Monday, November 28, 2011

The Burzynski Clinic, and the thug Marc Stephens

Mostly just wanted to do my part to Streisandify the shameless thug Marc Stephens, who claims to represent the Burzynski Clinic (though it's not entirely clear yet that he does) and has taken to such low methods as posting Google Satellite pictures of a 17-year-old blogger's house. The guy is a grade-A asshole, and no amount of daylight is too much for his thuggish tactics.

I also wanted to be clear about exactly what the Burzynski Clinic is doing that is ethically wrong. After all, antineoplaston therapy isn't completely implausible (though what evidence is available seems to go pretty firmly against it), and when there are no known better treatments, isn't it okay to try unproven methods, in the hopes they might pay off?

Not if you charge money for it. Patients typically don't pay to be in a medical trial, for somewhat obvious reasons. Even if antineoplaston therapy still looked promising (it doesn't) it would be unethical to charge patients exorbitant sums of money to receive it -- doubly so if the treatment is already looking dubious from the results of previous trials.

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