On ALTERNATIVE Or NON-TRADITIONAL CANCER THERAPIES and TREATMENTS by EMANUEL REVICI, M.D
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CONGRESSIONAL PUBLICHEARING BEFORE: CONGRESSMAN GUY V. MOLINARI on ALTERNATIVE or NON-TRADITIONAL CANCER THERAPIES and TREATMENTS BY EMANUEL REVICI, M.D. PRESENT: MICHAEL TORRUSIO DIANE CISMOWSKI, Court Reporter 26 Federal Plaza New York, New York March 18, 1988 9:55 o'clock a.m. MOLINARI 1 CONGRESSMAN GUY MOLINARI: This is Guy Molinari, representing the 14th Congressional District. We would like to get started here this morning. I have prepared a formal opening statement, which has probably been distributed, but I choose not to read that. Instead, let me set the record here by relating some of my prior experiences in a similar matter a couple of years back. It was a great learning experience for me, a very disturbing experience as well. Similar to what happened preliminary to this formal hearing today, several years ago our governmental agencies were instrumental in bringing pressure upon the Pan American Health Organization. In turn, it brought pressure upon the Bahamian Government, and the Bur ton clinic in Freeport, Bahamas, was closed. Some forty or fifty patients of Burton visited Washington and appealed to those of us that took time out of our day to listen to them to try to help. Now, I'm certainly not an expert in this field, but I do have a heart. I saw a look of panic in the faces of the people, and I made one promise to them that day, and that was to get down to Freeport and to see for myself what was going on. Through our State Department I made arrangements to go to the Island, and on the first day, with the help of the Embassy, to visit the Burton clinic. On the following day, I was supposed to take a plane and go over to Nassau and meet with the Bahamian Ministry of Health. There it was my goal to determine what specific reasons were being cited for the closure of the facility, and, of course, (what I was trying to determine), whether steps could be taken to satisfy the complaints and to determine whether the clinic could be reopened. What a surprise I was in for. The State Department set up the trip. I landed in Freeport. I met a gentleman from the Embassy, and I was quickly alerted to the fact that I would be able to visit the Burton clinic -and, in fact, did for about four hours- but the Ministry of Health had decided they were not going to meet with me the follow ing day. That puzzled me and nagged at me as well, because it wasn't a specific re quest from a Congressman from this country, but rather a visit that had been set up through the sponsorship of our State Department. I was angered and I called a press conference in Freeport. I couldn't unders tand why it was that we couldn't even have a dialogue, and, of course, I had made arrangements to turn around and go back home, convinced at that point that certain people in this country had brought pressure on the Bahamian Government so that we didn't have the meeting. You may all recall that the war cry that was being used at that time was AIDS, that Burton was causing AIDS to his patients. Indeed, we had Lester Maddox, who went on television, devastated and claiming he had AIDS that was caused by Burton. There were all kinds of 2 MOLINARI charges. I was watching them and reading them with great interest. We did this hearing. I received a letter subsequently from Lester Maddox, taking a totally different view, thanking me for what I did in conducting the hearing. He didn't have AIDS. There were so many misstatements made. I received a number of phone calls from the Establishment telling me how wrong it was for me to do what I was doing. After conducting a hearing that lasted for some eight or nine hours, I took the testimony, sent it to every member of Congress. I sent it to the New York State Medical Society. I sent it to the National Cancer Institute and others. I subsequently requested a meeting with the New York State Medical Society. There were about thirty-five doctors in the room that day, and, interesting ly enough, they had the minutes of the prior meeting there, and I asked them if I could read it. "Sure." I read the minutes, and what I read in part were statements indicating that in the case of Burton there was massive political pressure being brought upon members of Congress, and that we were responding to those mr,,sive pressures and would be going after the Medical Society to try to seek help. Well, that was pure poppycock. There were maybe only 500 patients there. There are 435 members of Congress, and what would we average one patient per Congressional District? But I learned that the information they were getting was not accurate. In deed, I was quite upset when my turn came to speak. I let them know how I felt about the thing. I must tell you that when I left at least three or four of those doctors very silently told me, "Keep going, keep doing what you're doing." "He's onto something." We did and were able to convince (by going to some influential members of Congress), the Office of Technology Assessment, OTA, to study alternative forms of cancer treatment, cancer therapy. There's a very high level physician who I knew from years ago, and I had occasion to talk to him one day, and he told me that the hammers of hell were coming down on his skull because of his involvement. All he was doing was not evaluating whether any of this therapy worked or didn't work; he was merely setting up the protocol for the testing and any other specific therapies. There again, he ran into this very powerful "Establish ment." We know that any of the doctors, M.D.' s, that have been supportive, and we learned this at the Burton hearing, were almost drummed out of the profession. Now, I cannot say that Burton's therapy works or doesn't work. That's far beyond my ability to make that judgment call. I did hear enough testimony, enough stories, and talked to enough patients, and I've been back to the clinic down there, to suggest that we should be look ing at that very carefully; and, indeed, a study will be bone. MOLINARI 3 Anybody in the audience who wants to tape-record what takes place here is free to do so. Anybody that wants to tape-record or take pictures may do so. I understand that some of you might have been present at the Food & Drug Administration hearing last week on the National Health Fraud Con ference, and you weren't free to take pictures or tape-record what was said that day; in fact, they had armed guards there that would escort you out of the room if you did so. That puzzles me and bothers me. Also, for the record I would like to make a statement that we've invited to this hearing the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer [Society], the Food & Drug Administration, and they all turned down the request. We would really have preferred that we hear from both sides so that we could have a balanced hearing, and when we finish and have published a hear ing record, it would be preferable from my standpoint that we hear the pros and cons. But their view, obviously, is that they would be giving credence to Dr. Revici and his techniques by being here. So, to hell 1with them! They're not here and we're going to proceed without them. I know that Dr. Revici has been fighting with his lawyers to prevent his license from being taken away in this State. I just buried, less than thirty days ago, my mother-in-law, who died from cancer. My daughter is engaged to be married. The date is set for July 16th. Her doctors told her and told my daughter that she would be alive and well, well enough to participate in the wedding proceedings, but she, of course, died a month ago. The question was raised by my wife and by my daughter, "Why didn't you take her to Dr. Revici, why didn't you take her to Burton or somebody else?" And, of course, the question came to my mind as we thought about these hearings, that imagine if after having the Establishment diagnose that my mother-in-law was going to live past July 16th and be well enough to participate in proceedings, if she had gone to Revici or if she had gone to Burton and died now, I'm sure we'd have the charge that, "Well, look, you didn't listen to us, and, as a consequence, your mother-in-law didn't survive July 16th, as we said she would." So, I suspect that what we're seeing here is, to a large extent, a refusal for some people to want to look at this thing with open eyes. We're talking about a man whose been doing this for a long period of time, and we'll hear the testimony today. But I must tell you, my friends, I am not happy with my own experiences, having been through this before and knowing the incredible opposition that is generated, the misstatements of facts.