Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/288717062?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Monday, March 4, 2013
Building society donates cash to help Special Olympians (From The ...
Building society donates cash to help Special Olympians
2:38pm Sunday 3rd March 2013 in News 
SPECIAL Olympians have received a financial boost thanks to a local building society.
The money will help Tim Peacock achieve his dreams of competing in the Special Olympics again after scooping five gold medals in power lifting at the 1997 games.
The Guisborough man has now put down the weights and taken up the more genteel crown green bowling.
And thanks to a donation of ?250 from the town?s Darlington Building Society other wannabe Special Olympians will be in with a chance of boosting their training.
This year at the National Games in Bath he will join nine other competitors in the bowls squad in a team of 105 athletes and coaches from the Northern region attending the Special Olympics National games 2013.
Keith Wilcox, northern region chairman of The Special Olympics, said: ?As the local regional committee, it is wonderful to get recognition from a local organisation.?
The charity will buy sporting equipment and the donation will help volunteers to hold events such as training and competitions.
Louise Thorpe, office manager, said: ?We decided to select The Special Olympics to receive a donation as their excellent work has a direct connection to some of our customers.
More information on the charity can be found at: www.sogb.org.uk
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Science-Based Medicine ? Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski's cancer ...
It?s no secret that I happen to be on several mailing lists of groups or doctors whose dedication to science is?shall we say??questionable. Of course, the reason I join such mailing lists is to keep my finger on the pulse of pseudoscience, so to speak. Between such lists and strategically selected Google Alerts (the latter of which appear to be failing me these days), I?m usually aware of potential blogging material fast on selected topics that have become my bailiwick on this blog. So it was that I became aware on Saturday of a development regarding the movie about Stanislaw Burzynski that was going to be released direct to DVD this week.
I wrote about this ?documentary? a couple of weeks ago, because it had become pretty clear that a significant part of the movie will be dedicated to a PR counterattack (more like a smear job) on skeptics who have been critical of Burzynski, criticism that apparently goaded him to use a rather unhinged individual by the name of Marc Stephens to threaten skeptical bloggers who had written posts critical of Burzynski?s science (more appropriately, his lack of science), and his proclivity for charging patients huge amounts of money to be in clinical trials, a practice that is in general considered at best questionable. The brouhaha in the blogosphere led me to pay attention to Burzynski in a way that I hadn?t before. Sure, I had heard of him, but I hadn?t really delved deeply into his claims. That situation was rectified in late 2011, as I reviewed the first propaganda movie made about Burzynski by Eric Merola, Burzynski The Movie: Cancer Is Serious Business. As I delved deeper, I learned that Burzynski?s evidence for the anticancer efficacy of his ?antineoplaston therapy? doesn?t hold up; that his ?personalized gene-targeted cancer therapy? is anything but personalized or gene-targeted; and that he?s using an orphan drug now in what appears to me to be a strategy to bypass restrictions on his use of antineoplastons that he agreed to in a consent agreement with the Texas Attorney General back in 1998 that allow him only to use these drugs as part of a valid clinical trial.
So I awaited the approach of this week with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation; anticipation because I wanted to see what sort of bizarre new conspiracy theories (or new twists on old conspiracy theories) that Merola could weave, and trepidation because I don?t know how badly Merola will trash me (and people I know) in his movie and such attacks could cause me difficulties. Suffice to say, it looked very much as though Merola was going to resurrect Jake Crosby?s scurrilous attacks against me from three years ago. So it was with great surprise that I read this e-mail on Saturday morning, sent to the Burzynski Movie mailing list:
Dear Burzynski Movie Subscribers:
Major International Distribution Deal For
Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business, Part II:We are pleased to announce that Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business, Part II has landed a major international distribution deal with one of America?s top distribution companies.
We can?t give out any specific details until everything is finalized, but promise to keep you informed. All we can say is, if you live in North America and own a television set, you will be likely able to see this new documentary by summer. However, the distribution deal stretches beyond just television.
Given this new development, we had to halt all pre-sales for the DVD to follow the protocols required of us by the distribution company. We are re-opening pre-sales now, with the new ship date being July 1, 2013 (instead of March 5, 2013).
The rest of the e-mail consisted of explanations of how those who had already preordered the movie for March 5 shipping would get a bonus if they kept their orders active and waited until July to receive their DVD.
On the surface, this would appear to be a horrible development, if Merola has indeed managed to secure some sort of international distribution deal. However, I?m not quite so sure that it is, as I?ll explain below. In fact, in retrospect an announcement of this sort should not have come as such a surprise to me for two reasons. The first reason is that, earlier this week, I had contemplated purchasing a copy of this movie so that I could know what it contained. However, not being thrilled with potentially revealing my name, credit card information, and home address to Eric Merola?s company, I thought that, if I were to order this movie, I?d do it through PayPal if that were an option and have it shipped to either my work address, which is public, or to a postal box. So I went to the Burzynski Movie website, only to find a message claiming that, due to high demand, orders were temporarily no longer being taken. That sounded odd to me, but oh, well?
Worst of all, there was also a notice that the first Burzynski movie will be shown twice on Thursday, March 7 on the Denver affiliate of Colorado PBS (discussed here). However, as I read this self-congratulatory bit of blather from Eric Merola, whose job it is to compose self-congratulatory blather for use in corporate infomercials, something seemed odd. I didn?t know what it was at the time, but it soon became apparent when someone sent me a link relevant to my post from two weeks ago about Burzynski?s cancer ?success? stories that very likely aren?t. What I discovered is that Hannah Bradley, one of the ?success stories? and a woman whose partner had made his own video about Burzynski and who will feature prominently in Eric Merola?s latest paean to the ?brave maverick doctor? Burzynski, had finally posted a new vlog:
When last I discussed Hannah Bradley?s story, I pointed out how cute I thought Hannah and her partner Pete were. Their love for each other radiates from the screen. However, I also felt obligated to point out why I thought that she was not the ?miracle cure? that she was being advertised as by Eric Merola. For a complete explanation, read my previous post. The CliffsNotes version for those who don?t want to read my previous lengthy post is that Hannah?s tumor, an astrocytoma (which is a form of glioma) did indeed appear to regress, but that regression can likely be explained by the surgery and radiation therapy that she had. The other part of the argument was that it is premature to represent Hannah as some sort of ?miracle cure,? given that the median survival for someone with her tumor is in the range of two to three years, and she?s only just reaching the two year mark. In other words, contrary to the story being spun about her by Merola and Burzynski, it is not that surprising that her tumor has what appears to be a radiographically near-complete remission (by ?radiographically? I mean what can be seen on imaging studies like MRIs) or that she is still alive. Her progress is still well within the expected behavior of the tumor that she has. If she were alive four or five years from now and tumor-free, that would be much more remarkable. Even then, however, it would not be evidence that the antineoplastons saved her because there are occasional complete remissions in this tumor type, and long term survivors, although uncommon, are not so uncommon that Hannah must be evidence that antineoplastons are so miraculously effective that they saved her when conventional medicine could not.
Finally, what most made me wonder about what was happening to Hannah was my simple observation that she and Pete have not posted images of any of her MRIs since late August. This is in marked contrast to each new MRI up to that point, which did show promising regression of the enhancing lesion and cystic area left over from her surgery. Also, she and Pete posted a vlog on November 1 that sounded as though it had bad news, but apparently took it down, as it?s not there anymore. As I said two weeks ago, I was worried. Real worried.
Now comes this latest vlog, and I?m more worried about Hannah than ever. Indeed, I almost fear to say what I feel obligated to say, because no matter how I do it, it?s likely to be spun, as Merola?s movie clearly has done to other skeptics with his ham-fisted shots of cancer patients crying about how skeptics are ?attacking? them, as an ?attack? on Hannah and Pete or as trying to rob them of hope. I also realize that there is a fine line between trying to use a case like Hannah Bradley?s as a means of educating the public about ineffective cancer ?cures? and coming off as attacking someone with a serious cancer. I try very hard not to cross that line, and I think I?ve been successful, for instance, here. However, if there?s one thing I?ve learned during all these years, it?s that if the person I?m discussing finds out about my post, that person always perceives it as an attack and lashes out. Similarly, Burzynski?s groupies realize that it is very effective to appeal to emotions and cast Burzynski?s critics as heartless villains so in the thrall of big pharma, ideology, or whatever that they will viciously rip into a patient whose life is threatened with a deadly cancer. Personally, I?d be very happy for Hannah and Pete if she were to survive to outlive me, whether it were due to conventional therapy, Burzynski?s therapy, or a combination of the two. I hate seeing people die of cancer, which is one big reason I became a surgical oncologist in the first place. And if it were Burzynski?s antineoplastons that did the trick, I?d be both happy at the discovery and furious at Burzynski for jerking people around for so many decades instead of doing the work it takes to prove the value of his treatment.
So why am I even more worried than ever about Hannah? It started right from the first shot of her latest vlog. Look at her face. It?s subtle, but, I think real: an increased asymmetry in which her lower lip on the left part of her face is droopier than I had ever noticed before. I first noticed this in her Christmas vlog but it appears worse now, particularly in comparison to her in the 40 minute Hannah?s Anecdote, which included lots of shots of her from December 2011 and January 2012. In those shots, she appeared to have had a bit of this going on then, but it was quite subtle. It?s not so subtle anymore in her latest vlog and suggests that the tumor might be growing and impinging on nerves going to her face. She also struggles for words in a way that I don?t recall ever having seen her do before. At one point, she has a hard time thinking of the word ?risk? and has to be prompted by Pete. All of this makes me wonder if she?s developed an anomic aphasia. I could be wrong about Hannah?s facial asymmetry; I?m not a neurologist. In fact, I?d like to be wrong about this (and you neurologists and/or neurosurgeons out there tell me if I?m wrong about this?I?ll tack on an addendum if you convince me). But I don?t think I am.
Next, Hannah admits that she has a ?really cystic area in my head? but insists that there?s no enhancing tumor and doesn?t really say if what is there is increasing in size or stable. Given her affect and the expression on her face when she discusses these issues, I truly fear that it must be growing. There?s also the issue of the marked change in how she and Pete discuss her scans. In Hannah?s Anecdote and their vlog of July 27, 2012, Hannah and Pete exult (and understandably so!) that Hannah has had a ?complete response.? Now, ?complete response? means just that: a complete response to therapy. No tumor detectable by MRI. That implies that anything seen on imaging now must have arisen between the scan of last August and now. Presumably, it arose between August and November, the time when she and Pete first noted that the news was ?not the best of news.?
I hate to say it, but I?ve seen this story before. I?ve even encountered it before myself. Burzynski has a tendency to tell patients with brain tumors that the formation of ?cystic areas? is a good thing that indicates his treatment is working. The most recent example I remember of this was Amelia Saunders, whose father reported on Facebook in November that Burzynski told them this:
Tonight is the update we?d always hoped we?d be able to write, but it has taken an enormous amount of faith and hard work to get this far ? and there were many times we didn?t think this would happen.
Amelia?s tumour is dying, from the inside. We?ll be getting another opinion from here on this, but the scans do back this up. There are cysts forming inside the tumour where cancer cells would have been before.
For the moment, we seem to be winning our little battle.
We are trying our hardest not to get too excited yet. These cysts are forming inside the tumour but it isn?t shrinking ? however this proves the treatment is working. Remember that Amelia has received no other treatment.
Amelia Saunders, as you recall, was the unfortunate little girl who developed an inoperable diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma and whose family managed to raise ?200,000 in just 12 weeks to send her to the Burzynski Clinic for antineoplaston therapy. In September, several stories in the UK represented her as a ?miracle cure? because she was able to attend her first day of school. Unfortunately, as I knew at the time, the ?cysts? that Burzynski was holding out as evidence that the antineoplastons were working were nothing of the sort. I knew that they almost certainly represented areas of ischemia (low blood flow) leading to tissue death as the tumor outgrew its blood supply. This is a phenomenon commonly seen in advanced malignancy. I knew this because tumor angiogenesis has been one of my areas of research interest, and I?m a co-author on one of the first papers to show that combining antiangiogenic therapy with radiation showed promise in animal models. Basically, tumor cells are constrained in their growth to the diffusion of oxygen and nutrients in aqueous solution unless they can induce the ingrowth of blood vessels, a process called tumor angiogenesis. That?s why tumors can frequently can outgrow their blood supply by growing faster than they can induce blood vessels to grow, and when that happens, areas in the center of the tumor will die and liquify. Surgeons are very familiar with this phenomenon, as are radiologists. Tumors frequently, as they progress, consist of a relatively thin rim of viable, growing cells surrounding a central area of necrotic tissue.
Not long after Burzynski?s whitewashing of Amelia?s November scan, Amelia started to deteriorate clinically. By late December, it was clear that she was dying. Sadly, Amelia finally passed away on January 6. Hers was a truly heartbreaking story, not the least of which because of the way that Stanislaw Burzynski appears to have strung the family along. I fear that he is doing the same with Pete and Hannah, who don?t deserve that any more than Amelia and her family did. One notes that in Pete and Hannah?s vlog of September 7, 2012, Eric Merola points out that Amelia Saunders was going to feature prominently in Burzynski II. This was shortly before stories about her going to school for the first time popped up all over the UK press, giving Burzynski some of the best press he?s ever had.
All of this brings us full circle to the sudden unexpected delay in release of Burzynski II: This Time It?s Peer-reviewed or Burzynski II: Electric Boogaloo (as I like to call the second Burzynski movie). Learning about Hannah?s latest scan right around the same time that I learned about the delay in release of Burzynski II made speculation irresistible that the two were somehow linked. Yes, it could well be a case of confusing correlation with causation and leaping to unwarranted conclusions. If that turns out to be the case, I will certainly admit I made a mistake. However, does it strike anyone else as odd that it is announced that the release of Merola?s movie is delayed three days before it was originally scheduled to be released and on the very same day we learn that one of its ?stars? who was going to be presented as a ?miracle cure,? as slam dunk evidence, along with Laura Hymas, that Burzynski cures incurable brain tumors, is no longer cancer-free? True, Hannah and Pete didn?t actually say that explicitly, but the inescapable implication is there. After all, when they thought that Hannah had had a complete response, they weren?t at all shy about saying so, while now they hem and haw. Again, this is one area where I?d be not just happy to be wrong, but downright ecstatic. Unfortunately, I fear I am not.
It might be that the reason for the delay in releasing Burzynski II is exactly as Merola has represented it. But one wonders why it would take four months and why the sudden last minute ?distribution deal.? Maybe it?s not so odd if Merola needs time to re-edit the movie in light of recent developments, which include Hannah?s plight, the audit of the Burzynski Clinic and Burzynski Research Institute by the FDA, which has shut its antineoplaston operation down, and another development that I know about but can?t really discuss publicly yet. (Fear not, it won?t be long before you know what it is.) It just wouldn?t do to release the movie now and have large parts of it be refuted by events occurring soon after its release, such as the FDA shutting down the Burzynski Research Institute for good or one of the movie?s two ?success stories? turning out not to be as represented. After all, Merola acknowledged publicly that, unlike the case with the first Burzynski movie, this time around the subject is ?fast moving? and events are moving rapidly. Maybe they?re moving more rapidly than even he thought.
Merola tries to paint Burzynski as the iconoclast, the ?brave maverick doctor? who is curing cancer while big pharma, the ?cancer industry,? and the government through the FDA try to shut him down to protect their hegemony. From my perspective, the real story needs to be emphasized again and again. There are many patients whose families have gone to huge lengths to raise sums as high as several hundred thousand dollars to pay for treatment at the Burzynski Clinic under the auspices of Dr. Burzynski?s ?clinical trials? that never seem to produce much in the way of useful data despite his having opened and closed dozens of them since he was ordered in the 1990s by the Texas Medical Board and the FDA not to use antineoplaston therapy except in the context of a clinical trial. Despite that, Dr. Burzynski has set up quite the cottage industry in which patients pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the ?privilege? of being treated on a ?clinical trial? with antineoplaston therapy, even though it is not FDA-approved, has never been convincingly shown to work, and has significant toxicities despite Burzynski?s claims that his treatment is so nontoxic. So we have many patients harnessing the generosity of kind-hearted strangers to pay for woo. It?s a depressing litany of people, mostly children, teenagers, and young adults like Billie Bainbridge, Kelli Richmond, Olivia Bianco, and Shana Pulkinen. And, most recently, there have been Rachael Mackey and Amelia Saunders. There are so many more.
And now Hannah Bradley, who, I hope, is cured but have ample reason to fear is not. All of these feed into the cult of personality that is Stanislaw Burzynski.
These patients come from all over the world, even from countries with universal health coverage, like the U.K. and Australia, to spend precious weeks of their remaining time in a foreign country far away from home and pay hundreds of thousands of dollars that they don?t need to spend for a treatment that cannot save them. Telling them that on this blog is not easy, because I take care of cancer patients. Even though I have thus far been fortunate enough not to have cancer myself, that doesn?t mean family members haven?t; indeed, my mother-in-law died nearly four years ago of a particularly nasty form of breast cancer. Even as a cancer doctor, I still wanted to believe that there was hope, even though all my knowledge told me that there wasn?t. At that point, even I might have been tempted by Burzynski. My only hope is that putting this sort of information out there can give patients who are thinking of going to the Burzynski Clinic a science-based assessment of Burzynski?s work, in marked contrast to the marketing that is all they will find in the work of Eric Merola and others who function in essence as unpaid advertisers to promote the glory that is Burzynski.
Source: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/index.php/burzynski-success-stories-update-movie-sequel/
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Sunday, March 3, 2013
China's Xi rides high hopes ahead of presidency
LUOTUOWAN VILLAGE, China (AP) ? China's fawning state media, jaded social media commentators and even poor corn and cabbage farmers agree: New Communist Party chief Xi Jinping is off to a good start.
"General Secretary Xi doesn't put on any airs. He talks like an ordinary person," said 69-year-old farmer Tang Rongbin. The new leader visited Tang's sparse, dimly lit farmhouse in Luotuowan village in December, bearing gifts of cooking oil, flour and a blanket.
Xi has styled himself as an economic reformer, an iron-fisted graft-buster, a staunch nationalist and a no-frills man-of-the-people ? spurring expectations for change. But as he prepares to be appointed to the largely ceremonial role of president, pressure will be growing on him to deliver.
China faces rising public anger over endemic corruption, a burgeoning rich-poor gap and the degradation of the country's air, soil and waterways. Slower economic growth and territorial disputes, especially with Japan, add to the tension.
Mounting protests over environmental issues, land seizures and high-handed officialdom point to the underlying social discontent. Days before the party conclave that brought Xi to power last year, thousands of protesters in the eastern city of Ningbo faced off against riot police outside government offices, calling on officials to halt a chemical plant expansion.
"I think there has been a revolution of rising expectations," said Willy Lam, an expert on party politics at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. "People realize they can get away with even demonstrations to make their wills heard."
Joining the clamor for change this past week were dozens of prominent intellectuals who signed a petition urging the government to ratify an international treaty on protecting human rights and the rule of law. Also, a group of about 100 parents of gays and lesbians urged lawmakers to legalize gay marriage.
The annual session of the national legislature, which opens Tuesday, will complete the once-a-decade handover of power that began in November when Xi and his leadership team assumed the top positions in the Communist Party. At the end of the session, Xi will take the title of president from his predecessor as party leader, Hu Jintao.
Deputies to the National People's Congress will rubber-stamp appointments of senior officials to the State Council, or Cabinet, to run economic and foreign policies; Xi and other party leaders finalized the personnel changes at a closed-door meeting last week. The No. 2 party leader, Li Keqiang, will become premier, the country's top economic official.
A separate meeting of the government's top advisory body held its opening session Sunday, with its chairman promising to support the new leadership.
The meetings of the legislature and the advisers, which will wrap up in mid-March, give the Xi administration a high-profile platform to lay out policies to build the prosperous, strong and fairer society he has talked about in his public appearances.
Xi came to power in the wake of a scandal that exposed infighting and corruption in the highest reaches of the party. Exuding a confidence and ease lacking in the remote, wooden Hu, Xi has seized on the public's disgust over graft and its hopes for national greatness to rally support for his leadership.
"He certainly took challenges and made them opportunities," said Cheng Li, an expert on Chinese politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "He turned them around into great expectations for him, and great hope."
Xi visited an early testing ground for the market reforms that have transformed China into the world's No. 2 economy to align himself with reform in broad terms, though he has given no indication of the changes he wants to make.
He stopped off at Luotuowan, 350 kilometers (200 miles) southwest of Beijing, and other farming villages to show his concern for those struggling to get by. And he has played to nationalist sentiments, taking a hard line against Japan in a long-festering territorial dispute, and touring military units to show his commitment to national defense.
Xi has disappointed some who had hoped for greater political freedom. Though he has espoused the virtues of constitutional government and the rule of law, dissidents continue to be harassed and a crackdown on self-immolation protests in Tibetan areas has only intensified.
It is fighting graft that Xi has made the signature campaign of his first three months ? a popular campaign that so far featured more symbolism than action.
He launched a drive to cut out red carpets, motorcades and other official extravagance. State media touted that he preferred simple meals over the usual banquets leaders are given while on inspection tours. He has vowed to target corruption at high and low levels of power ? both the "tigers" and the "flies."
So far, it's mostly flies that have been swatted. A slew of lower-level officials have been punished after revelations they were keeping mistresses or amassing multiple unaccounted-for properties. Its highest-level victim has been a deputy provincial party chief suspected of influence peddling and dodgy real estate deals.
Many politically minded Chinese aren't convinced that Xi will take the painful steps needed to root out deeply embedded corruption. Eliminating graft would require an overhaul of the patronage-based political culture and restraining the party's unchecked power.
"Will it be like the past when there was great determination expressed in speech, but ultimately no effective efforts followed to control corruption?" said Ren Jianming, an anti-corruption expert at prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing. "We haven't seen much in terms of specific measures."
Some Chinese want the party to allow its anti-corruption watchdogs to operate independently, and to require officials to declare assets publicly. A system in place since 2010 requires some officials to report income, real estate holdings and other wealth to their superiors ? not the public ? but that has done little to stanch graft. A few areas in Guangdong have recently been named as testing grounds for public asset declaration.
Still, resistance to full disclosure is high within the bureaucracy and perhaps even the leadership. Bloomberg News reported in June last year that Xi's extended family has amassed assets totaling $376 million, though it said none was traced to Xi himself.
"I believe that Xi should take the lead," said Wang Yukai, an anti-corruption expert at the Chinese Academy of Governance, which trains provincial and ministerial-level civil servants. "Politburo Standing Committee members also need to declare information about their spouses and children. This will pave the way for future declarations."
Many experts advocated an asset declaration mechanism when they attended a meeting called by Wang Qishan, the party's new anti-corruption agency chief, in late November, according to Ren, who was one of the participants. Ren said Wang noted that more research needed to be done but otherwise stayed noncommittal.
"There's now a lot of public expectation about anti-corruption work, and as the leading cadre in charge of this work, he must remain calm and rational," Ren observed. "It's easy to raise public expectations, but if you're unable to meet them, then you'll end up disappointing everyone."
___
Follow Gillian Wong on Twitter: http://twitter.com/gillianwong
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High Returns On A Small Fund Challenge Low Returns On A Big Fund
Editor?s note: David Teten is a partner with ff Venture Capital?and founder and chairman of?Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of Greater New York. I recently had an extensive debate with Tom Grossi, partner with New Enterprise Associates, about why and whether small funds (like mine) tend to outperform large funds (like his). He and I wanted to share the conversation with you.Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Z0-4_pkIf5o/
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