Stossel Reports Positively on Burzynski & Medical Freedom

A minor segment concerning Stanislaw Burzynski, MD, Ph.D. during a highly rated hour long ABC TV News special broadcast in prime time on May 26, 1998 had potentially major implications. The program was titled Sex, Drugs, and Consenting Adults. It was a lyrical, provocative, and unusually personal -- almost libertarian -- commentary by correspondent-host John Stossel on victimless crimes and the question of how far the government should go to regulate personal behavior. As ABC News' Web site described the program, "America was founded by people seeking freedom. The founders might have said freedom is what you get when your rulers leave you alone. . . Stossel challenges conventional wisdom to ask why the police are arresting increasing numbers of people who haven’t done anything to anyone else."

In addition to drug use, sex for money, and gambling, the program touched on the issue of assisted suicide. Stossel interviewed his own father, who is around 90, and sought his opinion on the subject. He also showed a man with terminal cancer who wanted to be prepared to end his own life humanely when the time came, an act which is legal in only one state, Oregon.

That medical issue opened the door to several minutes of coverage of Stanislaw Burzynski, MD, pad, whose original and promising unconventional approach to treating cancer using nontoxic antineoplastons has been met with a two-decade long effort on the part of the government to prevent people with terminal cancer from receiving the treatment and even to prosecute the doctor.

ABC's Nightline has done two programs on Burzynski. Stossel's show made use of some of that footage, including excerpts from a Congressional hearing at which Burzynski's patients demanded access to his therapy. Stossel also highlighted a seven year old boy with cancer whose parents had to struggle to get FDA approval to have him receive the treatment. (The child is doing well under Burzynski's care, it was noted.)

Despite the relative brevity of the segment on Burzynski, the significance was not only in the fact that it was very positive -- but in who was doing the reporting. Stossel, in the past, has reported negatively on alternative medicine, with considerable vitriol characterizing his high profile work. The clearest example was in October 1987 when he reported a feature segment on alternative cancer therapies and the annual convention of the Cancer Control Society in Los Angeles on ABC's newsmagazine 20/20. It was a condescending, one-sided hit piece. Stossel seems to have changed his tune quite a bit since then -- apparently having evolved like much of the rest of the mainstream to a new recognition of the value of alternative medicine and the viability of the medical freedom of choice issue. Welcome aboard the freedom of choice train, John Stossel!