Today is the day that Stanislaw Burzynski, the guy who treats cancer patients with snake oil made from a horse urine extract, is finally going on trial by the Texas Medical Board. He stands to lose his license to practice medicine at last, which is kind of an amazingly minimal consequence for a fraud who has been bilking dying patients for decades. Over 200 pages of specific and monstrous abuses were in the initial charges, which had to be pared down to a manageable number before the judges were willing to go forward, which tells you something: if you’re going to commit amoral acts, go big. Do so many crimes that just reading the list of charges intimidates the courts.
The most hopeful news, though, is that Burzynski’s former lawyer is saying that Burzynski is bankrupt, wants to put his clinic into involuntary bankruptcy proceedings, and is so miffed at Burzynski’s failure to pay his fees that he has left the service of the clinic and is suing Burzynski. It looks like the rats are deserting a sinking ship.
Would “fucking finally” be an inappropriate response to this?
Bankrupt my arse! Next thing it will be a doctor’s note saying he’s too physically feeble to attend court. Then, if forced into court, he’ll collapse on the floor and get taken to hospital. It’s all been done before.
Twitted this to Wonkette, perhaps it will make theirs snake oil special this Saturday
@2: I won’t say I’d be okay with it if that’s what happened–I’d like to see Burzynski get his after all these years selling people snake oil–but if he is shut down, I’ll be at least happy that he can’t keep harming desperate people.
I do hope he is going down big-time. One of my cousins was listed as a “success story” on his site… yeah, except he’s dead from his disease… I guess you could call that a “success”. :-( Burzynski got his money, after all.
Sadly the US legal system is so odd that one can’t tell what the outcome will be. All I can do is hope he finally gets shut down.
Dianne @#1 You beat me to it. Those were the exact words I came here to post.
Let’s not count the corpses until the ax work is done. He managed to skate by the last time he went on trial, and it is happening in Texas, after all.
dianne, getting shut down may not be enough to stop him from hurting people altogether. Heck, what’s happening in Texas may only stop him in that jurisdiction or within the US. I think something much bigger may need to happen in order to stop him hurting people. He’s going on trial with the Texas Medical Board. Perhaps their findings will point toward something that can be prosecuted up to a federal level. If nothing else happens, his name needs to continually associated with these current events in order to provide a counter dialogue to whatever he may try next.
But not without trying to take some of the gilded timbers home to make retirement a little more comfortable, it seems. Maybe that’s unfair but “Burzynski’s former lawyer” is not a description that conveys great moral character to me.
Actually, grumpyoldfart@2, I’ve found that shonky nostrum paddlers tend to have the same attitude towards accounting and business ethics as they do to medical science, and a lot of them are running bankrupt or nearly so. Of course they keep trading and shifting debts around and denying there’s any problem…until suddenly it becomes useful to be bankrupt, say when your creditors finally figure out they’ve been ripped off and demand their money, or you’re being prosecuted by a regulatory body…
Good to know. Let’s also hope that puts an end to celebrity Australian neurosurgeon Charlie Teo sending children dying of inoperable brain tumours to Burzynski for the guy to extract tens of thousands of dollars from desparate families for his urine treatments.
Kestrel: We’d be interested to hear your story if you could contact us at The OTHER Burzynski Patient Group https://theotherburzynskipatientgroup.wordpress.com/about/