Tag Archives: Eric Merola

Elizabeth Fago-Smith Interview | 2015 Update | by Eric Merola

Wednesday, 23 September 2015 23:40
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By Eric Merola

In my 7 years following the “Burzynski” saga, directing and producing that documentary film series, I’ve learned a lot in the process.

I have also experienced some massive bombshells in my time covering this story. For instance, in late 2009, right before I released the first “Burzynski” documentary, a Burzynski supporter and former college buddy of David Axelrod (President Obama’s former Chief Of Staff) handed off a DVD of “Burzynski” before its release, and after David watched it, he had this to say:

“This is very important, but it’s just too big. Maybe in 10 years we can face this – but not right now, it’s just too big.”

This was quite a sobering thing to hear.

Then fast-forward to the summer of 2010. One of the patients I profiled in my first “Burzynski” movie, Kelsey Hill, was cured of stage IV adrenal cancer by using Burzynski’s Antineoplastons.

Since she was undergoing full body scans to find if there was any more metastasis beyond her kidney, liver, and lungs—an MRI found a small tumor in her brain, but it turned out not to be malignant. Once she got through her journey of being cured of her malignant tumors in her kidney, liver, and lungs, they decided to “watch and wait” on the tumor in her brain.

Finally, Kelsey’s parents decided to have the benign tumor in her brain removed. They chose America’s leading pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson of Johns Hopkins (who is now running for President of the United States, and is the subject of the feature film “Gifted Hands” starring Cuba Gooding Jr.).

During the first consultation, Dr. Ben Carson looked at Kelsey’s records and said, “Wow, she’s doing great for having been cured of cancer after undergoing the amount of chemotherapy and radiation she must have endured.”

Kelsey’s father Steven replied, “she wasn’t treated with any chemo or radiation, she was treated exclusively with Dr. Burzynski’s Antineoplastons.”

Ben Carson had never heard of Dr. Burzynski before. Upon their second meeting with Dr. Carson, he said the same thing to them. This time Kelsey’s parents were armed with a DVD of my documentary, “Burzynski”—and corrected him a second time.

Dr. Ben Carson watched my documentary, and quickly discovered that Dr. Burzynski’s Antineoplastons (ANP) are the first medications in world history (at least within any controlled FDA-sanctioned study) to cure an inoperable brainstem glioma, and/or pontine glioma, also known as a “DIPG”.

Dr. Carson expressed that he himself has never seen a cure of this cancer type—DIPG, and he wanted to consider opening up clinical trials at Johns Hopkins using ANP for DIPG.

At this time, Dr. Ben Carson was one of America’s star surgeons, and had a lot of power within John Hopkins to start clinical trials using Antineoplastons at Johns Hopkins for DIPG in children. Dr. Carson then spent more than 2 hours on the phone with Dr. Burzynski expressing that he wanted to start this process.

After this phone conversation, two weeks went by, and Dr. Ben Carson stopped returning any phone calls or emails related to this.

In Dr. Burzynski’s words, “It was a matter of time, someone obviously got to him.”

This type of thing has been a constant in the Burzynski saga. Since Dr. Carson is running for President, I think it’s important that I share that story to the world, right here, for the first time.

Now, fast-forward to 2014. I interviewed Elizabeth-Fago Smith in relationship to her husband being treated with ANP. She was appointed by then Governor Jeb Bush to the board of directors of Scripps Florida among many other accomplishments. As we know, Jeb Bush is now running for President of the United States as well.

I will allow the interview to speak for itself—but I will leave you with one choice quote to peak your interest:

“It’s okay that you [the FDA], approve it for the Saudi King’s nephew, who got approval in 24 hours for Antineoplastons—who is still alive. Then you got a CIA agent on Antineoplastons, and that was done in a few hours. So you randomly choose who lives or dies? How do you live with yourselves?” Elizabeth Fago-Smith Board of Directors, Scripps Florida – 2015

Hannah Bradley is still cancer free! Aug. 28, 2015 – update – by Eric Merola

Saturday, 29 August 2015 04:55
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team-hannah

Hannah Bradley (now married, aka Hannah Bradley-Cohen!) is still cancer free! Aug. 28, 2015 update – from “Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business, Part II” by Eric Merola

Watch the August 28, 2015 Update below:

team-hannah

Visit TeamHannah.com + Buy her Awesome Cookbook!

Hannah Bradley was featured in “Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business, Part II” | Watch the trailer below:

WATCH INSTANTLY OR BUY DVD.

Watch “Hannah’s Anecdote” a Film by Pete Cohen about her journey.

VISIT HANNAH’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL FOR MORE

team-hannah

The Siegel’s Respond to the Houston Press 8/28/15

Friday, 28 August 2015 21:07
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This is a response written by Steve and Mary Jo Siegel regarding The Houston Press’ article:

“THE 10 MOST EMBARRASSING HOUSTONIANS.”

Mr. Rouner,

You are embarrassed by Dr. Burzynski? Interesting. Good for us that we do not embarrass quite so easily as you.

My wife was diagnosed with an incurable form of Non-Hogkins Lymphoma. After having a surgery that required the removal of almost 1 meter of her small intestine, we consulted the top cancer specialists in the U.S. at prestigious (and presumably non-embarrasing to you) research centers, including UCLA, USC, Stanford Medical, and Harvard (Dana Farber Cancer Institute). All this in an effort to determine what course of treatment we should pursue to save her life. All said that with chemotherapy and radiation she could survive for a while, but eventually her disease would mutate, spread, and she would die.

Now here is the embarrassing part for us. One top researcher wanted to enroll her in a clinical trial in order to perform an “autologous bone marrow transplant.” She would receive massive chemotherapy, and in his words “as much radiation as people that were within 1 mile of ground 0 at Hiroshima.” All this in an attempt to kill every single cancer cell in her body, and hope that she would not die of radiation poisoning or from the “massive” doses of chemo. None of this treatment, costing at that time, in excess of $250,000.00, was covered by insurance. That was 25 years ago in 1990.

My wife and I decided to find another way. Perhaps a less toxic approach which was not quite so “embarrassing” to the medical establishment. She never had one drop of chemo, nor 1 rad of radiation therapy (now there’s an oxymoron).

Right there in your beloved Houston (ours too), We discovered the work of the man you call an embarrassment, Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski. My wife started on his Antineoplaston treatment the first day we consulted with him. Within months her tumors began to disappear. She was eventually pronounced to be in remission. Not by Dr. Burzynski, but by her oncologist, an esteemed lymphoma researcher at UCLA. Today my wife remains cancer free. We have 3 grandchildren, none of whom would have known their wonderful grandmother, were it not for the discovery, work, and courage of the man you find so embarrassing.

If you care to do your research, and not continue to embarrass yourself, you will find that Dr. Burzynski has published several peer-reviewed articles on his work with the most aggressive and deadly brain cancers. His results are light years ahead, and better, than any conventional treatment now in use. I am certainly happy to furnish these for your review, but what you may discover, is that you have embarrassed yourself.

You can make amends by first apologizing to Dr. B for your ignorant assertions and cowardly attack. Dr. B. is a forgiving man. But more important is that you apologize to his patients past and present. Those who, after having been cast off by the medical establishment, found their way to Dr. Burzynski, and now are living, breathing proof that this gentle, non toxic, gene-targeted treatment is indeed a real and effective approach for treating some of the most intractable cancers. What is particularly heinous is that you may have scared off cancer patients who would have otherwise sought treatment with Dr. B, but now are relegated to receiving chemo and radiation, mostly ineffective, inhumane, and damaging treatments discovered more than a half century ago and still in use today.

They say mimicry is the sincerest form of flattery. Just look to MD Anderson and you will see they are now offering “Personalized Cancer Treatment”. This is the same concept as the gene-targeted therapeutic approach which started at the Burzynski Clinic more than 30 years ago. Dr. Burzynski has improved and refined this vital treatment year after year. Now comparing conventional cancer treatment to the Burzynski method is like comparing a rotary dial phone to an I-phone 10. Must be embarrassing that you didn’t know all of this was going on just down the road from you.

My wife and all of the Dr. B’s patients await your apology. Maybe your name should go on your list? That would be a good start.

Steven M. Siegel

Mary Jo Siegel

Camarillo, California

See a video clip of the Siegel’s in a “48 Hours” Special below.

Dustin Kunnari, cured of brain cancer by Burzynski – then and now.

Tuesday, 18 August 2015 19:18
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Dustin Kunnari, cured of brain cancer over 20 years ago by Dr. Burzynski’s Antineoplastons.

kunnari-burzynski-cured

Watch Dustin and his parents from the documentary:

Refer to the sourced transcript for more on this part of the story, here.

Learn more about the director of this documentary series, here.

Jessica Ressel-Doeden – Inoperable Diffuse Intrinsic Brainstem Glioma (DIPG) – Cured with Medical Records

Sunday, 09 August 2015 23:53
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Jessica Ressel-Doeden was diagnosed with a diffuse, intrinsic, childhood brainstem glioma (DIPG) in March of 1996 at age eleven.

According to the available data there has not been a single case of a verified cure (5-year survival) with patients diagnosed with diffuse (inoperable) childhood brainstem glioma treated with radiation and/or chemotherapy in any FDA-supervised experimental clinical trial in the history of medicine. Dr. Burzynski’s Antineoplastons hold the only cures to date—with a cure rate in some studies as high as 27.5% [PDF of original report, table page 172] + [Chemo/Rad – PubMed 2005] [ANP – PubMed 2003] [ANP – PubMed 2006] [ANP – Cancer Therapy 2007]

[The Lancet 2006 explains grim outlook – “survival remains static”].

** April 2014 Peer-reviewed clinical trial report for DIPG using Antineoplastons **

Following her initial diagnosis, the Ressel’s were informed that the only method approved by the FDA to “treat” her condition would be radiation. The radiologist informed the family that radiation would be shot “through the ears, burning her healthy cells from the outside in—causing permanent deafness, all of the hair around her ears would be gone—never grow back, her ears would become deformed and burnt, her pituitary gland would be destroyed—the gland that allows a human to grow and develop, and if she survived the treatment she would become a vegetable and incapable of taking care of herself.”

Considering that radiation treatment has never been shown to cure a single patient with her condition, combined with the devastating side effects such a treatment would inflict on an eleven-year old child—her parents declined the radiation treatment offered by her oncologists and decided to have Jessica treated by Dr. Burzynski instead.

Medical Records

1. Diagnosis: Jessica underwent an MRI on April 10, 1996 at the St. Louis Children’s Hospital which revealed a tumor in her brainstem. Her diagnosis was also confirmed on May 7, 1996 upon initial consultation with Dr. Burzynski. She had multiple MRIs after she was admitted into the Burzynski Clinic. There is also multiple third-party confirmations of diagnosis by physicians from the Springfield Clinic and the Missouri Eye Institute demonstrated by letters written to the Ressel’s insurance company.

2. Recovery: On May 8, 1996, Jessica began antineoplaston treatment. Her tumor disappeared and reappeared multiple times throughout the course of 14 months after the start date of treatment. On June 27, 1997, her tumor disappeared permanently. She has had multiple MRIs of the brain since that time which have all been negative for tumor recurrence—with the last MRI being May 20, 2005. Read Jessica’s treatment summary here. Read Jessica’s tumor measurements here. After her full recovery, the Mid-Atlantic Open MRI of Springfield, MO confirmed her tumor-free MRIs from 11/97 to 5/98 [PDF all medical records and sources for this paragraph].

3. FDA-supervised clinical trial data comparing chemotherapy and radiation treatment to antineoplaston treatment in patients with diffuse, intrinsic, childhood brainstem glioma. It has been clearly demonstrated that of 107 patients treated with chemotherapy and radiation with this type of tumor: 0.9% of these patients were cancer-free at the end of treatment, with no patient surviving 5 years after diagnosis. Of the patients treated with antineoplastons with this type of tumor: 27.5% of them were cancer-free at the end of treatment, with 27.5% of the patients living at least 5 years after diagnosis. Therefore, Jessica Ressel’s recovery after being treated with antineoplastons is not a mere anecdotal case (See sources from start of this post above).

Most would assume that such results would be front page news across the world, or would be grounds for Dr. Burzynski to receive the Nobel Prize in medicine. Sadly, these peer-reviewed results have been universally ignored by mainstream medicine.

Raising the Money to Receive Her Antineoplaston Treatment

Unfortunately, most insurance companies will not cover antineoplaston treatment. The Ressel family had to come up with $6000 per month to pay for her treatment all by themselves. The high cost of antineoplaston treatment is directly due to the United States government’s refusal to allow any tax-payer money to be granted to fund the FDA-supervised clinical trials that Jessica participated in—while simultaneously granting PhRMA tens of millions of dollars to fund similar FDA-supervised clinical trials with inferior outcomes.

Below is a TV news footage montage from 1996-1997 covering Jessica’s story, fundraisers and more:

The Ronald McDonald House Charities®

During our interview with the Ressel family, Robin said that she “had called the Ronald McDonald House to see if we’d be able to stay there, because we were going to have to stay in Houston for a while, I was talking to a volunteer on the phone—when I mentioned we had an eleven-year old we were taking to see Dr. Burzynski and we needed a place to stay for a couple of weeks—you could hear whispering going on in the background, the volunteer was being prompted what to say, and The Ronald McDonald House refused to allow us to stay there because we weren’t an M.D. Anderson patient. I felt bad for the volunteer, you could tell she was being told what to say.” Dan followed up by saying “There are a lot of programs out there, but I will never give a dime to the Ronald McDonald House. We were in a desperate situation, and they refused us because we were a patient of Dr. Burzynski”.

Joining the Fight in Preserving Burzynski’s Freedom

Jessica Ressel was being treated by Dr. Burzynski in 1996, several months after the FDA’s 5th grand jury against Dr. Burzynski resulted in an indictment. “The government was more frustrating than the cancer itself.” The Ressel family traveled to Washington DC to meet hundreds of other Burzynski patients to speak out against the FDA’s attempt to remove him from society.

Family Speaks Out

Jessica Ressel’s medical records are published by written authorization by Jessica Ressel-Doeden.