an eleven year veteran of the san francisco police department i hold the department's highest medal of honor for bravery that used to mean a lot more to me than it does now what i'd like to talk to you about today is my now seven year old daughter this is an identical twin her sister is now dead her sister when she was four years old kristen developed a highly malignant brain tumor that had spread throughout her spine and her brain the doctors told us that we had really two options take her home let her die or bring iran for massive dosages of chemo and radiation simultaneously and either event she was going to die they were quite certain of that and very quickly believing her only chance to be the standard route we gave her the chemo and radiation it burned her skull so bad she had second degree burns and her hair never came back to change your diapers we had to wear rubber gloves because her urine was so toxic and it burned her at the end of six months miraculously she survived the standard treatment although there was a high expectation she wouldn't she still had cancer we were told sorry we've done everything we can now she's going to die probably within a couple of months my wife and i choosing not to accept that started reading the first book i picked up the third chapter discussed dr brzezinski as you may guess i have some expertise in fraud in fact i'm quite certain there are enough attorneys in the room that before dear as an expert in fraud and i conducted my own investigation i have no doubt the man is not a fraud i have no doubt that he does what he does out of earnest belief that his medicine works and you're in a position to judge for yourselves whether it works or not but it's well established by the f d a that it's nontoxic eighteen months later we took my daughter off the plaster she had not died she had no signs of tumor should remain free for eighteen months of cancer within a month the cancer was widespread in her brain we put her back on brzezinski's by the way at the objections of our doctors for some reason felt that it had failed her we put her back on within nine weeks the tumor was completely gone she died last july of neurological necrosis her brain fell apart from the radiation the autopsy showed that she was completely cancer free at fifty two cases of that disease ever no one died cancer free just chrissie so she didn't die of a terminal illness she died of my inability to care for properly and she died from bad advice she died because there's a government institution that disseminates false information and is not looking out for the welfare of the people here ladies and gentlemen i swore an oath eleven years ago and i think most of us in this room swore at one time or another to uphold the constitution says life right  out what you're doing very new to me when i arrived he had seven charts ready for me to review that had been reviewed by the national a polish native name stands a lot brzezinski attended lublin medical university where he graduated first in his class at age twenty four and then received his ph d in biochemistry the following year while undergoing his he made another profound observation people who were inflicted with cancer seem to lack these newly discovered peptides in both their blood and urine while those who were healthy and free of cancer appeared to have an abundance of these peptides dr brzezinski theorized that if he could somehow provide a way to chemically extract these peptides from the blood and urine of healthy donors and administer these peptides to those with cancer perhaps it could be useful in treating the disease which taps five engineers for chemists three pharmacists for medical doctors and for research categories of genes that allow cancer to flourish genes and tumor suppressor genes when someone has cancer they have a higher level of genes switched on and with a higher level of tumor suppressor genes switched off the goal ons in f d a approved clinical trials since brain cancer is one of the most difficult types of cancer to treat he places a heavy focus on brain cancer and his clinical trials on may fifteenth two thousand i was diagnosed with an inoperable stage three anaplastic astrocytoma brain tumor following my diagnosis i was told that i had six to eighteen months to live so that i can colleges here in los angeles and san francisco and they were telling me that time maybe maybe five years of life so course i asked what would happen after five years if i get that five years and they said well we'll see what's available at that time meaning i would perpetually be on a course of treatment and he told me point blank that passes don't work the doctors it's treatment really sounded right to me so i started on his treatment on june sixth two thousand and december of two thousand all that was left of the medical records who was known at this time as jodi gold before she was married in two thousand and five it shows she underwent an m r i at st john's medical center in los angeles on may eleventh of two thousand where they found a two cen which they suspected was cancer the pathology department at st johns performed a biopsy four days later and confirmed that she did indeed have a malignant brain tumor ordinarily the f d a requires that anyone who wishes to be a part of dr burzynski trials must first have already undergone chemotherapy and radiation and failed however since jodi's tumor was so aggressive and her prognosis severely grim she managed to get special exception status to be placed into this trial without undergoing any other prior treatment  whatsoever and m r i on june first of two thousand revealed the size of the enhancing portion of jodi's tumor which was the part of her tumor that was the most aggressively growing on june sixth she started antonio plast on treatment and by july third only a month after starting treatment the enhancing portion of her tumor was gone her tumor remained a nonexistent up until september of the following year when she stopped her antonio plast on treatment all together it's one thing to be shown a single anecdotal case with this type of brain tumor and it's another to simply compare clinical trial data of in operable anaplastic astrocytoma patients treated with toxic radiation and chemotherapy versus free at the end of treatment while a two thousand and eight clinical trial report using only antonio plast ons found that five of twenty patients or twenty five percent were cancer free at the end of treatment with no toxic side effects and he kind of wrote it off i was very excited to tell him that i was cured and he really firstly babble about it so this is somewhat pressing for me another doctor that i have when i astrocytoma it was very excited he's like bleep bleep bleep you know i can't believe this is you because to know what the prognosis for this is and i said yes he's like i can't believe he survived this and he was very excited for me could prove that it could make you she was diagnosed in march of ninety six she was eleven and pretty much just started have been really bad double vision is how we discovered it went to the eye doctor and that's when they did the m r i and discovered it was a brain stem play almost and they explained to her as was diffuse where it was like the healthy tissue in the cancerous tissue words were all together so of course surgery wasn't an option and with the radiation they suggested her prognosis was probably going to be about eight to eighteen months the thing is with the radiation what it would do to you from what i understood was they would shoot the through your ears and the being would burn your healthy and your cancerous cells inside or outside and so all your hair around your ears would be gone never grow back your ears would become deformed him burnt you would become because you couldn't hear  it it would also destroy your pituitary gland which is the gland that helps you grow as you hit puberty yeah she was eleven at the time that was a real concern i had and make you stay in the eleven year old body  basically in the end you become of them in a vegetative state or you couldn't take carrier self which was a very good quality of life because in my big concern was with the oncologist originally that we were dealing with was you know how it was going to affect her development and when she started to enter the teenage years starting a period and growing and developing and he just looked at me said well frankly mrs russell she's not going to live that long what she would have to go through in those extra months that would be or i wouldn't go through what i do you're handed a death sentence anyway but what was the point of the radiation you know you then you have to say ok modern medicine doesn't have an the wrestle is riding on the best news you've had since march she and her parents now believe they are on their way to a cure but what doctors had said was an end here a brain tumor here at the b nski clinic in houston texas the wrestlers have bound an experimental drug they could only dream of eight months ago that's when jessie was still a fifth grader at a catholic elementary school in springfield it's when one of her eyes started crossing in she started seeing double it's when jessie went to the doctor and learned she had one of the most aggressive kinds of brain cancer a malignant tumor doctors said would kill her within months and that radiation would only give her a little more time and i would live for only three months and  red and white pain and left it and not a local but my yeah i'm still dying today the medical pictures tell a different story you can see the improvement immediately just looking at jesse's eyes now compared to last may and m r i on may seventh one thousand nine hundred ninety six revealed the size of the enhancing portion of jessica's tumor one month into starting antonio plast on treatment her tumor disappeared however given the aggressive nature of this type of tumor it quickly returned in august and remains until november and which time dr brzezinski doubled her antinea plast on dosage until her tumor went away in december only to return again in january of  ninety seven stayed around until april and finally disappeared in may of one thousand nine hundred seventy one year after starting antonio plast on treatment jessica's tumor remained nonexistent up until october two thousand and there were very few doctors that you would tell me you were saying brzezinski that would be kind of encouraging and positive with you most of them you they would hear the name brzezinski and they wouldn't want to deal with you as they were afraid i'm so relieved that we is literally it did save her life and here she is now twenty four and she's got a little boy who's almost five and she has her second baby will be born in october we just found out she's having a little girl again it's one thing to observe a single anecdotal childhood brainstem glioma survivor and it's another to see the results from f d a supervised clinical trials treating jessica's type of cancer here is a table illustrating studies published in two thousand and six comparing the results of different childhood brain stem glioma treatments there were three groups treated with radiation and chemotherapy and two groups treated with  out of all three groups treated with radiation and chemotherapy only one of one hundred seven patients or zero point nine percent more cancer free after treatment however this patient did not live beyond five years presumably being devastated by the amount of radiation and chemotherapy out of both groups treated with antonio plastic ones eleven of the forty patients or twenty seven point five percent were cancer free after treatment and eleven of the forty patients or twenty seven point five percent lived more than five years most of these brain stem glioma survivors who were not previously subjected to toxic chemotherapy and radiation before starting antonio plast on treatment they came back they said she has this large baseball sized tumor in her abdomen and not only that but it in her kidney it was like everywhere it was like and her hand over her lungs so here we are thinking basically this child has literally a few months to live is basically what they told us at that point they said well we think we can get the original to right now so they had this surgeon he was able to go  he got the whole tumor she did lose her left kidney and her left adrenal gland and it was for drugs and it was like eight pages of side effects and very little of that it was even more so because the drugs were  regiment that we have we have a six month old with one kidney and the side effects were my kidney failure here in fact leukemia me other kinds of cancers coming from this and i was just like even if she was going to  away i can't do this or i can't because it's like why would i want her last few months of life to be miserable i don't know what to do i just knew that i didn't want to put her through all that intense high dose chemo  and miss out on what might be the last bit of time that we have with there because i had talked to my uncle he's in his sixty's now but when in the end you know in the in hundred nine my cousin his daughter like three three and she had she got cancer or some kind and he told me about what that was like and that time and they just kept giving her more chemo and more chemo and more chemo and then finally we had this long several our conversation one day and he told me i asked him because i had prepared myself was trying to prepare myself i said what is it like when when a doctor tell that's it you can't do anymore and my uncle ray told me that for the for the last few weeks of my cousins live they celebrated christmas once a week and they had a christmas number birthday once a week until i was it and i just i was putting myself in his shoes and i was thinking i was just thinking that i couldn't watch my daughter wither away and that if i wanted to be at least i wanted whatever time i had to be happy as happy as could be anyway and not i don't know not not just while i watch or wither away from chemo that's not doing any good anymore drug that they wanted to give kelsey came out around one nine hundred eighty eight and i realize this isn't the cutting edge of technology this is there they're giving us the same all the same old stuff that i just well you know if she's got approximately nine months to live then you know we come over here and we don't have all the side effects full you know and not much time which might mean better off doing if the entry of the ending result is the upon the removal of kelsey's left kidney and left adrenal gland her diagnosis was confirmed at the university of texas  and again at m d anderson cancer center where a month later m d understand also confirmed that kelsey's cancer had spread to her lungs after desperately researching kelsey's situation her family decided to decline all chemotherapy treatments offered by m d anderson and instead enroll kelsey into one of dr brzezinski clinical trials by this time kelsey's cancer had also spread into her liver after starting her antonio plast on treatment the tumor in kelsey's liver was gone by august of two thousand and seven c t scans of her chest revealed six tumors in her lungs at the start of treatment leaving one small spot four years later which was deemed to be enacted and most likely scar tissue today kelsey hill is considered to have had a complete response to her anti nuke last on treatment brzezinski began treating cancer patients with antonio plast ons he has successfully treated virtually every type of cancer relieving thousands of families from across the world of this dread disease ye unlike other clinical trials which are supported by billion dollar pharmaceutical companies and are often assisted by large tax funded research grants from the national cancer institute the united states government currently prohibits any given the existence of a treatment that is curing cancer at a rate that traditional medicine could only dream of and doing so without any damaging side effects most would assume that every penny of our tax dollars allocated for cancer research would be thrown and dr brzezinski is direction the problem that we face however is that a huge financial house has been built on the paradigm of purging the body of industry pumping out chemotherapeutic agents every month there are all kinds of machines that deliver radiation you've got all this stuff in the world and if trillions of dollars i find it very interesting that we have same guys the pharmaceutical industry is arguably the most profitable industry on our planet with its profits being triple that of all of the fortune five hundred companies rising profits result in rising stock prices the only way this industry can sustain this profitable momentum is by continuing to introduce new patented drugs and since the pharmaceutical industry relies on the f d a as its gatekeeper to introduce these new drugs it's in their best interest to ensure the f d a remains as compliant as possible and since the f d a is also an office of the united states government it's in the government's best interest to preserve one of its most powerful industries the former editor in chief of the new england journal of medicine dr marcia angell has been very outspoken with the idea that it's time to take the food and drug administration back from the drug companies in one nine hundred ninety two congress put the fox in the chicken coop and it passed the prescription drug user fee act which authorizes drug companies to pay user fees to the f d a for each brand name drug considered for approval the user fee act put the a on the payroll of the industry it regulates and it has drastically changed the way it operates the part of the agency that reviews new drugs now gets more than half of its money from the pharmaceutical industry the f industry is underscored by the composition of its eighteen advisory committees outside experts who helped evaluate drugs incredibly many of these advisors work as consultants for drug companies the f d a behaves as though the pharmaceutical industry is its user not the public in two thousand and ten the fee revenue paid by the pharmaceutical industry to the f d a has risen to over a half a billion dollars annually pharm over one point four million per application for most cancer drugs submitted to the f d a to ensure a timely approval it's important to understand that neither congress or the f d a had requested this new fee structure to occur instead pharma itself went to congress and impose these new fees on to the f d a in essence purchasing the f d a drug a valuation department from both the government and the public and a two thousand and seven health policy report sponsored by pfizer supporting the renewal of these user fees they revealed that the medium review time for priority drugs and those for serious life threatening diseases that lack satisfactory treatments such as cancer was sped up from twenty one months in one thousand nine hundred three to six months and two thousand and four dozens of cancer therapies have been reviewed and approved within three or four months meanwhile dr brzezinski his patients and other supporting scientists have made every conceivable effort to get the f d a and thus the government to cooperate and the research review and approval of sense nineteen seventy seven making antinea plast ons and administering them to his patients within his private practice they found that according to both the texas state and federal law the use of any drug or a new drug can be used to meet the immediate needs of the patients of a licensed doctor particularly when there is no other available option for them the laws stated that such activity was not governed at the time by the texas food drug and cosmetic act and is not otherwise unlawful under the laws of the state of texas however dr brzezinski would not be legally allowed to introduce or deliver antonio class duns into interstate commerce which means he had to keep his activities only within the state of texas to avoid breaking any federal laws as long as he did this his actions were not within the regulatory authority of the f d a however once word began to spread that dr brzezinski was successfully treating what was once considered terminal then back and forth and been called to the boards finally they proposed to me that i should present to them and i'm out of cases of patients who benefited from mission of the living on my life after that in one thousand nine hundred eighty six dr brzezinski agreed to present to the texas state board of medical examiners forty cases of various types of cancer he had successfully treated using antonio plastic guns  patients ranging from breast bladder long liver brain head and neck and lymphoma after submitting these cases to the medical board he didn't hear back from them leaving him to assume that the board was satisfied and would leave him in peace however two years later the board came back again pretended that the cases he submitted were not successful and claimed he was violating a law that didn't exist which was grounds for the board to cancel revoke or suspend ninety still the board had no case which prompted them to file a second amended complaint in one thousand nine hundred two the medical board kept coming back each time with the same argument practically making xerox copies of their prior claims changing the titles and simply resubmitting them after about five years of this sixty of dr burzynski patients petitioned the board to stop harassing their doctor the board then tried to ignore these petitions by attempting to strike them from the record finally that's something that will be remains to be seen i had never heard of dr burzynski i didn't know anything about him i never was quite clear what the board's problem was the board did not bring any expert witnesses to contest points that were raised by dr burzynski now without an expert witness to render an opinion in certain areas i can't give any credence to opinion raised by a layman and dr  he was quite a witness he said he had never seen anything like what dr burzynski was able to accomplish with his aunt and their plaster and brain cancer he had one young boy there who had been truly was about that they hear strapping lad a good boy but when he was he was first started on treatment when he was about four years old he's name was paul he was given up on by his original doctor when mary michaels took the stand on behalf of her son paul she trained her eyes on the state's attorney i mean i have enough to worry about when i go to bed at night about my son and my family i don't need to worry that this treatment is going to be taken away have no other questions for all i know the kid may still be alive favor finding that the medical board did not introduce any evidence at the hearing that antonio plast ons are not safe and effective nor did they introduce any competent or substantial evidence at the hearing that antonio plus stands are not generally recognized by experts qualified by scientific training and experience to evaluate their safety and effectiveness and as far as the law goes it does not apply to a licensed physician who manufactures his own medications and soley uses it on his own patients in the state of texas now most would think that at this point the texas medical board would stop wasting their time brzezinski's time terminal cancer patients time and the taxpayers money pursuing a case they knew they couldn't win then they told me after they were going to rewrite my proposal for her to say should take adverse action against dr burzynski and i said i thought it rather well think again texas acknowledges that the drugs may be helping some large terminally ill the state says the drugs should be used this is the state board of medical examiners which licenses doctors in texas this is the agency challenging dr business of the people who died this is the brain of an eight year old boy with a huge tumor most thought would kill him he used dr brzezinski images of his skull taken six years later showed the tumor has almost disappeared dr bruce cohen is brzezinski to a higher district court of course this time they knew they couldn't raise any issues about whether or not his treatment was effective and the texas state board of medical examiners which has fought to suspend dr  layman that would really be the question dr brzezinski has won his latest round in court the medical examiner's order was reversed but that is not expected to be the end of his trouble with the state of texas the texas medical board took this imagi all the way to the texas state supreme court where the judge issued an iranian probation order against presents which brzezinski successfully served but again leaving the texas medical board completely unsuccessful in their efforts to remove his medical license so if efficacy was not an issue and dr brzezinski wasn't breaking any laws then why would the texas medical board continue on with this empty pursuit well it was eventually realized even by the mainstream press that the food and drug administration had been pressuring the texas medical board to continue trying to take away dr brzezinski medical license for this story we wanted to talk to the f d a about its policies and procedures the agency did agree to talk to us on background where it wouldn't be quoted but it repeatedly refused our requests on camera the f d a and pharma quickly realize that if dr brzezinski is discovery would be given a fair review process not only would chemotherapy and radiation dwindle into obscurity financially crippling the industry but it would also mean that for the first time in history all of that income would funnel away from pharma and into the lap of one single scientist who holds the exclusive patent rights apparently the f d a had not ruled out the possibility of this happening one day on march twelfth one thousand nine hundred seventy six f d a bureau of drugs director richard kraut states in the cancer letter when anyone other than large institutions ask permission to conduct clinical trials you want harsh regulations sometimes we say it is proper to hinder research and once these guidelines were adopted the f d a would consider itself bound by them in  krauts states again i never have and never will approve a new drug to an individual but only to a large pharmaceutical firm with unlimited finances and so the fiercest fight in f d a history began ruling the f d a sent her a letter warning her in advance if this court declines to grant the injunction sought by the government thus permitting continued manufacture and distribution of anti needle clas the government's what then be obliged to pursue other less efficient remedies such as actions for seizure also known as breaking his clinic and and condemnation of the drugs also known as a propaganda campaign or criminal prosecution of individuals also known as throwing dr brzezinski in prison regardless of these threats from the f d a the judge in the case basically said that he can treat anybody  a grand jury to hear evidence to try to indict dr brzezinski in connection with that they had a raid obvious clinic where they seized two hundred thousand pieces of paper including all of his medical records of all patients little difficult to practice grand jury indictment nine hundred eighty six they come back seize another hundred thousand documents no indictment nine hundred ninety another grand jury either the second of the third day present more documents dr been said he testifies extensively before the grand jury no indictment nine hundred ninety one thousand nine hundred ninety three f d a investigates dr brzezinski we don't know if the evidence was presented to another grand jury nine hundred ninety four another grand jury no indictment nine hundred ninety five another grand jury this grand jury started in march of this year on march twenty fifth i believe it was dr brzezinski along with a few of his patients appeared on c b s show this morning let me play devil's advocate here you all very desperate flooded with calls last friday with people wanting to know how to get ahold of you they're going to see this story this morning see that you have been raided by that bit by the f d a and they're going to i know if you were for real or if the concerns of the of the they have something to do with with your treatments and the viability of your treatments i don't think let me jump in here i don't think there's really an issue as i mentioned regarding the safety of the drug and the f d a isn't conten this point of the drug doesn't work the only issue is that according to the f d a has not been proven by controlled clinical trials so at least in terms of safety that the f d a isn't saying that it's not safe and the f d a isn't even saying that that  doesn't work right right now they're just contesting or their parents are contesting whether dr brzezinski himself has been shipping the medicine out of state which in some respects is quite ridiculous since he has approval to ship the medicine out of state to various cancer institutions around the country he ships it out of the country to various countries because it's being used in other places and he ships it to individuals who have been granted permission by the f d a to receive the medicine under what's called a compassionate use ok may june and july more witnesses testified before the grand jury more documents so we've had now for five or six grand juries we talk about a subpoena practices most recently the f d a has now subpoenaed the medical records of every patient who has gone on t v and told their story about dr brzezinski well at the committee judge what they think of that you talk about dissemination of false information by the f a now has refined this tactic instead of waiting for people to call up the f d a what they've done is subpoena all the records about from dr brzezinski about his business associates and all the researchers around the world and there are many of them w researching it you know plastic this is therapy now what they're doing is systematically contacting everyone who does business with them who maybe do business with them and telling about the grand jury investigation is obtaining documents i believe that they're doing this in order to make  in my opinion you have every right to use the investigative authority in the in the a judicial the resources the federal government to the justice department to convene a grand jury that's very appropriate the first time perhaps even a second term it becomes questionable the third time the fourth time and the fifth time it is not i think in an logical conclusion to think that the f d a has a returned chairman i ask counsel to comment but i don't think those are the same the go is a matter of law those are the same things i'm baffled by the the splitting of hairs here but i'm just trying to understand the exchange between the witness and the chairman what i understood the chairman to say is that there have been four grand juries convened at least four i just left then with rather strong inference that if you can be in force ever grand juries and there's no indictment returned notwithstanding the prosecutor's telling me always that it's possible to avoid a ham sandwich that probably there's not much there