Arizona checks on Brych

Press, 11 February 1983, Page 7

Arizona checks on Brych

NZPA Washington The cancer therapist. Milan Brych. on trial in California for allegedly defrauding patients and practising medicine without a licence, is also under investigation in neighbouring Arizona, where he now lives, according to the latest evidence.

Dr Joseph Giordano, an oncologist at the University of Arizona, told a Los Angelese Superior Court jury that Brych. earlier barred from practising in New Zealand. had talked about the development of a machine which could detect and cure cancer.

He said Brych claimed to have dined with the Arizona Attorney-General, Mr Bob Corbin and gained his backing, but said he soon began to have doubts about Brych and notified the AttorneyGeneral's office, which asked him to wear a transmitter at future meetings. Tapes of those conversations were played to the jury last week, and will start

again this week when Dr Giordano resumes his evidence.

Mr Corbin told the jury he had never dined with Brych nor given him his support.

The defence lawyer, Mr Godfrey Isaac, has said that Brych is continuing cancer research in Arizona but not treating any patients there. In a similar, but unrelated, case, America’s Food and Drug Administration has listed immuno-augmentative therapy developed by a zoologist in the Bahamas as a quack cancer treatment because the zoologist refuses to provide scientific proof that it works. His treatment is claimed, like Brych's. to be a serum obtained from a patient's blood.

In spite of the F.D.A.'s warnings, however, two states — Oklahoma and Florida — have approved the sale of immuno-augmenta-tive therapy devices after intensive lobbying by people who believe in the treatment.