Science-Based Medicine

Laetrile and the Politics of NIH-Sponsored trials of “Alternative Cancer Treatments”

Part I of this blog ended by asking how, in light of the implausible and arduous nature of the “Gonzalez regimen” for cancer of the pancreas, and the unconvincing “best case series,” the NIH could ever have decided to fund a trial of it.† This entry will begin to answer that question. In so doing it may seem to veer from the original subject, but hold on to your seats: what you’ll find here is a piece of the treasure map that leads to the Mother Lode of Fool’s Gold that is government-sponsored “CAM” research.

All historical accounts of the encroachment of implausible claims into the research agenda of the NIH must begin with Laetrile. By that is meant all implausible claims, not merely those having to do with cancer. Elsewhere we have traced the history of “chelation therapy” for coronary artery disease, and have shown that its origins as a political movement, eventually leading to an unethical, $30 million, 2000 subject NIH trial, were intimately associated with people and organizations advocating Laetrile—the most lucrative health fraud ever perpetrated in the United States. In that essay we offer evidence that the creation of the NCCAM itself was at least partly attributable to the history of Laetrile and its advocates. Several good histories or partial histories of the Laetrile debacle are available online, including here, here, here, here, here, and here. The best,¹ but one that does not seem to be available online, is by the recently deceased dean of historians of American quackery, James Harvey Young. Continue Reading »

Part IV of this blog ended by observing that the NIH-funded trial of the “Gonzalez regimen” for cancer of the pancreas,† to have begun in March, 1999, was in trouble almost as soon as it started. As originally designed, it was to have been a randomized, controlled trial comparing gemcitabine, the standard chemotherapy, to the “Gonzalez regimen” of pancreatic enzymes, “supplements,” twice-daily coffee enemas, and other purported methods of “detoxification.” By June, 1999, according to Dr. John Chabot, the Columbia University surgeon acting as Principal Investigator (PI) of the trial, only 3 of the first 50 potential subjects had agreed to be randomized, and none of the three met the eligibility criteria. By January, 2000 it had become clear that the trial would not accrue a sufficient number of subjects if it remained randomized, because almost all of the potential subjects were intent on being in the “nutritional,” ie, the Gonzalez arm.

Trouble with Randomizing

The investigators at Columbia therefore decided to change the protocol to a “single-armed, non-randomized case-cohort study where patients will only be enrolled in what was the nutritional arm.” Paradoxically, PI John Chabot had recently explained, at the 1999 Comprehensive Cancer Care Conference of James Gordon’s Center for Mind-Body Medicine, why this would not be a scientifically sound design:

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Part V of this Blog argued that the NCCAM-sponsored trial of the “Gonzalez regimen” for cancer of the pancreas is unethical by numerous criteria.† To provide an illustration, it quoted a case history of one of the trial’s subjects, who had died in 2002.¹ It had been written by the subject’s friend, mathematician Susan Gurney. A similar story was told on ABC 20/20 in 2000, albeit not about a trial subject. Each of these cases demonstrates the wide breadth of Gonzalez’s quackery, as did his brush with the New York medical board during the 1990s.

This entry addresses some aspects of how those in charge of the trial failed in their duty to protect human subjects. By implication, it suggests what is necessary to prevent similar travesties in the future. It also addresses, to the small extent that the information exists, what appear to be the final ethical violations: first, that the trial will never be completed, thus having “expose[d] subjects to risks or inconvenience to no purpose.” Second, that Columbia University and the responsible investigators have no intention of explaining why.

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A Review; then Back to the Gonzalez Regimen†

Part I of this blog introduced the topic of the “Gonzalez regimen” for treating cancer: “Intensive Pancreatic Proteolytic Enzyme Therapy With Ancillary Nutritional Support” and “detoxification” with twice daily coffee enemas, daily “skin brushing,” “a complete liver flush and a clean sweep and purge on a rotating basis each month,” and more. The topic was occasioned by the federal Office for Human Research Protections having recently cited Columbia University, for the second time, for violations of human subject protections in its NIH-funded trial of Gonzalez’s method as a treatment for cancer of the pancreas.

Part I discussed the implausible and bizarre regimen and cited Gonzalez’s troubles with malpractice suits and with the New York medical board during the 1990s. It ended by wondering what could have induced the NIH to give a $1.5 million grant to Columbia University to study the method.

Parts II and III began to answer that question, tracing some of the key events and individuals from the Laetrile wars in the 1970s to the NCI-funded trial of Laetrile reported in 1982, to the ”immuno-augmentative therapy” (IAT) battles of the mid-’80s, to the Report on “Unconventional Cancer Treatments” by the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) in 1990, which in turn led to the NCI adopting its “Best Case Series Program” in 1991.

The end of Part III hinted that the conspiracy mongering that had greeted every attempt by the government to explain its positions on implausible cancer treatments, from Laetrile to the OTA report, ultimately led to the creation of the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) at the NIH, also in 1991. There is plenty of evidence for that, both from the conspiracy mongers themselves and from more level-headed observers. Each time the government acted—to fund a trial of Laetrile, to solicit the OTA report and propose a study of IAT, to establish the NCI “Best Case Series” program, and to establish the OAM—it was not because of scientific or medical considerations, but because of political pressure. More on that from time to time, but now back to Dr. Gonzalez.

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A Reminder (Mainly to Myself): this Blog will Eventually get back to Discussing the NIH Trial of the “Gonzalez Regimen” for Treating Cancer of the Pancreas†

Which, if you’ll recall, is an arduous dietary and “detox” regimen that includes 150 pills per day, many of which contain pancreatic enzymes, two “coffee enemas” per day, ”a complete liver flush and a clean sweep and purge on a rotating basis each month during the 5 days of rest,” and more. In Part II I ventured off on a tangent about Laetrile and government sponsorship of trials of implausible cancer “cures.” That became more involved than I had planned (but also more enlightening, or so I hope), and Part III continues on that tangent.

The Politics of “Alternative Cancer Treatments”: the Lamentable Legacy of Laetrile (cont.)

The whole tide is beginning to turn toward metabolic therapy for degenerative disease and preventive medicine. Laetrile…has been the battering ram that is dragging right along with it…B-15,…acupuncture, kinesiology, …homeopathy and chiropractic…And we’ve done it all by making Laetrile a political issue.”

-Michael Culbert, editor of The Choice, the newsletter of the Committee for Freedom of Choice in Medicine. Quoted in 1979.¹

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Blogger’s note: This blog, which is rough going in places, will be presented in either 2 or 3 parts (I won’t know which until next week). I’ll post a part each week until it is complete, but due to overwhelming popular demand I promise to maintain the every-other-week posting of the far more amusing Weekly Waluation of the Weasel Words of Woo/2.

Introduction

On Feb. 25, 2008, the federal Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) cited Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) for violating Title 45, Part 46 of the Code of Federal Regulations: Protection of Human Subjects (45CFR§46). The violations involved Columbia’s administration of the NIH-sponsored trial of the bizarre “Gonzalez Regimen” for treating cancer of the pancreas.† The OHRP’s determination letter to Steven Shea, MD, the Director of the Division of General Medicine and Senior Vice-Dean at CUMC, cited ethical problems of a serious kind:

We determine that the informed consent for the 40 of 62 subjects referenced by CUMC was not documented prior to the start of research activities, nor was the requirement for documentation waived by the CUMC IRB for subjects in this study.

It was the second time that the OHRP had cited Columbia for its dubious management of the “Gonzalez” trial. The first occurred in Dec. 2002, after investigators had determined that the trial’s consent form “did not list the risk of death from coffee enemas.” The OHRP listed several other violations at that time, but “redacted” them from the letter that it made available to the public. Continue Reading »

NB: If you haven’t yet read Part 1 of this blog, please do so now; Part 2 will not summarize it.

…

At the end of Part 1, I wrote:

We do not need formal statistics or a new, randomized trial with a larger sample size to justify dismissing the Gonzalez regimen.

In his editorial for the JCO, Mark Levine made a different argument:

Can it be concluded that [the] study proves that enzyme therapy is markedly inferior? On the basis of the study design, my answer is no. It is not possible to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.

That conclusion may be correct in the EBM sense, but it misses the crucial point of why the trial was (ostensibly) done: to determine, once and for all, whether there was anything to the near-miraculous claims that proponents had made for a highly implausible “detoxification” regimen for cancer of the pancreas. Gonzalez himself had admitted at the trial’s inception that nothing short of an outcome matching the hype would do:

DR. GONZALEZ: It’s set up as a survival study. We’re looking at survival.

SPEAKER: Do you have an idea of what you’re looking for?

DR. GONZALEZ: Well, Jeff [Jeffrey White, the director of the Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine at the NCI—KA] and I were just talking a couple weeks ago. You know, to get any kind of data that would be beyond criticism is—-always be criticism, but at least three times.

You would want in the successful group to be three times — the median to be three times out from the lesser successful groups.

So, for example, if the average survival with chemo, which we suspect will be 5 months, you would want my therapy to be at least — the median survival to be at least 15, 16, 17 months, as it was in the pilot study.

We’re looking for a median survival three times out from the chemo group to be significant.

Recall that the median survival in the Gonzalez arm eventually turned out to be 4.3 months.

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Background: the distinction between EBM and SBM

An important theme on the Science-Based Medicine blog, and the very reason for its name, has been its emphasis on examining all the evidence—not merely the results of clinical trials—for various claims, particularly for those that are implausible. We’ve discussed the distinction between Science-Based Medicine (SBM) and the more limited Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) several times, for example here (I began my own discussion here and added a bit of formality here, here, and here). Let me summarize by quoting John Ioannidis:

…the probability that a research finding is indeed true depends on the prior probability of it being true (before doing the study), the statistical power of the study, and the level of statistical significance.

EBM, in a nutshell, ignores prior probability† (unless there is no other available evidence) and falls for the “p-value fallacy”; SBM does not. Please don’t bicker about this if you haven’t read the links above and some of their own references, particularly the EBM Levels of Evidence scheme and two articles by Steven Goodman (here and here). Also, note that it is not necessary to agree with Ioannidis that “most published research findings are false” to agree with his assertion, quoted above, about what determines the probability that a research finding is true.

The distinction between SBM and EBM has important implications for medical practice ethics, research ethics, human subject protections, allocation of scarce resources, epistemology in health care, public perceptions of medical knowledge and of the health professions, and more. EBM, as practiced in the 20 years of its formal existence, is poorly equipped to evaluate implausible claims because it fails to acknowledge that even if scientific plausibility is not sufficient to establish the validity of a new treatment, it is necessary for doing so.

Thus, in their recent foray into applying the tools of EBM to implausible health claims, government and academic investigators have made at least two, serious mistakes: first, they have subjected unwary subjects to dangerous but unnecessary trials in a quest for “evidence,” failing to realize that definitive evidence already exists; second, they have been largely incapable of pronouncing ineffective methods ineffective. At best, even after conducting predictably disconfirming trials of vanishingly unlikely claims, they have declared such methods merely “unproven,” almost always urging “further research.” That may be the proper EBM response, but it is a far cry from the reality. As I opined a couple of years ago, the founders of the EBM movement apparently “never saw ‘CAM’ coming.”

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Last week I discussed the dismal results of the “Gonzalez Trial” for cancer of the pancreas,* as reported in an article recently posted on the website of the Journal of Clinical Oncology. I promised that this week I’d discuss “troubling information, both stated and unstated [in the report],” and also some ethical issues. More has come to light in the past few days, including Nicholas Gonzalez’s own voluminous, angry response to the JCO article. I’ll comment upon that below, but first a brief review.

The trial was begun in 1999 under the auspices of Columbia University, after Rep. Dan Burton had pressured NCI Director Richard Klausner to fund it. It was originally conceived as a randomized, controlled trial comparing the “Gonzalez Regimen” to standard chemotherapy for cancer of the pancreas. In the first year, however, only 2 subjects had been accrued, purportedly because those seeking Gonzalez’s treatment were not willing to risk random assignment to the chemotherapy arm. In 2000, the protocol was changed to a “prospective, cohort study” to allow potential subjects to choose which treatment they would follow. Gonzalez himself was to provide the ‘enzyme’ treatments.

After that there was little public information about the trial for several years, other than a few determination letters from the Office of Human Research Protections and a frightening account of the experience of one subject treated by Gonzalez. By 2006 or so, those of us who pay attention to creeping pseudomedicine in the academy were wondering what had become of it. About a year ago we found out: the trial had been quietly “terminated” in 2005 after it met “pre-determined stopping criteria.” As explained here, that meant that the Gonzalez group had not fared well.

Four years after the trial’s ‘termination,’ the report was finally published: The Gonzalez cohort had not only fared much worse than the cohort that received chemotherapy, but it had fared worse than a comparable group of historical controls. Here, again, is the survival graph from the JCO paper:

The Gonzalez group had also fared much worse in ‘quality of life’ scores, which included a measure of pain.

Now let’s read between the lines. Forgive me for taking shortcuts; I’m a little pressed for time. Continue Reading »

A Review

Dr. Lipson’s “detoxification” post on Thanksgiving Day and Dr. Gorski’s recent post about “Gerson Therapy” were timely, because last weekend I noticed something that I should have noticed months ago. Before delivering the punch line, let me remind you, Dear Reader, of the nature of the topic. The regimen advocated by Nicholas Gonzalez is a variation of a “detoxification” treatment for cancer that has been around, in one form or another, for more than 50 years (“Gerson Therapy” is another example).† Here is the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) description:

Patients receive pancreatic enzymes orally every 4 hours and at meals daily on days 1-16, followed by 5 days of rest. Patients receive magnesium citrate and Papaya Plus with the pancreatic enzymes. Additionally, patients receive nutritional supplementation with vitamins, minerals, trace elements, and animal glandular products 4 times per day on days 1-16, followed by 5 days of rest. Courses repeat every 21 days until death despite relapse. Patients consume a moderate vegetarian metabolizer diet during the course of therapy, which excludes red meat, poultry, and white sugar. Coffee enemas are performed twice a day, along with skin brushing daily, skin cleansing once a week with castor oil during the first 6 months of therapy, and a salt and soda bath each week. Patients also undergo a complete liver flush and a clean sweep and purge on a rotating basis each month during the 5 days of rest.

As unlikely as it may seem, in 1999 American taxpayers began paying for people with cancer of the pancreas to be subjected to that regimen, in a trial sponsored by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and the NCI, conducted under the auspices of Columbia University. Gonzalez provided the treatments. A few months ago I presented a multi-part treatise on the “Gonzalez regimen” and the trial. It demonstrated that all evidence, from basic science to clinical, including the case series that supposedly provided the justification for the trial, had failed to support any real promise (the case series had previously been considered by reader Dr. Peter Moran, who also found them wanting).

It showed that the impetus for the trial, as has been true for other regrettable trials of implausible health claims, can be traced not to science but to the reactionary politics of anti-intellectual populism: initially to Laetrile and to the “Harkinites,” and more recently to the Honorable Dan Burton (R-IN). It reported that there were major problems with the Gonzalez trial from the outset, and that for at least one subject the regimen was more torture than therapy. It reported that for unclear reasons the trial had come to a halt a couple of years ago, and that it appeared that there would never be a report of its findings.

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