes that protect you against deadly diseases.
SS: Let’s get to the nitty-gritty. What supplements?
SB: Okay, for example, curcumin and genistein may play a role for some people, and also products which are the active ingredients of green tea. There are numerous natural products which can do the task, and once you know what genes are silent you can design the program to make sure to keep these genes in good shape.
SS: Can a healthy person keep their genes in good shape?
SB: By using natural products to prevent this silencing—for instance, taking curcumin supplements or cooking with turmeric and genistein, which is a substance available in soy.
We’re doing everything wrong. We are silencing genes through various mechanisms. One of them is the wrong diet. Chemicals and stress play a big role, as well as lack of proper sleep, imbalance of the body clock—activity during the night and sleep during the day—all will silence genes in the body. And then there are viruses, carcinogens, and pollution. All these factors are leading to silencing the genes which protect against cancer. And when a gene is silenced for a long period of time—and I’m talking about tumor suppressor genes—this leads to mutations, which are more permanent changes, and then cancer will progress further. These factors are created by us.
SS: The average American diet consists of processed foods, foods in bags and boxes, foods with unpronounceable chemicals in them, diet soda, fast foods, fake food … is that what you are talking about?
SB: Certainly. Coke can silence a good number of genes, as can being on an unhealthy diet. Cigarette smoking can silence genes, and lack of exercise. Most of these things are quite well known to people, and finally they lead to gene silencing. You will speed up gene silencing if you continue to do the wrong things.
As I told you earlier, we’ve introduced a line of supplements called Aminocare that work on the mechanisms which are involved in the silencing of the genes in aging. We already have tests that prove we can extend the life of animals with these supplements by influencing the activity of the genes. These chemicals already exist in our bodies, in dairy products, and they also exist in royal jelly—which is the food fed to the queen honeybee. The queen honeybee lives sixty times longer than the worker bees because she is eating royal jelly every day. We isolated what was in the royal jelly which extends the life of animals, and we put these ingredients, as well as others, in our supplements.
SS: How important is hormone balance relative to cancer?
SB: It’s very important. Hormones are also genetic switches. Hormones work because they regulate the activity of the genes. For instance, estrogens work because they activate certain genes and silence others.
If you don’t have the right hormonal balance, then you will speed up cancer development.
You need to regulate hormonal balance if you want to control cancer. Antineoplastons are similar to hormones, as both are genetic switches. Some of them are peptides. Hormones are carried by blood, and they enter the cells and regulate gene expression.
SS: I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear you say this because I have been saying this in my books for some time. Hormonal balance is cancer protective.
SB: That’s a very important message. Most doctors don’t know what molecular mechanisms are or how they work. Inside the cell most of these hormones go into the nucleus and will work as molecular switches. They will activate some genes and silence others. Antineoplastons work in a similar fashion except that the molecular mechanism can be somewhat different depending on which hormone you are talking about.
SS: It seems to me as men decline in testosterone their PSA numbers go up. From a layperson’s perspective it seems that putting back the missing testosterone to optimal ranges would be protective, and I have had this confirmed by many doctors.
SB: Right. But it’s not the testosterone itself, but a derivative of the testosterone, DHT. You see, testosterone is metabolized in the body and it creates a much more active chemical which is causing prostate cancer. Until recently it was believed that testosterone was causing the rapid progression of prostate cancer, but a publication just last week proved the value of testosterone for patients who have prostate cancer.
SS: This must be the Abraham Morgentaler report. I read that. I think this is great news for men. For so long men have been deprived of testosterone because of an unproven fear that it causes prostate cancer.
SB: Yes, it’s the derivative, the chemical which is created from testosterone, that is stimulating prostate cancer. Certainly too much testosterone will cause progression of cancer, not directly, but after it is transformed into another chemical inside the body.
SS: So do you, Dr. Burzynski, have the cure to cancer?
SB: Well, we certainly have a number of patients who are cured from cancer. If we have patients, for instance, who are twenty or thirty years free of advanced cancer, I would say these patients are cured. We have a number of such patients, so we can cure cancer … but not in everybody because cancer is not a single disease. Cancer is like a combination of numerous different types of illnesses, and each of these different types of cancer has numerous genetic signatures, so one cancer patient is not the same as the other.
It’s difficult to say I have the cure for cancer, but I have cured some patients with cancer. In fact, a good number of them. Sadly, there will always be some cases for which I do not have the answer … yet. But we are always learning, and one day …
SS: You must feel fulfilled and satisfied with the great work you are doing.
SB: There’s no doubt about it. It’s a great feeling to see these people in good shape, leading normal lives. Among our patients are those who came to us as children, around twelve or so, and we got rid of their cancer. Now they have children of their own. Because of the way we treat cancer, our patients have had no problem with fertility and we don’t see any problems in the children. That’s very good news. They are living fully active, normal lives. That is a great feeling.
SS: I am sure it is. Thank you so much. As I said in the beginning, this has been an honor.
I was diagnosed in 1989 with low-grade non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Low-grade is almost always incurable with conventional treatment. Before being diagnosed I was sick for over a year. I was having horrible stomachaches. I went to the emergency room three times, and the third time I said to my husband, “I’m going to die,” because I had diarrhea so bad and for so long and I was throwing up and had lost ten pounds. I just knew something was terribly wrong, but they kept treating me for an ulcer. Finally a doctor suggested I get a CAT scan while I was in pain, and that is when they found the tumor.
They hadn’t seen it with a CAT scan previously because I had a condition where my intestine folds over itself and only during pain was it visible. I had been to so many doctors and everyone had been telling me it was all in my mind or it was my diet. But now I had a fatal cancer.
They said I might live for three, maybe five, years with chemotherapy and radiation. My doctor at UCLA suggested I go to Boston for a bone marrow transplant. When my husband and I did the research, we found that one out of ten people die of this transplant treatment. I was forty years old. I had three young children, teenagers. Reluctantly I went to Boston. The specialist doing bone marrow transplants was quite interested in speaking with me because I had not done chemo or radiation yet, and they wanted to try this treatment on people who were clean, so to speak … and I had stage IV cancer, so I was an interesting study.
Boston depressed me. We went to the Cheers bar and I was trying to have a nice time with my husband, but the realities of what we were about to undertake were overwhelming. I didn’t want to die, and I didn’t want to miss raising my children, so this was what I had to do.
In our research we had read about Dr. Burzynski, and two days before I was to do the bone marrow treatment, I suddenly changed my mind and said to my husband, “Let’s leave Boston and go to see this Dr. Burzynski …” which, I must say was the best decision of my life.
Dr. Burzynski’s treatment was nontoxic, and I figured that I could always do the bone marrow treatment later if this didn’t work.
As soon as I walked into Dr. Burzynski’s clinic, I knew I was in the right place. It was just such a warm, caring environment; and it was then I felt there was hope, true hope. He was using only antineoplastons then, and I was offered the pump or capsules and I chose capsules. I felt it would be a lot easier. Having a catheter in my chest scared me a little.
I was on the capsules for three months when I started to notice that the tumor on my neck, that I could see, was actually getting bigger. I called Dr. Burzynski, panicked, and he said, “This means one of two things: either the cancer is indeed growing, or the cancer cells are dying and sometimes when they die it causes the tumor to get a little bigger.”
All along the way Dr. Burzynski was available to explain things to me, and he was such a blessing. I flew back to Houston and this time he implanted a catheter in my chest and I am telling you—this is the amazing part—in three weeks, with the medicine going directly into my bloodstream, the tumor on the side of my neck disappeared in one night. I had been on it for three weeks, but in just one night it disappeared.
I showed my husband and we both screamed. I couldn’t believe it. The next day we called Dr. Burzynski and he said I would still be on the treatment for another nine months before they could absolutely pronounce me in remission.
My doctor at UCLA was not supportive of Dr. Burzynski and called him a charlatan and a fraud, and that he only wanted to take my money, but I didn’t care. I kept going for my treatments.
Nine months later I was pronounced in remission by UCLA! Right, UCLA! I stayed on the antineoplastons for another three months; I was just afraid to go off. I would still be on the capsules if I could.
All of this was without side effects. My hair didn’t fall out, I wasn’t sick, and while I was on Dr. Burzynski’s treatments I led a totally normal life—I carpooled, cleaned my house, I could do whatever I wanted. I even went waterskiing!
When they indicted Dr. Burzynski and wanted to put him in jail, I was incensed. My husband took off work for about two months and we went to Houston during the trial. We marched every day with all the other cured patients. We had the radio station come down; the construction workers marched. And after the acquittal, we had this party with some of the jurors, and several of them said that we cancer patients looked better than they did.
I had been fighting, literally, for my life, as were so many of the others. I was in the middle of my treatment, and if they had put Dr. Burzynski under, I would have gone under too if I couldn’t get his medicine.
I’ve thought a lot about why they did this to him, and it’s because they were afraid of him. He is the discoverer, and he’s a great man, and in time I believe he will be known as the greatest scientist of our time.
I have been cancer free now for seventeen wonderful years.
Dr. Burzynski means everything to me. There was a time in my life when I didn’t think I would see my children graduate from high school. Now I’ve seen them all graduate from college and I’m a grandma. I am so happy every day that I get up and thank God, and I thank Dr. Burzynski. He is in my heart every day, and I talk to people on the phone each day who are sick and I try to make the connection with them to try Dr. Burzynski’s treatment.
The other day a friend called me and told me his cousin had a brain tumor, and I said, “You know, don’t be devastated by this. Just tell him to go to Dr. Burzynski.”
–Mary Jo Siegel, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma,
cancer free for seventeen years
I don’t feel that my daughter, Sophia, would have lived if I hadn’t found Dr. Burzynski. She had a deadly childhood brain tumor called pineoblastoma at ten and a half months of age. She was offered “standard of care” chemotherapy and radiation, but I looked at my little baby and couldn’t put her through that. It was a terrible time in our lives.
It was my husband who heard about Dr. Burzynski, but I didn’t want to go. I had been warned about him, that he was a quack and a charlatan. But my husband insisted, and it was against my instincts. Then I met Dr. Burzynski and he made a believer out of me. He said to me, “You have a very sick child. I can try to help her, but I can’t promise anything, because this type of tumor pretty much has a zero survival rate.”
She had an infection in her brain as a result of the surgery in our hometown, and at the time we weren’t even aware of that. The doctors in our hometown just kind of kept pushing her off, as in if we weren’t going to pursue orthodox treatment, they didn’t see any reason to check her out. It was a raging infection that very well could have killed her. So when we got to Dr. Burzynski’s clinic we had to spend three weeks in the children’s hospital to clear the infection before we could deal with her cancer.
Dr. Burzynski told us the tumor was killing her fast. We felt so helpless. The fluid in her ventricles was backed up from the infection, and the doctors in my hometown scoffed at the idea of going to Dr. Burzynski.
But we decided to use Dr. Burzynski’s protocol in spite of the cynicism of our doctors. He put an IV port in my little baby and she was on the treatment for several years. We had to get real creative because as Sophia became a toddler it became more difficult to keep the port attached. She was a baby and wanted to pull it out. But she handled it well.
You know, when it’s a matter of life or death you figure it out. She had to stay on the antineoplastons longer than most people because she was so little and they couldn’t give her huge doses of it. They just raised the amounts slowly and safely as she grew.
Today she is thirteen years old and living a normal life. It is a huge milestone. Every time I look at her, I have flashbacks. I wish so much I had kept a journal of all those dark and terrible times. I’ll never forget it. But as I look back and try to think of details I just realize how lucky we were to find this treatment.
She understands today how lucky she is, and that her life was saved. In fact she was asked to do a research paper at school this year on somebody she really admires or respects or is a hero; of course, she did it on Dr. B. It’s a heartbreaker.
We get calls from all over the world about Dr. Burzynski, and I always recommend they go and just have a consultation at least. It takes a big leap of faith to go this way, but then I look at Sophia and realize it was her only hope, and now she is alive and normal and happy and growing normally. I made the right choice. Dr. Burzynski saved her life, and somebody led us there, I know it, and it worked out. Dr. Burzynski is a wonderful man and a great healer. They treat Sophia like their little princess. Our job as parents is to protect our children and keep them safe. I am thankful every day that we made the right choice.
–Jenny Gettino, mother of Sophia Gettino, who had a brain tumor
at ten and a half months of age; Sophia has been cancer free for
thirteen years
When I was ten and a half months old I was diagnosed with a rare disease called a cancerous brain tumor. My parents were very scared. My friends and family were very optimistic. It was not very easy for them. I give them a lot of credit.
What optimism means to me is to expect the best possible outcome.
What being optimistic means to me is for people to stay positive. Everyone should stay optimistic all the time. If you don’t stay optimistic all the time, you will be negative, and you should never be negative.
When I was a baby, not only me, but everyone around me had to be very optimistic. Friends of mine had to be very optimistic for the same reasons. Those reasons were for me to get better and be my old self again and eventually I did. I can tell you pretty much anything you want to know about my disease. I am so lucky to be alive, and it is all thanks to my doctor. That amazing gentleman is Dr. Burzynski. He is the best doctor in the world. I love him. I wish I could see him more often, but he lives all the way in Houston, Texas. I am very happy to be alive.
When Dr. Burzynski received the call to action that he was getting a new patient, he was very happy to help. So he got to work right away researching what type of disease I had, and he found out I had cancer. Then he was trying to figure out what type of cancer I had. Then he finally told my parents the dreadful news. “Your daughter has pineoblastoma.” Then he prescribed one of his many treatments for me and it worked fabulously. Before I went to Dr. B. the hospital wanted to do chemo and radiation on me. But thankfully they didn’t, because I was too young for that stuff. Also, I had friends that did different treatments before they came to Dr. B.’s office, but unfortunately it was too late for them and they didn’t make it. But I have my own special ways of remembering them. Some of those ways are praying and wearing things like jewelry to remember them. Sometimes my family and I go to visit their families. My parents and friends believed that I could be cured and I was. I have exceptional memory when it comes to stuff like that. I am happy, healthy, and cured. I have awesome friends and making more.
Everyone can get through the bad times if they stay very optimistic. If you have a disease or if you know someone who is sick, stay very optimistic. Talk to people and encourage them that everything will be all right. If you make it look like you are happy, it makes them happier.
If you keep a positive attitude you will be much better off. You will get through life much easier. Always stay optimistic. For me optimism is to expect the best possible outcome. That is how optimism helped defeat my disease.
—Sophia Gettino, thirteen years old, cancer survivor, from her
entry in the Optimist Speech Contest
When Dustin was diagnosed with medulloblastoma, a highly aggressive form of brain cancer, it was a terrible time for our family. He was just a baby and they wanted to put him on chemo and then radiation, which would have caused mental retardation and was not recommended for his age but would have to be done if chemotherapy failed. The chemo he was offered was an experimental type that a computer would randomly pick, and among the risks were hearing loss, stunted growth, learning disabilities, bladder and kidney damage, sterility, and leukemia. There was a 20 to 40 percent chance the treatment would work. Neither of these treatments offered any hope at all, so we started looking for alternatives, and that’s when we found Dr. Burzynski. We had a calling list from the Cancer Control Society in California and one of the names on the list was Dr. Burzynski. They told us about a child who had been in treatment with a brain tumor and the child had done well. Then we talked to other patients and were impressed, so we decided to look into it, and the outcome seemed to be so much better than any other alternatives.
When we met with Dr. Burzynski his optimism and his treatment made a lot of sense, so we decided to take a chance with him. He said there was a very good chance that Dustin would respond to his treatment initially, and at that time we hadn’t even been thinking long-term; we just wanted him to live a couple more years or maybe five years. Even that would have made us happy.
In April of 1994, we took Dustin to Houston, Texas, to the Burzynski Clinic. Dustin was too young to be a part of Dr. Burzynski’s study, but in response to our pleas, Dr. Burzynski agreed to treat him. Dustin was equipped with an IV pump that he carried around in a backpack so he could receive antineoplastons intravenously. We were taught how to program the pump for specific treatment times and dosages. We learned sterile techniques in case the IV tubing got pulled out or damaged, and we learned how to deal with emergencies.
Dr. Burzynski told us that he would stop treatment if there were no positive results on his first MRI, but to our great joy, the six-week MRI showed no evidence of a tumor. Every three months we made the trip to Houston for Dustin’s checkup and to get more medication. After one year on antineoplaston therapy a tumor once again was seen on a follow-up MRI, showing the aggressiveness of medulloblastomas. It was heartbreaking. So they increased his dosage and he continued to have periodic lab tests and MRIs done. Eventually that tumor disappeared.
Today he is well. He’s a normal teenager. He’s got a certified nursing assistant license and is working as a certified nurse, while he is going to college to become a registered nurse.
He is very aware more and more as he gets older that he had a second chance at life. This year he thanked us for all we had done for him, and he realizes that it was a big thing he went through, and he is also very grateful to Dr. Burzynski.
I believe he’s cured. Definitely. He has outlived the original prognosis by years and years.
I think Dr. Burzynski is the greatest doctor in the world. He’s very brilliant, and as far as I am concerned he’s a genius. He’s also a very caring person, and he doesn’t want to do harm to anybody; he just wants to help. I think he’s a great man. He saved my son’s life and we couldn’t have asked for anything better.
I tell people who call for information on Dr. Burzynski, what is it going to hurt? The treatments are very safe, there are no harsh side effects, and it’s not going to hurt you. We really feel that God led us to Dr. Burzynski in the first place … right from the start.
–MaryAnn Kunnari, mother of Dustin, who had medulloblastoma, a
highly aggressive form of brain cancer, at the age of two and a half;
now cancer free for fifteen years
I’m fifty-eight years old and today I am healthy, but I have had breast cancer five times. It started in 1993. I was forty-three years old when I found a lump. After an excisional biopsy, they determined it to be breast cancer. My treatment was thirty-one rounds of radiation. Then in November of 1995 I found another little lump around my bra line, and that also turned out to be breast cancer, but very small. It was in the same breast, about an inch away. If you had to have breast cancer, it was a darned good scenario.
In 1995, I opted to get a mastectomy with immediate reconstruction because I just didn’t want to deal with this anymore. Since I already had implants I knew what to expect and felt it would look pretty much the same. But in December, my breast started popping open and fluid started to leak out, so it would have to be drained. It did that for quite a while, so the plastic surgeon stitched it up, but it kept popping open again. Shortly after that I had a mammogram and they found carcinoma in situ [DCIS] on the other breast, so I had surgery and immediate reconstruction in that breast, and then I started having this same problem with this implant. My body just doesn’t like foreign objects. Once again, six months later I had an MRI and they found a little uptake in the sternum area, which turned out to be another small breast cancer, the same type I had before, that probably stemmed from an internal mammary lymph node pressing onto the sternum. So I had more radiation. In June of 2003, I started getting my tumor marker numbers checked, and in November of ’04 my numbers went up a little bit. Normal is from 0 to 32 and mine was at 34. Then in February it went up to 37. I talked to my doctor and I was pretty freaked out. They started talking chemo. And I thought, No—this time I’m doing it a different way.
I read about Dr. Burzynski in Dr. Julian Whitaker’s newsletter, so my husband and I decided to go to Houston to meet with him. I had a CAT scan and another MRI on my brain, and thank God the brain was fine. But they found a little tumor in the bone in my left shoulder area. I had had some pain in that shoulder, but I figured it was like a rotator cuff injury because I exercise a lot.
Dr. Burzynski put me on sodium phenylbutyrate and antineoplastons. I started with thirty-six pills a day. He took my tumor markers and also started me on Xeloda, which is an oral chemotherapy with very few side effects. It allows you to have a better quality of life while the medicine is doing its work.
Now my tumor markers are in the normal ranges. I feel fine and healthy. I continue on Dr. Burzynski’s medicines because I’m too chicken to stop them. I feel like they are really helping me, and I don’t think they are toxic. Every time I have my tumor markers checked I get very anxious, but my numbers have been good and I just feel so healthy. This whole experience has taught me I am loved, and I feel because of my experience that I can help other people, which is very uplifting for me.
Dr. Burzynski is a wonderful man. So is Dr. Orlam, who works with him. After having had recurrence after recurrence, I feel with Dr. Burzynski that I finally have gotten control over my cancer. My tumor markers are great so far, and I am grateful each day that I am alive.
–Lolli D’Orisio, breast cancer survivor