The PR Ziopharm should put out in my opinion, refuting false claims

Does outright fraud bother you?

Some people learned about the fraud that was Bre-X and rather than being disgusted, they wish they could have profited from it.  Bre-X soared to unbelievable highs because soil samples were seeded with gold shavings from a wedding ring, it made investors, (even institutions) think this company had uncovered a massive gold strike.

Prolific ZIOP pumper RobCos has gone all over social media sites like Twitter with an equally false claim.  He's not putting shavings from a gold ring into a core soil sample, instead he's putting out false information about a person who is bravely fighting a battle with cancer, all in an effort to boost the PPS of Ziopharm in my opinion.

What is he claiming?  Here's what he put on Twitter:

 

rc

‏@pharmamaven

$ZIOP patient #1 stage 4 failed all other therapies MRI clean almost 1 yr out vs 3-5 mos expected OS. http://www.investorvillage.com/smbd.asp?@intercooleronli …

• RETWEET
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10:41 AM - 24 May 2016

And here is what he put up at Investorvillage: (click on the text to visit the actual post)

• Lets all remember what this is about - giving these poor people with mostly stage 4 GBM who failed previous surgeries and treatments including some with chemo and surgeries who are expected to live 3 to 5 months hope. Charles previous treatments all failed and he is off them now - his tumor always grew back faster than it has this time on the IL-12+V treatment and he is in a few weeks going to be one yr on the new therapy after everything else failed with no tumor regrowth on this therapy. God bless him. Lets all stop the negative posts for a day and say a prayer for all of the patients on this trial and everyone with cancer. Amen.

It would be incredible news, if any of it were true, and frankly I wish it was true.  But the facts say otherwise.

RobCos aka pharmamaven sourced his information from a website written by a Mr. Peacock called ''The Brain Chancery''.  RobCos claims that patient #1 failed all other therapies, which again I wish was true.  Here is what Mr. Peacock says on his website:

• I’m going to start taking Temodar again, which is the same exact stuff that I took at the beginning, for an entire year.  One great thing is that this time, I’m going to take a much lower dosage, and I have so much less tumor in there now that this makes sense.  It has a good chance of working.  And here’s a big reason why we think so:
• Temodar doesn’t always work for everybody, and sometimes it doesn’t work at all.  But as Dr. Hu pointed out: for that year that I was taking Temodar, my cancer did not spread or grow at all.  It only shrunk.

Obviously if a treatment resulted in a tumor shrinking, then it didn't fail.  There is still no cure for cancer, treatments heretofore have been geared toward increasing life span and improving quality of life.  Yes there are individuals who have been treated by various means who remain cancer free, the patient at Duke, cancer free for four years and profiled on 60 Minutes springs immediately to mind. But even her doctors are hesitant to use the word cure.

As for RobCos claim of a ''clean'' MRI almost 1 year out.  That is another fabrication, I wish Mr. Peacock did have a cancer free ''clean'' MRI, but thankfully at least his latest MRI showed no growth according to his blog, so that is positive.  A clean, cancer free MRI is my most sincere wish for him.

Does any of this really matter though?  I mean its just one shameless Internet poster, obviously the guy behind it is morally bankrupt.  But who is RobCos or Pharmaven anyway?  I mean if people are dumb enough to believe some internet pumper, then they get what they deserve....right?  Sure, and I guess shaving a wedding ring down to falsify core samples is fair game, and defrauding people out of their money à la Bernie Madoff is okay too.

RobCos has something of a following.  He moderates the investor forum for Ziopharm at InvestorVillage, with his posts regularily being recommended 30, 40 sometimes 50+ times by users. On twitter his account boasts over 1,500 followers.

I have little doubt that there are some sad individuals out there who have seen this bogus information, and have gotten quite excited and either took out a position in Ziopharm, or added to an existing one.

''Wow!!!  This company has treated a guy and his MRI is clean after almost a year after he failed every other treatment".

Now maybe Ziopharm doesn't care that there is an individual spreading false information about their company?  I don't know.  Their CEO reportedly made something like $15 million last year, with much of that compensation being stock based.  I know in the past Ziopharm put out a press release to confront false information on their company written on a blog, but in that instance the information they were refuting was negative.

Maybe they don't care about falsehoods being shared all over social media, so long as the information has a positive spin?

Here's the PR I think they should put out, or something along these lines:

ZIOPHARM Oncology, Inc. (Nasdaq:ZIOP) today issued the following statement regarding information shared on social media sites like Twitter by an individual with various user ID names including RobCos and pharmamaven.  

The statements made by this individual are misleading and wrong.  We have made no representations of having a patient in one of our trials with a clean MRI, or of having survived almost 1 year after failing other treatments.  

While our recent PR of May 18th cited favorable interim survival results it was noted in the release that these results are early and involve only a limited number of patients. While the company is encouraged by the results we wish to repudiate the claims made by this RobCos aka pharmamaven individual on various social media sites.

I would love to see it, but I won't be holding my breath.