Hannah Bradley
Although I don't write about him as much as I used to, there was a time a couple of years ago when Houston cancer quack Stanislaw Burzynski was a frequent topic of this blog. His story, detailed in many posts on this blog and in an article I wrote for Skeptical Inquirer, is one that involves many facets, including an abysmal failure of the normal government agencies designed to protect patients from abuses like his to actually do their jobs and—oh, you know—protect patients. If you want an idea of how utterly impotent our regulatory agencies are, the Burzynski case is as good an example as…
I was doing my usual browsing of the web yesterday in search of topics for today's post when I came across an excellent article by a colleague and friend of mine, Dr. Rachael Dunlop, who nailed it in a post entitled Anti-vaccination activists should not be given a say in the media. In the article, Dr. Rachie nailed a point that I and other skeptics have been trying to make time and time again, namely how the press all too frequently inserts false balance in stories about medicine, particularly vaccines. As Dr. Rachie put it, we don't give equal time to flat earth believers. My favorite…
After yesterday's epic deconstruction of the latest propaganda-fest from everybody's favorite Leni Riefenstahl without the talent, Eric Merola, on his most admired subject, "brave maverick doctor" Stanislaw Burzynski, I needed something science-based to cleanse the rancid taste of intelligence-insulting nonsense from my mind. Through a quirk of fate that couldn't have worked out better if I had planned it myself, a long-expected investigation of the Burzynski Clinic by the BBC, presented on its venerable news program Panorama. It was entitled, appropriately enough, Cancer: Hope for Sale? Ever…
Well, I've finally seen it, and it was even worse than I had feared. One might even say that watching it was like repeatedly smacking my head into a brick wall. It felt so good when it finally stopped.
I'm referring, of course, to Eric Merola's latest cinematic "effort. Ever since it was revealed that ric Merola's planned to make a sequel to his 2010 propaganda "documentary" about Stanislaw Burzynski, Burzynski The Movie: Cancer Is Serious Business, whose rank stupidity provided me with copious blogging material, I've finally actually seen the finished product, such as it is. Of course,…
Film producer Eric Merola seems to think that there is a conspiracy of skeptics (whom he calls The Skeptics) hell bent on harassing his hero, Brave Maverick Doctor Stanislaw Burzynski. According to his latest film Burzynski: Cancer Is A Serious Business, Part 2 (henceforth referred to as Burzynski II, to distinguish it from Merola's first Burzynski movie, to which I will refer as Burzynski I), there is a shadowy cabal of Skeptics out there just waiting to swoop down on any Burzynski supporter who has the temerity to Tweet support for him, any cancer patient being treated by Burzynski who…
One of the strategies that Stanislaw Burzynski will undoubtedly use to "prove" in Eric Merola's new Stanislaw Burzynski movie that antineoplastons work in cancer will be to highlight "success stories." Last year, Burzynski apologists frequently pointed to a girl with an inoperable brain tumor named Amelia Saunders as a success story when the U.K. press widely featured her going to school in September but, very sadly, her family saw her tumor begin to progress again in December, ultimately resulting in her death about a month and a half ago. In the process, Burzynski did what he all too often…