Today an incredible story that begins with one man’s health crisis and ends with him finding a way to cure himself with a discovery that stands to help millions. It also exposed remarkable flaws in America’s process for finding and approving effective medical treatments. A caution, some medical images in this report are graphic.

The following is a transcript of a report from “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”
Watch the video by clicking the link at the end of the page.

Bradley Burnam: I’d gone to bed the night before

In December 2009, Bradley Burnam woke up to see a horrifying sight in the mirror.

Burnam: This whole side of my head was black and my ear was like twice its normal size and hot. ’cause it was infected and now it’s a sign of infection. Obviously terrifying. My dad’s a cardiologist. I called him, he’s a local hospital physician. He said, “meet me at the ER right now.” I didn’t even make it into the actual ER door before the infectious disease doctor in the hallway who happened to be a colleague of his said, “You need emergency surgery right now.”

Burnam had picked up a deadly superbug, CRE for short. It’s 70% fatal once it enters the bloodstream. He concluded he’d caught it during his job visiting hospitals as a medical device sales rep. Even after the emergency surgery, the bacteria continued to cause recurring wounds over the next five years resulting in 21 operations.

Burnam: The pills that they were giving me, you know, dozens upon dozens of antibiotic courses, IV antibiotics at one point, the surgeries, you know, the scraping, the cutting, nothing was working. I don’t blame the physicians, these were great physicians. They just didn’t have the tools to stop this.

Sharyl: You lost part of your ear. You must have had reconstructive surgery?

Burnam: Oh, about half of those 21 surgeries, you know, if you can’t cut it in half, but I’d say about approximately were reconstructive. I have an amazing surgeon. I mean, he was doing stitching inside the ear canals. And my scalp looks like a roadmap if you look at all the scars.

Sharyl: What made you think that maybe you could develop something that would cure yourself?

Burnam: I remember that Europe always got things a few generations before us. And I looked over there and I saw that there was something that they had that might help me. And when you’re that desperate, you know, you go off script— ‘maybe I can get this ingredient, maybe I could do something with it. Maybe I could give it to my doctors.’ So I didn’t necessarily even know where things were going at that point. I love where they’ve gone, but I just wanted to help myself at that point.

The key ingredient was Polyhexamethylene biguanide, PHMB. It’s a safe antimicrobial agent widely used in the UK since 2010 to stop infection in wounds—but virtually unknown in America.

Burnam started work to see if he could turn it into an ointment that might work on his infection. He turned his garage into a makeshift lab, ordering ingredients and supplies online. Some of them delivered in large drums.

Burnam: And I’m convinced to this day, my neighbors probably thought I was working on something else, which is why I got this industry nickname of “Breaking Brad” ironically.

After about 100 tries he cracked the code: He found a way to fuse the liquid form of PHMB into a stable ointment. Testing showed that it killed the strain of the Superbug that was destroying his life.

Burnam: So after I found out from the lab that it actually worked on the organism that was causing my problems I gave it to the doctors ’cause they have freedom to use things, you know, as they wish. And I showed them the data.

Sharyl: But you didn’t just rub it on your

Burnam: No, I didn’t wanna touch that without the doctor’s, at least, permission. So they put it in there and the wound started to close. And these abscesses used to take months to close.

Sharyl: How soon did it start to look better?

Burnam: Weeks.

Sharyl: Wow.

Burnam: And you can tell quickly on these really deep, you know, chronic abscesses when the tissue that looks healthier, when it starts to actually look better, it was quick.

Sharyl: So an ingredient that existed widely used in Europe relatively unknown in this country?

Burnam: Relatively, is sort of an understatement. I would say almost entirely unknown.

Sharyl: So you make it into a product that can be used on wounds?

Burnam: Yeah.

Burnam believes his invention saved his life. Next, he set out to share it. But he found navigating FDA requirements frustrating— to say the least. On his own, he figured out how to put together an application for FDA clearance.

Burnam: I ran all the tests, paid for it myself took it through the FDA from Kinko’s, actually was working from Kinko’s. And I put together the binder there and I got it cleared at the end of ’16. And things just sort of went from there.

Sharyl: How long did this take you and how much money did you spend?

Burnam: For the initial FDA clearance I spent, including the review fee $24,000.

Sharyl: You started your own company

Burnam: Yep.

Sharyl: On the basis of that one medicine?

Burnam: Yeah. So when I got a call from the largest medical distributor in the world saying, we want to carry your product, and I was still one person and the back of the package went to my cell phone for customer support. I thought maybe I should build some infrastructure at this point.

Burnam (Turn Therapeutics video): Imagine living with an infection so drug resistant, so aggressive, it keeps coming back no matter what doctors throw at it.

The company is Turn Therapeutics and the product is Hexagen. Ongoing drug trials are looking at it to treat severe eczema and toenail fungus.

For Burnam, his days getting cut on in the OR appear to be over.

Sharyl: Your product cured yourself?

Burnam: My product cured myself. And I felt it was my duty— I feel like it’s a cliche word, but it feels like the right word to use— I had to get it to other people. Because my story is romanticized a lot. And I love that it brings some people hope, but it was a miserable five years.

Burnam’s company now has three FDA-cleared products based on his PermaFusion technology. They may be effective on diabetic ulcers, venous wounds, and more—preventing amputations and healing chronic cases that used to linger for years or even prove fatal.

Watch video here.