Shouldn't patients have the right to choose the treatment of their choice for certain illnesses/diseases?

Yes, choices should be given in most cases. The exception is highly contagious diseases threatening the lives of large communities.

@mattbrowne Yes I can agree with that.

I agree with @mattbrowne. And i’d add that expecailly with cancer not only our current therapies are extremely tentative already, but we also need human test subjects, so we’d really be better off if we let anyone who wanted to participate into clinical trials just do so.

As for the article you linked, it seems to incredible to me that a man that recieved so much hostility in a country whose pharmaceuticals companies tamper with the health system has not yet moved to places like Wweden to complete his research.

There seems to be a problem with Dr. Burzynski soliciting for patients, which is a different complaint that the way your link is skewed.

This link offers a broader look at Dr. Burzynski, and despite the name of the site, www.quackwatch.com, comes across as pretty objective. I could understand the hesitation to promote urine injections as a cure for cancer.

@PandoraBoxx The problems described in that link were caused by the interference from mainstream medicine and the FDA attacking him to begin with. Many patients were saved by this Dr’s treatments after the conventional methods you encourage failed them. I can give you HUNDREDS of links about the horrors of chemotherapy (which has not been proven to be effective for many cancers to begin with). Many of these “alternative” treatments have never even been given the chance to be proven. I will tell you something else, if even 20 people with different types of cancers went into an unapproved clinic and even 15 of them were cured despite what the MDA, oncologists or the quack website “quackwatch” said wouldn’t that be encouraging to you? That should be up to the patients themselves not the FDA which protects these a-hole hospitals and pharmaceutical companies profits and will do anything to keep using the same barbaric treatments and kill the competition. I can’t believe people do not see this, it absolutely blows my mind that more people are not outraged by this.

The fact is Dr. Burzynski’s antineoplastins had a higher success rate rate than the conventional methods and would probally be much higher if the patients immune systems weren’t destroyed by the chemo to begin with because his treatments are only allowed as a secondary option. The chemicals in chemo are way worse than any urine. Do you realize what is actually in many chemotherapy drugs?

People need to start standing up for their rights, people have a right to be fully educated about their illnesses and treatment options and choose what they feel is best for them. Doesn’t it strike you that the same treatments that we used over 70 years ago are the same ones being used today? If things stay the way they are it will be the same treatments another 70 years from now.

@Jabe73 The problems described in that link were caused by the interference from mainstream medicine and the FDA attacking him to begin with.

If that is your point then i have to retract my statement, to a point. People should have the right to pick the treatement, and even get killed, if they want to, but it’s absolutely necessary for “mainstream” medicine to call out quacks. This particular case may or may not be quackery, but a system that has in its best interest the patient and not the chance for quacks to profit HAS to call out quacks when it sees them.

I understand your point that your system isn’t motivated by interest in the patients but rather by interest in a monopoly, but that’s a problem inherent in your barbaricly deranged health-care system, and not in the fact that doctors who know what they’re talking about will speak out against quacks.

And, again, i have to ask, what is Dr Burzynski waiting before moving to europe and getting state funding for his research if it works so well? European states grant money for research to hospitals based on potential results of their research, if he has substantial proof it’s kind of suspicious of him not to have tried to actually use an unbiased health care system yet.

Most definitely….It is our bodies.

Yes. Farah Fawcett went to Germany to get treated for anal cancer as the United States did not offer the same treatment and it is still an experimental treatment at this time. She and the doctor’s from German felt this treatment extended her life.

@Jabe73 Are you prepared to pay cash?

I would want to read an M.D.‘s analysis of his clinical trials data before weighing in on this one. It’s curious that the article didn’t even link to his research. If this guy really has found a cure for cancer, I would think every research institute and university in the world would be banging down the doors trying to get access to this treatment for further study, right?

Any MD’s willing to look at his research?

It looks like an independent study conducted by the Mayo Clinic concluded: “Although we could not confirm any tumor regression in patients in this study, the small sample size precludes definitive conclusions about treatment efficacy.”

I doesn’t look all that promising.

It’s bogus, plain and simple. Moreover, the website listed by the OP is simply a blog post authored by someone calling himself the President of the Alberta Reappraising AIDS Society. As hard as it is to take any medical blog seriously, someone who promotes the notion that AIDS is not caused by HIV is clearly not competent to discuss medical issues in a scientific or reasoned way. A full analysis of this technique and background is available at quakwatch, as has been noted above, and I won’t rehash it.

As far as the (obviously slanted) question, on the one hand, people should be able to make whatever choices they want (to a degree), but doctors should not be forced to support them. The job of a doctor is to know her field well enough to advise and treat patients effectively and compassionately. It would be considered malpractice to advise and assist someone follow a “treatment” such as this.

@chyna Yes, Farrah Fawcett went to Germany for treatment, but there isn’t any definitive proof that the treatments extended her life. Depending on the stage of cancer and the treatment provided, people can live for years with anal cancer, and even if one’s prognosis is a year, that simply reflects an average, and some will live less than while others more than a year. WebMD seems to give a fair and balanced discussion of her care as well as others’ alternative choices for cancer.

@Thammuz You said “we’d really be better off if we let anyone who wanted to participate into clinical trials just do so”. There are several problems with this. One, trials (particularly cancer trials) are very expensive to perform correctly, and adding thousands more people is often not feasible. Two, most clinical trials are done with a very narrow question with a carefully selected patient population (and control population). If you allow all-comers, you may not be able to detect the differences that you would if you specifically chose a certain population. For instance, if your endpoint is one-year survival, including people with early disease who might live for years anyway will dilute one’s ability to assess the efficacy of a treatment.

@shilolo What i meant is that insurance shouldn’t be a factor, even though i don’t actually know wether it is or not (i figured it probably is), since we could consider the data as payment.

@Thammuz Insurance typically isn’t a factor in clinical trials. That’s why they are so expensive, because all of the costs of the trial are paid for by the company or NIH grant.

Farrah Fawcett has a very bad last year, in spite of the constant (and expensive) attention. Her cancer (anal) devoured her; I’m not sure the quality of her life was worth the the emotional and physical price she paid. But I do understand some people’s need to try anything at the end-of-life.

I volunteered (nobly but unwisely) for a double-blind study for a medication-by -mouth for post breast cancer treatment. The pill contained taxil, which caused neuropathy of the hands and feet. I was relieved to learn that I was taking tamoxifin, nasty in its own right but predictable.

@shilolo Oh, ok, then nevermind.

@Jabe73 The story you linked to said the doctor in question Gave the treatment to his patients when in fact the issue was Selling the treatment to his patients – at a high price.

The standard routine in medicine – which I agree with – is to license for Sale only treatments which have proved successful in clinical, reproducible trials.

The medical community did not say that he had to stop research, but that whoever did the research had to do it using the analytic methods of the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth.

This is not science going on here. This is just marketing quackery.

People desperate to live longer will latch onto ideas that in saner, healthier moments they would quickly reject (e.g. homeopathy). That’s why research is required to prove treatments before they are licensed for sale; a few desperate people claiming to be cured, or a doctor who provides self-serving statistics with no corroboration is not proof.

@gorillapaws You did not accurately read about Dr. Burzynski’s treatment with his pateints for what you gave me is biased information from the mainstream Mayo clinic. That link didn’t even go into how long the “clinical trials” were done for. If you actually read about the treatment Dr. Burzynski gives his patients you would have known that the treatment in many cases takes a long time to start taking effect (sometimes the neoplasms do get larger during the beginning of the treatment before the antineoplastons start taking effect). Your bias shows again because I never said this treatment was a “cure” (far from it) and I am aware that many patients have not responded well to his treatments, but I can tell you the many horror stories about chemo. There were MANY positive testimonials from Dr. Burzynski’s treatments so why don’t you go to his website and tell his patients their treatments from this Dr. were “quackery”.

There is another thing might I add, I just used that link in my question as an example of just one type of “alternative” treatment option. The question I asked was not an attempt to promote Dr. Burzynski’s treatment but rather to just give one example in my real question to whether the health of patients should be left up to themselves rather than having some state or government body making it illegal to recieve one type of treatment only for ANY type of illness/condition. I am not giving any more links myself to Dr. Burzynski’s treatments or the testimonials from his patients because of course they will be “biased” in his favor. I am ending this argument on antineoplastons because this was not my main argument.

@shilolo Well I have every right to “slant” my question (like I’m the only one that does that on this website). The problem with your trust in mainstream medicine is that the cancer monopoly will never allow any treatments to be tested in a fair way that fall outside of the conventional treatment regimens.

I could call conventional methods “quackery” myself. German epidemiologist Dr. Ulrich Abel (while admitting chemotherapy was useful in some types cancers in certain stages) didn’t have great things to say about it. This link http://www.encognitive.com/node/4361 is a general overview of what he found (I couldn’t find his original papers only partials) so I pasted this. The “quackwatch” website (which I will admit has some accurate descriptions of real quackery) is mostly quackery in itself. “Dr.” Barrett didn’t even pass his medical board examine and then has the nerve to question many other doctors and scientists whose credentials were WAY more knowledgeable and qualified than himself. This site will criticsise anything outside of mainstream medicine including even accupunture and chiropractic therapy (which many people I know swear by).

Maybe many people on fluther did have good results with conventional methods but I know 8 people (1 of them including my father) that are all gone now despite using your “recommended” treatments. I KNOW it was the chemo that killed my dad, not his cancer. I’m not getting into details on how I know this. The problem is when chemotherapy kills someone it will always go on record as the cancer having killed them instead. Oncologists also know that glucose feeds cancer but do they tell their patients to go on a low-carb or ketogenic diet? No they do not. Why is this? Do I have to give you the links where this diet was actually tested? Why waste my time with biased people anyway. People do have a right to fully know what is best for them when they have any type of illness. Patients rights should prevail over profits.

@chyna The clinic Farrah Fawcett went to in Germany I don’t believe was the same clinic that Ronald Reagen was a patient at. Farrah Fawcett still recieved the same conventional treatments that she would have gotten in her own country. There are only a handful of german clinics that offered the EHT/hyperthermia and fever treatments that Ronald Reagen used. Most german cancer clinics themselves still use the same methods to treat cancer that are used in the U.S.

How ironic that a major U.S President like Ronald Reagen traveled to Germany in top secrecy to treat his cancer after the conventional methods failed him in his own country. Ronald Reagen recieved the hyperthermia treatment on some type of machine (he also had to change his diet as well). He was already in his mid-seventies went he got his cancer treated in Germany and went on to live for another nearly 20 years before passing away from another cause. His cancer never returned after his treatments in Germany. It is hard to dig up information about this because his treatments in Germany were never really made public.

@Jabe73 It is hard to dig up information about this because his treatments in Germany were never really made public.

Obvious question: then how do you know anything about them other than hearsay?

Also you still haven’t answered my question, which applied to Dr Burzynski as well as every other scientist whose research has been blocked because of economic interest: If their treatements work so well and they have proof, then why don’t they come to a european country? Many european countries have policies for state funded researches that are in no (legal) way influenced by companies (since we’re not barbarians and we don’t allow politicans to be bribed legally). Hell, the UK even suggested funding for homeopathy at some point, seems to me they could get money even if they actually were quacks.

@Thammuz Because I am not promoting his treatment I only used it as an example of one possible alternative. Why don’t they publish how many people get murdered by chemotherapy? My real question was should patients have the right to seek their own treatments for their illnesses.

@Jabe73

Me: why don’t they come to a european country?
You: Because I am not promoting his treatment I only used it as an example of one possible alternative.

O_o Are you serious?

@Thammuz Chemotherapy and surgery for cancer still being used to treat cancer in another 100 years from now? Wooo! I’m so excited! Are you serious?

@Jabe73 Have you actually read what my question was? Or any of my replies at all?

I AM in favour of freedom of choice in matter of treatement, what i’m saying is that any system that has in its best interest the wellbeing of the patient has the duty to call out quacks.

Then i asked you: if your system is so flawed, and objective research can not be done because of lobbies and shit, why don’t they take their groundbreaking discoveries to europe and develop them here?

To which your reply was “Because I am not promoting his treatment I only used it as an example of one possible alternative.” Are you saying you have the authority to decide who experiments in europe and who doesn’t?

@Thammuz I’m against quackery myself. No one gets pissed more than me when I see many of these alternative websites making claims such as “you will never age” or “never get sick” or cure your illnesses with a vegan diet. The water ionizer claims tick me off as well, plus they sell for a grand or more (I can actually build my own for less than $100). The ridiculous vitamin and supplement claims. The bogus colon cleansing, yes I could go on and on.

I have to honestly ask you or anyone for that matter something. Do you really believe mainstream medicine has our best interests in mind? Do you really believe they are trying to find a cure outside of drugs/chemotherapy/ surgery and radiation? I’m not about promoting quackery but true freedom in cancer research. This is the very reason why quackery exists to begin with because the same methods we use to treat many illnesses now are the same methods used well over 50 years ago. Did you actually look at what I said about a ketogenic diet? Just google “ketogenic diet cancer” and you will find several links including where this has actually been tested on cancer patients by doctors. Glucose feeds cancer, not ketones. Why aren’t oncologists telling their patients to restrict their carb/sugar intake when they have cancer?

I do not have answers why Dr. Burzynski didn’t go to europe. Again I never claimed this procedure was a “cure” but possibally another alternative. I don’t know why you keep bringing that up. Mainstream medicine will never report anything to do with alternative treatment cures so yes the only thing you will get is what is limited in testimonials. I also question something else. Why did California need to make a law against doctors giving or recommending any other treatments outside of chemo, radiation and surgery? Is this freedom? This is what the whole point of my question was.

@Jabe73 I have some news for you, though it might be jarring. People die. It happens. People will die irrespective of all of the major advances in the world (including the bogus antineoplastins promoted by an HIV-denying group, who can’t be taken the least bit seriously). People will die of cancers, heart disease, strokes and infections despite our best intentions. To blame the medicines for someone’s death from a disease that 100 years ago had not treatment at all is absurd.

As far as your intent, you promote a vague conspiracy theory that doctors/governments/big pharma are all in cahoots to suppress miracle drugs (including one from urine, which IS the body’s waste after all). Yet, “miracle cures” by genius doctors and in foreign countries “work”.

As I said before, patients can feel free to make whatever decisions they want, including terrible ones. Caveat emptor.

@Jabe73 I don’t know why you keep bringing that up.
Let me enlighten you: because that’s a first sign of quackery. The same reason why James Randi’s challange has never been taken by anyone. Because THAT would prove it beyond doubt.

As @shilolo put it: you promote a vague conspiracy theory that doctors/governments/big pharma are all in cahoots to suppress miracle drugs. I ask you: why? When there is a monopoly, you make the price. Tell me how it would profit a pharmaceutical company to have its patients die when a better treatement that could keep the patient alive and paying apparently exists? Furthermore, again, don’t lump your flawed and inhumane health care system with european ones. Our systems may be flawed but surely not as much as a system where only those able to afford treatement get it, expecially consiering that generally richer means also in better igenic conditions and thus less likely to actually need treatement.

It’s your society. It’s your people. Your system is based on egoistic premises, and the simple concept that one might think that he shouldn’t be forced to pay for someone else’s helath care is quite clear proof that the problem lies much deeper than a few greedy bastards doing what 90% of the populace would do in their same position.