Talk Cancer

Question:

Well, the bench trial is almost concluded, the judge having decided that final arguments and additional findings of fact and conclusions of law be submitted in writing within three weeks, so there is a chance the issues of ownership and "new matter" in the patents might be decided by the end of July. The defendants adopted a tag-team approach, examining one another as expert witnesses, and proceeded to bury UNM’s own "experts" in a pile of exhibits and testimony that left this observer with the distinct impression he had witnessed a rout. By adopting the stance of lawyer vs. witness, the two pro se scientists successfully entered many exhibits crucial to their rebuttal of the claims made by UNM concerning the vitalethine modulator compounds, and systematically picked apart the case UNM had attempted to build characterizing the inventors as being upstart nobodies out to bully poor little UNM and its licensee, motivated solely by spite and malice engendered by UNM’s unsupported determination that synthetic vitalethine can’t exist and is therefore worthless. An interesting ploy, one that is probably quite effective against those who are forced to hire attorneys to defend such attacks. In this case, the defendants were able to curtail their expenses significantly by serving as their own attorneys, expert witnesses, and research assistants, enabling them to conduct this 25 month litigation for a fraction of the cost incurred by UNM, reported to be more than a quarter of a million dollars to date. To illustrate the ridiculous posturing that has been going on throughout this entire litigation on UNM’s part, testimony from "expert" Christopher Murray that the vitalethine molecule was in effect a chimera was vanquished when Dr Scallen pointed out that structurally similar compounds were ubiquitous in nature, and were key elements of photosynthesis and the transport function of hemoglobin. Dr. Knight’s testimony revealed that there were major departures from the authentic synthesis protocol, and a paucity of reliable analyses, certainly far too little data to corroborate UNM’s allegations, and absolutely not enough to justify licensee Floyd Taub’s clinical studies with human cancer patients. In summation, Dr. Scallen pointed out that UNM failed all three major criteria in drug therapy development, the first being the successful production of authentic compound, the second being the accurate characterization of the compound, and last, showing sufficient efficacy in treating disease with pertinent animal studies. At the end of  Dr. Knight’s testimony as expert witness, a feeble attempt was made by UNM to rebut incriminating statements and evidence, but the only headway they made was to establish that Knight had made an error in calculating values for compounds in a table of data supplied as an exhibit. Upon recalculation, Knight admitted the mistake and demonstrated that the error had no impact on his overall conclusion that UNM did not suport its "scientific" claims. Dr. Knight also staged a "tet defensive" if you will, debunking UNM’s claim that Knight’s authentic vitalethine might be beta-alethine contaminated with carbon tetrachloride, a toxic compound with no known therapeutic properties. Dr. Scallen pointed out in his testimony as an expert witness that another UNM claim, that the inventors had inadvertantly synthesized a taurine, was equally ridiculous since taurines have been shown to be significantly elevated in a wide variety of tumor tissue samples, leaving serious doubts as to why adding more taurine would be effective in treating cancer. Knight estimated that existing reports of the licensee’s studies indicate that the authentic vitalethine is from 100 million to 1 billion times more potent in its biological activity than the compound Taub has presumably dubbed "BetaLT". It was pointed out to the judge that Christopher Murray, Floyd Taub, and several others have conveniently shown up on patents issued recently that read directly on the prior art defined in the vitalethine patents and applications dating from the early 1990’s. UNM’s other "expert", Shield Wallace, was on hand during Dr. Knight’s testimony, and presumably primed UNM attorney Paul Adams for his cross-examination "assault" the following day, but was not called as a rebuttal witness, nor was Floyd Taub as originally proposed. After Dr. Scallen testified, Adams stated to the judge that he was not going to cross-examine the witness, nor was he going to provide any rebuttal witnesses of his own, in order to "end the suffering" the court was presumably enduring at the hands of the defendants, admitting the while that this was a major departure from his usual practice. Having thus "turned tail" and departed, UNM left the defendants to their fate at the hands of the squirt-gun wielding judge who admitted early on that he had forgotten all the chemistry he ever knew in his youth, probably an advantage in this instance, since UNM had nothing of substance to present, as it turned out…                                                   "QED"                                            Kristofer Dale,                                            ragged individualist,                                            statistic at large… p.s. Learn and live, http://www.vitaletherapeutics.org

Response:

Testimony reveals that experts hired to reproduce vitaletheine compounds did not follow the exact protocol before declaring to UNM and the patent office that the original inventors were wrong. The current Albuquerque Tribune article in the "Battle Over a Cure" series is here:   http://www.abqtrib.com/archives/news01/063001_news_trial.shtml Cancer Series Archive:    http://www.abqtrib.com/cancer/index.shtml                                            Kristofer Dale,                                            ragged individualist,                                            statistic at large… p.s. Learn and live, http://www.vitaletherapeutics.org

Response: