Do Burzynski and dodgy behaviour go hand in hand?

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This whole thing just gets more insane by the minute. It’s bad enough supposedly reputable newspapers like The Observer giving uncritical coverage to praiseworthy, if misguided, attempts by beloved celebs to raise money for a little girl dying of cancer. Praiseworthy because, well, that’s obvious. Parents and family need all the help they can get and cancer research always needs more funding: there are many different types of cancer, with many different causes. Misguided, because the type of research being funded, isn’t. It’s at best a desperate attempt by a single doctor to promote a treatment he continues to believe in after 30 unsuccessful years of ‘clinic trials’; at worst it’s a con trick.

Let me make it quite clear, if it wasn’t already from my previous posts on the subject: I tend to think the worst of Dr Burzynski and his acolytes. I am far from alone in this opinion, as the plethora of links below shows. There are repeats from other posts, but this bears repeating.

The semi-literate and possibly borderline legal threats sent by Burzynski’s pet killer chihuahua – who must be condoned by Burzynski as he has not repudiated this person’s actions over the period he’s been sending these emails – are unpleasant, to say the least. Court action is of course mentioned, but there is also the veiled threat of “we know where you live” and warnings that the recipient should think of their family.

Now this weeping syphilitic sore has started attacking teenagers:

@timlusher Hello there! Not sure if you’re aware of this, but my blog about Dr #Burzynski is getting some attention! rhysmorgan.co/2011/11/threat…

— Rhys Morgan (@rhysmorgan) November 28, 2011

Over the next few days, busy as I am, I’m going to start looking at Dr Burzynski’s publicly available financial information. It had better be squeaky clean, both legally and morally, because otherwise his arse will be mine.

I have sworn this.

Here’s some more new reading. Heavyweights like Orac, PZ Myers, Phil Plait of Bad Astronomy and Cory Doctorow have all weighed in recently. Stephen Fry tweeted the link to Rhys Morgan’s post (and the site promptly collapsed under the deluge of readers). These are some of the paw prints left by a cat well and truly out of the bag:

• The Burzynski Clinic – Another Crank Tries to Intimidate a Blogger
• Threats from The Burzynski Clinic
• Beware the Cancer Quack – updated
• Todd W’s tongue in cheek vision of the beleaguered Stephens/Burzynski team: May As Well Try to Stop a Storm…

Related articles

• The Burzynski Clinic Threatens 17 Year Old Blogger (quackometer.net)
• The Burzynski Clinic Threatens My Family. (quackometer.net)
• A P.R. flack from the Burzynski Clinic threatens a skeptical blogger (scienceblogs.com)
• Marc Stephens issues more threats on behalf of the Burzynski Clinic [Respectful Insolence] (scienceblogs.com)
• Evidence? Burzynski don’t need no stinkin’ evidence (cubiksrube.wordpress.com)
• Stanislaw Burzynski’s public record (skepticalhumanities.com)
• The False Hope of the Burzynski Clinic (quackometer.net)
• Dear Observer …………… (nucella.wordpress.com)
• Dear Observer Part 2…………… (nucella.wordpress.com)
• The Burzynski Clinic goes bonkers (blacktriangle.org)
• The ones Burzynski doesn’t boast about (anarchic-teapot.net)
• Burzynski: piss-poor cancer therapy at a hefty price (anarchic-teapot.net)
• The Great Burzynzki Caper (codenix.org)
• Someone should have told those goons about the Streisand effect (furiouspurpose.me)
• The Burzynski Continuation (cubiksrube.wordpress.com)
• “Alternative” cancer clinic threatens to sue high school blogger (blogs.discovermagazine.com)