Patient ‘might have died’ on Brych treatment

Press, 3 December 1982, Page 15

Patient ‘might have died’ on Brych treatment

NZPA staff correspondent Washington A cancer specialist has testified that one of her patients might have died had he undergone the unconventional treatment offered by the therapist, Milan Brych.' Dr Alexandra Levine, an associate professor of medicine at the University of Southern California, was in the witness-box on the eighth day of Brych's trial. Brych. ’ aged 43. who practised in New Zealand and the Cook Islands before moving to California, faces a 12-count . charge, including conspiring with- the late Dr Richard O'Connor to defraud terminally ill cancer patients and with practising as a doctor without a licence. "It is certainly possible, and I would think probable." Dr Levine said when the prosecutor. Mr Lee Harris, asked her if the life of Robert Amick, aged 49. could have been shortened had he taken Brych's immunotherapy treatment. Mr Amick described his June 18. 1980, visit to Brych and Dr O’Connor to the jury and said Brych promised he could cure his cancer. Dr Levine said there were inherent dangers in denying Mr Amick conventional chemotherapy. “I think that Brych's treatment would have subjected him to harm," Dr Levine said. "He needed to be treated with something, but

there is no evidence that the treatment you speak of would work in a positive sense. There also is no evidence what the side-effects would be."

Recalling her first meeting with Mr Amick on June 25, 1980, Dr Levine described her patient as a panting, sweating man. with the right side of the neck largely swollen.

"He had apparently been told that he had a short time to live. He thought he was dying any second." Dr Levine said. She said she had to convince him to undergo chemotherapy because he was reluctant because of the potential side-effects. Without such treatment, she said. Mr Amick’s breathing could have been seriously impaired and he would have faced potential anaemia. Dr Levine said that the chemotherapy she was administering to Mr Amick could only alleviate his symptoms because there was no known cure for lymphoma. Asked about the validity of Brych's prediction that Mr Amick would die in a matter of months, she said that most lymphoma patients, if properly ministered to. had an average life expectancy of seven to 10 years.

However, under crossexamination by defence counsel, Mr Godfrey Isaac, she said Brych's prediction was not inconceivable.