Some cancer patients have to battle not only their disease, but the Food and Drug Administration as well. At issue is a drug called antineoplastons. FDA regulators, dead set against allowing even terminally ill patients the freedom to chose their own therapies, won't allow use of antineoplastons, which the agency hasn't approved but supporters claim to be effective in treating cancer.

• In one case, an inoperable brain tumor in a 16-year-old boy shrunk over the years from 3 inches in diameter to the size of a pea under antineoplaston treatment -- despite the fact that the FDA forbade the family to acquire or use the drug.

• In June of 1997, a federal jury acquitted the Houston doctor who makes antineoplastons of contempt-of-court charges for violating a 14-year-old injunction against shipping the drug over state lines.

• While Dr. Stanislaw Burzynski had not shipped the drug out of Texas, prosecutors claimed he continued to treat patients who lived out of state, knowing they might take the drug across state lines.

Arguing that patients should not have to break the law to save their own lives, a number of doctors and patients across the nation are banning together behind the Access to Medical Treatment Act, being sponsored in Congress by Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Joe Barton (R-Tex.). The Act would allow patients to be treated by a licensed health-care practitioner with any medical treatment -- so long as they are informed about the risks and benefits of the treatment.

Practitioners would also be required to inform patients whether the FDA has approved the drug.

Supporters of the bill contend that the only way to ensure that Americans are free to choose their own medical treatments is to recognize health freedom as a basic right.

Source: Sue Blevins (Institute for Health Freedom), "Fighting Cancer -- and the FDA," Wall Street Journal, June 2, 1997.