Tag Archives: cancer

WilsonTV3

[Garda whistleblower John Wilson on TV3’s Tonight With Vincent Browne last week]

Mr Wilson is currently in Cavan General Hospital, after having emergency surgery for bowel cancer this week. He is currently awaiting results of a biopsy.

His wife, Anne Wilson, spoke to Pat Kenny this morning about her husband and about the stress he has been under for the last number of years in relation to his efforts to reveal what he believes has been wrongdoing by some members of the gardaí.

Pat Kenny: “You’re quoted in the papers as saying the stress of the whole thing brought on the bowel cancer, is that really your belief?”

Anne Wilson: “Well Pat, there’s no history in John’s family of it, or cancer. And the amount of stress is unbelievable, what that man has gone through over the last couple of years. There’s only one other person that can understand the amount of stress and that would be Maurice McCabe. It’s unbelievable what those two men had to go through. So I’m convinced it has contributed to because stress does cause..”

Kenny: “Stress indeed is one of the factors. If you have any kind of predisposition to it, the addition of stress on top of everything else can certainly bring it on and John undoubtedly went through an awful lot of stress. Has that stress been in anyway aliviated by Minister Varadkar and, overnight, Minister Joan Burton, offering their support?”

Wilson: “Well, actually, John was having a bad day yesterday in the hospital cause they lifted them out of the bed so he was in a bit of pain and when I heard about Minister Varadkar’s statement, I got in touch with John in the hospital and he was delighted so yes it has helped. I’m delighted that Mr Varadkar came out and spoke like that..it’s just it’s taken so long.”

Kenny: “Yes, and Joan Burton said that she was speaking really for all the Labour colleagues in cabinet – that they were of one view about all of this. So there’s no doubt that Sgt McCabe and your husband, John, have certainly have a good deal of support in Cabinet.”

Wilson: “Well I have to thank Clare Daly, Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan, Mick Wallace, and Joan Collins – they were there from the beginning – and Padraig MacLochlainn and Mary Lou McDonald, they have been absolutely fantastic. From the very beginning, the Independents put their neck on the line and supported the Garda whistleblowers. And when the story came out first they could have sat back and just let it go, you know when we brought to their attention but they kept going and going and going. They were absolutely amazing, fighting for them.”

Kenny: “Yesterday, yet again, Commissioner Callinan refused to apologise for that ‘disgusting’ remark that he made back in January to the committee, what do you feel about that?”

Wilson: “I feel that Commissioner Callinan’s excuse now, or reason, for his ‘disgusting’ remark totally contradict the way he said it back in January. At the time in January, he didn’t mention it was the way the information was given to the public. He said it was disgusting and then he emphasised it by saying ‘personally, I think it’s disgusting’. So his comments now are totally contradicting, in my opinion, what he had said in the PAC.”

Listen back here

Meanwhile

 

Previously: Gwan The Leo

Gilmore joins Varadkar’s call for Callinan to withdraw ‘disgusting’ comments (Irish Times)

111114-mr-freeze
A small scale study into the efficacy of cryoablation, where the needle-tip of a probe is frozen to -100°C and used to destroy tissue, has proved phenomenally successful in eliminating cancerous lung tumours. A treatment rather than a cure, the future potential of the technique appears bright.

The results of a study on cryoablation were presented at the 38th Annual Scientific Meeting of the Society of Interventional Radiology in New Orleans. The treatment has passed the first round of trials known as ECLIPSE (Evaluating Cryoablation of Metastatic Lung/Pleura Tumors in Patents — Safety and Efficacy) with astonishing results.

The process was tested on 22 patients with a combined total of 36 tumors who were given 27 cryoablation treatments. At a three month follow up, all of the patients’ tumors remained dead. At six months, five of the 22 patients’ tumors were examined and found to still be dead. The research is unclear on the status of the remaining 17 patients.

geekosystem

(Image: “Mr Freeze’ Warner bros)

Jennifer Keane writes:

Whenever alternative medicine is mentioned, patient choice is championed, and the frequent refrain of “what’s the harm?” is heard; people with no hope are being given a second chance at life by “pioneering” treatments with unheard of cure rates, and anyone who questions the treatment is decried as cruel and heartless for stealing hope.

Hardly a week goes by without an article about a fundraising campaign for some alternative clinic, and this week is no exception – on Saturday July 14, both The Irish Times and The Irish Independent carried the story of Alexandra Burke-Costa from Effin, Co Limerick.

Her family are trying to raise money to visit a controversial clinic in Houston, Texas, run by Stanislaw Burzynski. The clinic purports to provide “targeted gene therapy” and uses antineoplastons, an unproven substance derived from human urine, to allegedly cure numerous forms of cancer with virtually no side-effects, and far fewer damaging effects than the standard treatments of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The clinic has grown in popularity and become something of a mecca to people with incurable cancer, and this is in large part due to irresponsible reporting on the part of the media.

The Irish Times calls Burzynski’s treatment “advanced”, and the Irish Independent refers to it as “pioneering”, but neither report even pays lip service to the controversy surrounding the treatment, its efficacy, and the largely inflated cost, and if there is one thing that is certain about treatment at the Burzynski clinic, it is that it is controversial. 

It has been approximately 45 years since Burzynski discovered antineoplastons, approximately 35 years since he began treating patients with them, and approximately 24 years since that first presentation in which he discussed the clinical results of his treatment. This is an extremely long time to be testing a treatment without publishing significant results, moving further through the trial process, or reaching a stage where the product can be marketed to the general public (given that the FDA estimates that it takes approximately 8.5 years for a new cancer drug to reach the market, from inception, through trialling, and to delivery).

In short, there have been some bold claims made about antineoplastons, without any significant clinical research to support them. In addition to his antineoplaston therapy, the “targeted gene therapy” mentioned has, in practice, been anything but targeted. Patient blogs talk about Affinitor and Votrient (both chemotheraputic drugs) being used off-label, and numerous comments scattered across the web indicate a seemingly random pattern of prescribing chemotheraputic drugs (to be acquired from his on-site pharmacy, at highly inflated cost).

With such a question mark hanging over this treatment, it seems odd that so many outlets would report favourably on it (or shy away from mentioning the controversy), and yet each time Burzynski’s treatment is mentioned in the media, it is inevitably described as pioneering, advanced, unique, and at worst, experimental. These articles (and countless others like them) fail to mention the fact that the treatment is unproven, and instead focus only on the patients, before encouraging people to donate, but would people donate if they knew more about the treatment, its chances, and the often questionable actions of the clinic’s founder? Would patients still seek treatment if these articles did more to highlight the controversial aspects of the treatment?

People say that patients don’t care about data, journals, and technical data, and that may be true, but even if it is, patients do deserve the truth about their treatment, their prognosis, and everything associated with it. With scientific papers often seen as dry and inaccessible (both because of the content, and because of the expensive paid access required to read them), it can be easier to find that truth in a heart-warming cure story than in the data points on a graph, and this is why accurate reporting about alternative treatment providers is so important. A patient should absolutely have the right to choose alternative medicine over conventional treatment, but it is a poorly informed choice if it is based on infomercials, advertising websites, and unproven claims, and patients deserve accurate information to help them make their choice.

Each uncritical article published about clinics like the Burzynski clinic amounts to free advertising for a treatment which is at best, as yet unproven, and at worst, much more damaging than it is claimed. Though articles about individual patients and families must tread a careful line between criticism of the clinic and the feelings of those involved, the current standard of reporting on these clinics ultimately helps no one. It’s time to stop hiding the controversy, and sweeping it under the carpet. Patients deserve information, not infomercials.

Previously: That Cancer Appeal Story

An utrasound image of a tumour on a 45 year-old’s testicle. Writing in the International Society of Urology’s journal, doctors G. Gregory Roberts and Naji J. Touma (what are the odds?) said:

“The residents and staff alike were amazed to see the outline of a man’s face staring up out of the image, his mouth agape as if the face seen on the ultrasound scan itself was also experiencing severe epididymo-orchitis,” wrote the authors, referring to an inflammatory condition.

Face Discovered in Testicular Tumour (Telegraph)

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