Controversial Texas doctor Stanislaw Burzynski goes before disciplinary board
Houston doctor Stanislaw Burzynski – a rock star in the alternative medicine world – has spent decades fighting state and federal regulators, who often have taken a dim view of his claims to be able to cure the terminally ill patients no one else can help, using unapproved medicines available only from him.
The Texas Medical Board has repeatedly tried and failed to shut Burzynski down, arguing that the pugnacious Polish immigrant puts patients in danger by marketing unapproved and potentially risky cancer drugs of his own invention.
Burzynski's latest battle begins Thursday, at a disciplinary hearing in the state capital.
The medical board, like most of the medical establishment, paints Burzynski as a snake-oil salesman who hawks unproven therapies to desperate souls.
Yet that disdain hasn’t deterred patients from around the world from seeking care at his Houston clinic.
Now, Texas medical officials are trying a different tactic.
At Thursday's hearing, they will argue that the 72-year-old Burzynski – the subject of a USA TODAY investigation in 2013 – pulled a bait-and-switch on customers looking for natural cures.
Burzynski allegedly attracts the terminally ill from around the world to Houston by holding out the promise of his proprietary cancer drugs, available exclusively from his clinic, even though he knows most of those patients can’t legally receive them, according to a 38-page list of charges from the medical board.
In board documents and in interviews, Burzynski’s attorneys have denied any wrongdoing.
“He doesn’t believe he violated the standard of care,” said Dan Cogdell, Burzynski’s attorney. “He did everything that was proper and called for.”
Burzynski’s experimental drugs, which he calls antineoplastons, are legally available only through clinical trials overseen by the Food and Drug Administration, which has strict criteria for including patients.
Once patients are in Houston, the board charges, Burzynski allegedly offers them commercially available drugs which they could receive at any hospital in the United States. The board notes that Burzynski allegedly combines these medicines – at a high markup – in unproven ways, giving powerful therapies nearly simultaneously, without informing patients of the risks, or that he owns the pharmacy that provides the medications.
The medical board also accuses Burzynski of improperly charging seven patients a total of nearly $400,000 by billing people for tests and services they allegedly did not need. Burzynski also allegedly allowed unlicensed staff to practice medicine and misled patients by addressing these employees as “doctor,” according to board documents.
In his written response to the board charges, Stanislaw Burzynski denied misleading patients.
Patients who don’t qualify for the antineoplastons trial are offered a related, FDA-approved drug called phenylbutyrate, which the body metabolizes into one of the ingredients in antineoplastons, Burzynski said in his response. Like most of the drugs dispensed at his clinic, Burzynski prescribes phenylbutyrate “off-label,” for uses other than those for which they’re approved, he wrote. Prescribing drugs off-label is not a violation of FDA rules.
Burzynski also said denied he misled patients about his in-house pharmacy, noting in his official response to the board that, “there is no legal or ethical requirement for an oncology practice to separately or specifically notify a cancer patient that the practice’s in-house pharmacy is owned by the oncology practice.”
Burzynski also said he never deceived anyone about the clinic’s unlicensed research associates, who assist the doctors on his staff. The associates “work under strict supervision of licensed physicians,” Burzynski said in the response. As graduates of foreign medical schools, they’re legally allowed to be called doctors, he said in the response. He also asserts none of them diagnose or treat patients.
Burzynski denied overcharging patients, arguing in his official response that all of the charges cited in board’s case against him were reasonable and medically necessary.
Some of Burzynski’s former patients and their families plan to testify against him at the medical board hearing this month.
Among them will be former patient Wayne Merritt, who sought out Burzynski after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2009. Like many of Burzynski’s patients, Merritt sought an alternative to conventional chemo.
In an interview, Merritt’s wife, Lisa, Burzynski promised to treat her husband with antineoplastons. Instead, Merritt received a different but related drug, along with commercial therapies such as Xeloda and Zolinza. Xeloda is FDA-approved for advanced breast and colorectal cancer. Zolinza is approved for a type of lymphoma. Neither is approved for pancreatic cancer.
“When we got home and talked to our regular oncologist and found out it was just regular chemo, we felt we’d been scammed,” she said. The Armuchee, Ga., couple said they spent $20,000 for about a month of treatment at the Burzynski clinic. Wayne Merritt received additional chemotherapy from his doctor in Georgia and remains healthy today.
Burzynski “is living the high life off the backs of the terminally ill,” Lisa Merritt said. “I hope they revoke his license.”
Burzynski has no intention of retiring or backing down from his fight with the medical board, and won't stop seeing patients, Cogdell, his attorney, said.
Describing his client’s feisty temperament and enthusiasm for his work, Cogdell said, “There’s no reverse in that transmission. That man won’t retire as long as he’s drawing a breath of air. He’s very committed to his patients.”
While Burzynski still has a core of loyal supporters, his previous attorney, Richard Jaffe, has turned against him, claiming the doctor owes him nearly $250,000 in legal fees. Jaffe, who defended Burzynski for decades, has filed suit in federal court to force Burzynski into an involuntary bankruptcy proceeding. Burzynski has filed court documents in the case showing he’s more than $1.1 million in debt,. Burzynski has asked the court to dismiss Jaffe's petition.
Jaffe declined to comment for this article. But in a separate document in the bankruptcy case, Jaffe said that Burzynski hasn’t told the court about all of his creditors, who include patients and insurance companies who overpaid him.
The medical board also has filed charges against other current or former doctors at Burzynski’s clinic, although it has not set a date for their hearings. Those physicians include Burzynski’s son, Gregory Burzynski, as well as Zanhua Yi and Alejandro Marquis.
The board has accused all three of failing “to practice medicine in an acceptable professional manner consistent with public health and welfare.”
Contributing: Christopher Schnaars.