The first patient lived about 5 1/2 weeks. The doctors theorized that an infection might stimulate the patients' immune systems and prolong their lives. Muizelaar and Schrot called their novel approach "probiotic intracranial therapy," or the introduction of live bowel bacteria, Enterobacter aerogenes, directly into their patients' brains or bone flaps. The procedure in question involved three patients described in documents only as Patients 1, 2 and 3 – two middle-aged women and one man who had a common enemy: glioblastoma.įor anyone unlucky enough to be diagnosed with the highly malignant brain tumor, the prognosis is dismal. When you read this part of the story, you'll shiver.
#To hell with good intentions summary code
Schrot, who were found to have violated university's faculty code of conduct with their experimental work. It happened at the University of California Davis (UC Davis) and involved two very prominent neurosurgeons there, a former head of the department Dr.
It happened at t involves the same sort of tumors that Stanislaw Burzynski claims to be able to cure, namely brain tumors. (His IRB is chaired by an old Baylor crony of his from the 1970s, and he has been cited for numerous problems with his IRBs.) I'd like to contrast how their unethical research, in which the Geiers subjected autistic children to chemical castration with Lupron to decrease testosterone levels and allegedly make mercury easier to chelate (to them mercury was bound by testosterone, something that doesn't happen under physiological conditions but requires organic solvents) and Stanislaw Burzynski administered an unproven cancer chemotherapy (antineoplastons) to hundreds of patients over the years and charged them for it, compares to a recent case in the news. Stanislaw Burzynski got away with it for decades and, apparently, is still getting away with it to some extent. Mark and David Geier got away with it for years. In both cases, I lamented how they could use their own IRBs stacked with their own cronies to rubberstamp scientifically and ethically dubious studies. Before that, I used to regularly write about Mark and David Geier and their unethical use and abuse of IRBs and clinical trials. I've written a lot about Stanislaw Burzynski and what I consider to be his unethical use and abuse of institutional review boards and clinical trials.