The Milan Brych Story

Greg Ansley - 1 February 1991

In this talk a journalist reflects on the rise and fall of a media superstar.

I am going to start with the premise that Milan Brych, charlatan though he may have been, was good for New Zealand. He was good for medicine, good for journalism, and good for the maturity of our society. And from a specifically newspaper point of view, be was good for business—colour and hope in his optimistic beginnings; scandal and outrage in his latter days here; and a vicarious delight in his free-wheeling American career.

Brych was a man whose time was ripe. New Zealand was a plum waiting to be picked, and he did it magnificently. He found a land of innocents looking for heroes. He found a medical profession strung by a code of conservatism and honour, and he played it to his tune; and he found a news media which had yet to fully realise that charlatans could be abroad in its home patch. Even if it did have an inkling of malfeasance, it was bound by laws so tight it could not risk exposing wrong-doing. That factor, unfortunately, remains the case even today.

These are points I will make at length. They are the reasons I believe Brych was a boon to this country. He shook us from our naivety and taught us to look behind the facade. He made it harder for others who would exploit us, harder for others who may try to grow fat on the tragedies of others, and harder for those who would make us look fools.

Brych was like many lessons—they hurt at the time, and although the scars may heal the memory never fades.

That Brych was able to so thoroughly hoodwink New Zealand is in some ways both incredible and, at the same time, understandable. On the one hand, he had a history that could not have survived even the merest nick on its surface, and it remains remarkable that no initial effort was made to scratch it. On the other hand, Brych was a man of great charisma whose personality blinded more than the medical profession. It is such that he maintains a core of supporters from among his surviving patients, and was able to speak with authority and confidence on his release from prison. For the media, though its opinion may have changed, Brych remains good copy.

Had Brych not been dealing in human tragedy, I suspect he could have become one of this nation’s folk heroes. Conmen are readily admired, not strictly approved. Brych had both the qualifications and the background.

Brych left school in Czechoslovakia at 17, without university entrance qualifications. In 1958 he was jailed for armed robbery and, when he was released seven years later, found a job as a laboratory technician in Bmo. He was given the job as part of his rehabilitation. The head of the institute later said Brych was dismissed for producing false laboratory results which endangered the lives of patients.

Brych was back in prison by 1967, this time for fraud and for trying to cross into Bulgaria illegally. A year later he was released in an amnesty promulgated just before Soviet tanks ended Dubcek’s mule.

Those Soviet tanks released Brych on the West. He arrived in Italy in July 1968, claiming political asylum. You will remember how that invasion aroused outrage and anger in the West, and great sympathy for the refugees of Dubcek’s experiment. Brych’s identity card, which he handed to police at Trieste, made no reference to any professional qualifications though educational achievements and occupation are included on such documents.

Brych was, if nothing else, confident. He first said when applying for a special United Nations travel document that he held a doctorate in biology, but that he had been unable to bring his diplomas out of Czechoslovakia. In a further interview he claimed to be a physician, a fabrication we have all come to know about here.

Brych arrived in New Zealand in 1968, and began work as a laboratory assistant for the Auckland Hospital Board. The Board accepted his statement, and his assertion he was merely waiting for his qualifications to be smuggled out of Czechoslovakia. His employment in the laboratory was essentially arranged to give him time to improve his English.

Brych was not always going to be a cancer phenomenon here, apparently. In his early days in this country he sought help from another Czech refugee in compiling his application for registration with the Medical Council. At that time he told acquaintances he was a psychiatrist, and wanted help in translating his thesis “The mechanics of human emotions”. I suspect Brych did know them well.

Inevitably, Mr Brych, psychiatrist, became Dr Brych, cancer revolutionary. It is a measure of his considerable powers that he became registered in 1972. Foreign doctors did not then have to sit examinations, and the Medical Council, like the Hospital Board and, later, the press, took him on trust. Brych’s personality and a very adroit tongue, combined with sufficient superficial medical knowledge, must have been a heady brew. I suspect it must have been fairly pleasing, and somewhat flattering, for the Auckland Hospital Board to have secured a man of such apparent abilities,

The media became aware of Brych when he splashed on to front pages of newspapers throughout New Zealand claiming to have found a treatment for Hodgkins Disease. His claims were backed by the head of Auckland Hospital’s radiology department, who described Brych’s “unique use of dmgs” as a significant advance in the treatment of cancer.

I make no apologies for the immediate acceptance of Brych’s claims by the press at that stage. Brych was, as we know, a very convincing and credible performer. He was pioneering a field still hidden in fear and mystery. He appeared to have found a cure for mankind’s greatest disease, or part of it. No real explanations of his method were released which may have given cause for doubt. If they had, would a journalist have dared challenge a man of such apparent stature? And, above all, Brych was solidly backed by reputable and respected men of medicine.

Brych was as much a gem to the media as he was for Auckland Hospital. The press loves heroes. It loves local heroes even more. Brych became both. He was colourful, fashionable in both his field and background, and he was accessible. Brych was a certainty for media support. His patients gave every cause to continue that. He was everything a doctor should be—a man of science, a man of compassion. Reporters who saw him in action spoke of his ability to inspire the terminally ill with a confidence that they would indeed live. It was like finding out Dr Kildare was real.

Brych was more a darling to the media because traditionally medicine in this country is conservative at best, arcane at worst. Neither the media nor the profession was really practiced at talking with each other, and certainly not with any great confidence. Reporters saw doctors as alternately aloof, pompous, unnecessarily secretive, patronising or condescending. Doctors no doubt shared similarly uncomplimentary views of journalists. I accept these are generalisations, and that the situation is changing from both sides. But not then.

Suddenly, from this grey world, reporters were served up aman of colour, or personality and vitality, who knew how to play them, yet keep their respect. Here was a man serving humanity, who could combine the alchemy of medicine with the alchemy of public relations. Such men are rare in the business of journalism, especially in the New Zealand of 14 years ago, and are to be treasured. That conventional medicine gave its blessing was a bonus.

When the boom began to lower on Brych, it is not very surprising that a gulf also began to open between doubting doctors and the media, or that parts of the media gravitated to Brych’s side. There was no clear evidence that this miracle worker had committed any wrong. Suggestions that he may have sinned were based, at least initially, on professional pique at his refusal to share his secrets.

I realise that more lies behind professional annoyance at Brych’s refusal to disclose details of his modified chemotherapy than simply pique. Subsequent events proved beyond doubt the validity of shared knowledge, especially of new techniques. But you must remember that Brych had soared to public acclaim on the basis of peer support, the adoration of patients, and the resulting admiration of the press. To have doctors grumble without apparent due cause smacked initially of sour grapes. Journalists are familiar with the bitter, often deeply personal, battles that take place within science and academia from time to time. It was easy in Brych’s case to believe other doctors were either jealous of the attention he was receiving, or irritated on professional grounds that such a peacock should invade their conservative cage.

Unease grew, however. As doubts increased in the medical profession, they began to be reflected in at least some parts of the media. This showed in the start of a separation of Styles in reporting Brych.

Among those who felt Brych should follow medical protocol, if only for his own best interests, news emphasis moved away from the glamour of the man to fairly straight reportage of the controversy. This is a normal reaction in a media bound by our present defamation laws. It is simply too dangerous to make allegations, to repeat charges, or to even make implications, no matter how thorough the research. And the media has to be careful not to build heroes one day, and destroy them the next. It is not good journalism, and it is not good for the reputation of newspapers.

While some began the sobering-up process and started to take a less rarified look at Brych, others perceived the doctors demanding his secrets, and the hospital authorities who took him to a commission of inquiry, as stiff-necked conservatives resentful of real talent in their midst. Brych was seen by these reporters as the underdog, the small man against the establishment. To some people, Brych’s sufferings symbolised all the indignities they had ever suffered at the hands of doctors.

When Brych was finally dismissed from the hospital it became clear that even the medical establishment did not quite know what to do with the man. Although he could no longer work at the hospital, the Hospital Board made arrangements for him to treat patients at a private hospital, which he did until November 1974. If doctors did not know how to handle Brych, it goes without saying that the media was also suffering some confusion. And all the while, Brych’s charisma carried him through.

A measure of the power of his magnetism could be shown in the fact that some of his supporters won election to the Board in his cause. During the inquiry at Auckland Town Hall in 1974, the public galleries were packed with Brych advocates, who jeered any witnesses critical of their idol.

By now most of the media realised that something was very obviously askew with Milan Brych. The evidence against him mounted, culminating in the decision by the Medical Council to strike him from the register. Not a great deal of support was felt for his claims that the communists were out to get him, although the man remained very newsworthy. There had never been a Milan Brych here before. His personality blossomed even more under fire. His patients and supporters became, if anything, even more fanatical. There was certainly very little else that could compete with the spectacle of a man exposed and dishonoured by his profession thumbing his nose at both facts and former colleagues.

Brych was also rapidly becoming an international news phenomenon. The Australians, especially, were hungry for news of this bogus doctor who had, for a time, fooled the world into believing he was a messiah who could lead the dying back to life. Their interest, and the delight of journalists here in this continually-rolling story, heightened when Brych left for the Cook Islands.

By dodging the Supreme Court Appeal and thereby a bearing which could have ended his career forever, and by fleeing into the exotic embrace of the Cook Islands Prime Minister, Sir Albert Henry, Brych scored yet another public relations coup. Brych exiled in paradise, pursued by his pitiful followers and supported by the colourful Sir Albert, was a heady mixture. Brych drew new support from among Australian cancer victims, and new enemies in Australian medicine and media. His news value rose even higher when Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, the then Premier of Queensland, scoffed at federal authorities and backed Brych. That was also, however, the end of any credibility Brych may have retained among reporters. The nicest thing the Australian media said about Sir Joh was that he was a peanut farmer. Not long before he backed Brych, he also announced plans to build cars with internal combustion engines powered by water. The two seemed to fit naturally together in Sir Joh’s bizarre world.

Brych of course disappeared to America, where, newspapers were delighted to learn, he managed to talk his way into an even more colourful mess. That is the value of Brych. His Style and his audacity guarantee good copy. It is tragic that the copy should be based on the manipulation of tragedy.

But Brych taught us a lot. We know he was able to gain credibility here through natural sympathy for refugees of armed aggression. We know that medical authorities here assumed his credentials had been checked by the United Nations in Italy. And we know that apparent gaps in his knowledge were put down to inadequate English by a staff willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. We know the strength of his personality. And we know that all these factors were compounded by a media that had found a hero.

We also know that none of this should have happened. The proper checks should have been made by the authorities. The media should have taken a closer look also at this phenomenon itself. Reporters should have made inquiries about his background, even if only for a feature on the man of the moment.

New Zealand is a different place now. It is wiser, and a little sadder. The introduction of examinations for foreign doctors wishing local registration by itself is a screen against another Brych. We are more suspicious, or at least careful as well. And the media is no longer easily blinded by the light of city slickers from the big bad world.

That said, and given the subject of this talk, I should say that mainstream medicine and skeptics will continue to be irritated by the media and its coverage of so-called alternative medicine.

Newspapers, especially, will continue to run stories on treatments and people who may be labelled quacks. This does nol mean we will accept another Milan Brych so easily. Nor does it mean we are being taken for a ride, nor that we are supporting medical systems of dubious merit.

There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that traditional medicine has always regarded innovations with suspicion or distrust, right from the days when leeching was par for the course. Viral theories, you may remember, did not gain immediate acceptance. Nor did acupuncture. The media does not, therefore, regard our medical establishment as infallible, nor its pronouncements as indisputable. We have also made a practice for years now of appointing specialist medical reporters. Although most remain lay people, they gain a broad understanding of the field and, more importantly, contacts of authority and breadth of knowledge. The media also has more contact with developments overseas. These factors mean newspapers, in particular, are less likely to be intimidated by the establishment, and more willing to question it.

The second major reason why traditional medicine, if I may use the term, will continue to be upset by media coverage is that newspapers and television must entertain, as well as inform. That is why they run horoscopes, for example.

People like to read about the odd and the unusual. They also have the right to be told about it, and to have the information available to enable them to make up their own minds. What is important for the media to achieve is the balance between unlimited information and censorship, a line of responsibility that best serves the broad interests of New Zealanders.

I think Brych taught us that this balance should be achieved. I think he also taught us that it will not come to pass unless medicine and the media talk more candidly with each other. Since the development of medical reporters this has been evolving, but slowly and with difficulty. Reporters and doctors remain wary of each other, probably with good cause. Doctors need to retain confidentiality and professionalism. So do journalists. Their ultimate aims may not be the same, which is why I suspect doctors fear all reporters are unscrupulous cads and inveterate peeping toms. This is not the case, of course. The aims of each side can be met by striking the right balance, and that can be found by developing trust.

Trust, in turn, is developed by a willingness to talk. Reporters have as much cause to suspect contacts as contacts do reporters, and working towards a functional arrangement is not unlike a drip feed. It takes time. It is worth the effort.

There is a further element that concerns us, as reporters, and you, as skeptics. Both of us want to expose our charlatans, our cheats and our frauds. In most cases this is not possible outside of our courts, or parliament, unless you are willing to risk a defamation action.

Defaming someone means publishing a statement that brings someone into disrepute, or makes someone think less of him or her. It is worse in law to defame someone than to commit offences against their person. Actions now claim anything up to ten million dollars, which can be a strong deterrent for public skepticism.

If you claim someone is a fraud, you must also have the evidence to prove it in court, to the highest standards of the law. You are also guilty until you can prove yourself innocent by establishing that what you said or wrote is the absolute truth; which is far harder than it sounds. There is no room for reasonable doubt, as exists in criminal law.

You may present a list of completely true and accurate facts, yet still be successfully sued for tens of thousands of dollars. A court may find that while the facts are right, they left an implication which could not be proved.

You as skeptics have two problems from these laws. The first is the immediate danger to yourselves. The second is convincing the media to print something its lawyers would not touch with sterile gloves.

In theory, this means we could have another Milan Brych, or worse, in this country. We could all know about it, and do nothing because we cannot prove it to the satisfaction of laws framed by politicians who make good use of them. I suggest that you remember Milan Brych, and have a chat with your MP. The law is in the process of amendment now, but needs more work if the aims of skepticism, and a Irce press, are to be realised.