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Fight Childhood Cancer and One of Its Biggest Profiteers, Stanislaw Burzynski

January 23 is cancer con man Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski’s 70th birthday, but what do you get for the man who has stolen everything from people with cancer ? A sense of shame? A moral compass (to tell him where  to go)? How about actually fulfilling the promises he has made but not kept to thousands of children with cancer and their families by doing something to help them instead of profiting by causing them harm?

With your help, the Skeptics for the Protection of Cancer Patients plan to do exactly that, raising at least $30,000 by his birthday, then challenging the Burzynski Clinic to match whatever they raise, with the total amount going to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital to support legitimate cancer research and science-based care, even for children who can’t afford it (a novel concept for Burzynski, who charges $30,000 just for one person to enter his “clinical trial” of antineoplaston therapy, a trial that has conveniently been in the preliminary stages for more than 30 years).

Cancer.Business We want to help raise at least $5,000 of the fundraiser’s goal by issuing our first official Skepchick Challenge. If we raise at least this amount by midnight, January 22, Rebecca Watson, Rhys Morgan (one of the bloggers Burzynski and cohorts tried to threaten and harrass into silence when, at 17, Rhys exposed antineoplaston for the fraudulent treatment it is), plus other prominent skeptics and atheists will fight to the (virtual) death in Team Fortress 2, live-streamed for your viewing pleasure.

Click here to donate, or donate using the widget below!

Every dollar you can spare serves multiple purposes:

  • Supporting actual scientific research into childhood cancers.
  • Providing tangible help to kids with cancer and their families.
  • Educating the public on how to recognize alternative health scams on their own.
  • Giving us all a chance to be entertained by what could be the biggest Battle of Skeptics EVER (stay tuned for more details on that).

You can also help the cause by joining in the blogging effort to get out the word about this dangerous man and his clinic in hopes of preventing other from being conned out of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars or worse—being conned out of their very lives.

If you’re not familiar with the doctor’s shameless multimillion-dollar predatory practice or how you can tell that his treatments are bullshit (and that he knows it), you can read more about him, the Burzynski Clinic, and the Burzynski Patient group on Josephine Jones’s blog and on oncologist and cancer researcher Orac’s blog Respectful Insolence. If you have the stomach for it, head over to The OTHER Burzynski Patient Group to read stories about just a fraction of the people he’s harmed. These are just a handful of the articles out there already, and over the next couple of weeks, the blogosphere will have plenty more (including some here on Skepchick).

Please spread the word, help these kids, and donate if you possibly can. Even $5 will help. This is what skepticism is all about.

Featured image via Creative Commons, photograph by Leslie Wood.

Melanie Mallon

Melanie is a freelance editor and writer living in a small town outside Minneapolis with her husband, two kids, dog, and two cats. When not making fun of bad charts or running the Uncensorship Project, she spends her time wrangling commas, making colon jokes, and putting out random dumpster fires. You can find her on Twitter as @MelMall, on Facebook, and on Instagram.

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10 Comments

  1. ZOMG! Melanie! Many thanks! I’m going to be hanging with the Minnesota skeptics tomorrow night! Hope you’ll be there. (Bob, from theotherburynskipatientgroup) .

  2. Is there a time limit for this?
    I’d like to wait until my next paycheck to donate.

    This reminds me of an ad in the local paper for a resort that is supposed to allow people to stay healthy without taking “harmful medications”.

    Or some shit like that.
    I could only laugh.

    1. Our deadline is midnight, Jan. 22, but you can probably still donate on the 23rd. I don’t know when that day they plan to ask Burzynski to match it. Bob? Do you have a time for that?

  3. Thanks for this. The more I read about this charlatan, the more sickened I am by his obvious manipulation of desperate families in horrible situations. He should be sued into oblivion.

    1. He is a piece of work. And by “work” I mean “shit.”

      He’s taken advantage of all ages, but the kids are the ones who really get me. To get cancer as a child to begin with is horrific. On top of this, to be a child with little to no control over the situation, and THEN vultures like this taking away what little chance you might have had by preying on your parents’ fear and desperation. Beyond sick. Words aren’t strong enough to condemn this man.

    1. I agree! Nothing we can do to give people’s lives back or ease past pain he’s caused, but being able to do *something* is wonderful. Thanks for tweeting it!

  4. I think the fundraiser will still be up after his birthday, but the amount we’re going to deliver to him is what we have in the kitty by his birthday. If I have to dispatch the challenge early, fuck it, I’ll round up. >:))

    1. Go to your main page for the fundraiser (logged in) and you’ll see a link to “Grab My Fundraiser Widget” in the list of orange links beneath where you can tweet.

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