| PaulKing 2005-06-27, 8:48 am |
| Hi Everybody - big deal at the Dept of health and Human Services - Guess
what? It just may be wrong to use orphans in drug trials, under certain
circumstances... Who knew?
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http://www.gnn.tv/articles/1475/The...f_AIDS_Research
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The NIH Scandal and the Future of AIDS Research
A federal investigation calls New York drug trials on orphans unethical
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Fri, 17 Jun 2005 12:47:29 -0700
By Liam Scheff
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The Department of Health and Human Services Office of Human Research
Protections investigating the clinical trials on Black and Hispanic
orphans at New York’s Incarnation Children’s Center (ICC) has found that
the National Institute of Health (NIH) and Columbia Presbyterian Hospital
acted unethically.
The Associated Press reported yesterday: “The government has concluded at
least some AIDS drug experiments involving foster children violated
federal rules designed to ensure vulnerable youths were protected from the
risks of medical research.”
ICC began testing drugs on its orphan population in 1992, the same year
they became a subsidiary of Columbia University’s Pediatric AIDS Clinical
Trial Unit, under Dr. Anne Gershon. The trials were implemented and
overseen by a committee, headed at ICC by Dr. Stephen Nicholas. Dr.
Nicholas left ICC in the late 1990s and is now Chief of the Department of
Pediatrics at Harlem Hospital. In 2033, I went undercover inside the
facility and saw the effects of the drugs on the children myself. I broke
the story in an article entitled The House that AIDS Built that first ran
on Indymedia.org.
Many of the drugs (like AZT and its analogues) that were used in the ICC
trials had previously been approved for use in adults and evidenced
life-threatening and fatal toxicities.
So why put a drug with severe recorded toxicities into a population of
Black and Hispanic orphans?
Moving a drug that is experiencing failure from one population to another
may be a way to test the full potential or limits of a drug. But it also
artificially sustains the life of the drug by keeping it in research
trials – that is, it circumvents a marketplace loss and keeps a
questionable product in rotation.
The trials at ICC reflect a second, and perhaps more important trend in
pharmaceuticals – the opportunistic nature of drug testing.
Incarnation’s orphans live at the bottom of American class system. Often
the children of drug users, they were born into ill health and poverty.
Additionally (and like all AIDS patients), these children were, because of
their HIV status, written of as a loss by the medical authority, before
they even got a chance to live.
AIDS doctors will claim with unquestionable authority that without drugs
like AZT, HIV positivity is always a terminal condition, even though HIV
testing is a flawed art, at best (see Knowing is Beautiful and Sex Crimes)
and even as the research community generally ignores the population of HIV
positives who avoid the standard treatments and seek out alternative
therapies, often with measurable success.
Why isn’t the NIH interested in competitive AIDS research? That’s the
billion-dollar question. That is, if inexpensive micronutrients and
competitive disease and treatment models prove more successful than the
current research, it will represent a loss of billions for the AIDS drug
and research industry.
There is reasonable evidence that we should we be looking outside the
current therapies into competitive treatment models. There is also
incredible resistance to the idea. Researchers who challenge the current
dogma in HIV research quickly find themselves thrown out of the club.
But some studies have gotten through, and the results are enticing.
A 1994 study in the journal Journal of Infectious Diseases found that “The
risk of death among HIV-infected subjects with adequate serum vitamin A
levels was 78% less, when compared with Vitamin A-deficient subjects.”
(J.IF 1994; 171: 1196-1202).
A 1993 study in the journal of AIDS found that vitamin A supplementation
increased T Cells and reduced predicted progression to illness in AIDS HIV
positive men: “Among well nourished HIV seropositive men who participated
in the San Francisco Men’s Health Study, high energy-adjusted vitamin A
intake at baseline was associated with higher CD4 cell count at baseline,
as well as with lower risk of developing AIDS during the 6 year period
follow up” (J.AIDS 1993; 6: 94)
Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, published in the
journal Epidemiology noted that better nutritional status equaled better
health and prognosis in HIV positive individuals: “HIV infection may be
modified by nutritional status…Numerous observational studies report
inverse association between vitamin status…and the risk of disease
progression or vertical transmission.” (Epidemiology 1998; 9: 457-466).
The study also reported that antibody and PCR tests in pregnant women are
also positively affected by basic nutritional supplementation: “Adequate
vitamin status may also reduce vertical transmission through the
intra-partum and breastfeeding routes by reducing HIV viral load in lower
genital secretions and breast milk.” (ibid)
The study concludes: “Vitamin supplements may be one of the few potential
treatments that are inexpensive enough to be made available to
HIV-infected persons in developing countries.” (Epidemiology 1998; 9:
457-466).
Increased health, Increased T Cells, significant decreases in mortality –
and beta-carotene is cheap. Other vitamins including B, C and E have also
proven clinically effective in improving the health of HIV-positive and
AIDS patients.
But, I forget. AZT is the cure. Anything else is lunacy. Unless, of
course, the public demands otherwise.
Kudos is owed to the HHS committee for reviewing the evidence in the
Incarnation trials, and to Dr. Jonathan Fishbein of the NIH AIDS clinical
trials division, who wrote an official request to Daniel Levinson, the
inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services,
demanding accountability.
“The HHS has not been policing their work,” Dr. Fishbein told me last
week. “They have not been accountable for the money that’s been handed
out.”
He continued, “There needs to be an independent, objective review of the
medical records of every foster child that has been put into a
government-funded AIDS clinical trial.”
Perhaps another motivating force in the HHS ruling was the growing
movement of Black civil rights groups (like New York City’s December 12th
Movement), who staged multiple protests throughout the winter and spring
at Incarnation Children’s Center, and who are now circling around the
bigger questions of the reliability of HIV testing, and the allowable
toxicities of standard drugs used in AIDS care.
But in all the good news, there has been one significant point missed by
the various news agencies that have covered the story:
The drugs used on the kids as part of clinical trials, the drugs that were
so toxic, are the same drugs that are still being used daily in adults and
children who test HIV positive worldwide.
They are the same ‘life-saving’ drugs – AZT, Nevirapine and the Protease
Inhibitors – that we’re in such a hurry to get to poor, rural Africans and
Indians who are labeled HIV positive.
So was it the clinical trials in New York that caused the drugs to be
toxic? Or was it just the drugs?
The medical literature on AZT, the mainstream media’s “life-saving AIDS
drug,” paints a steady picture of toxicity and failure that are difficult
to ignore:
In 1987 the New England Journal of Medicine reported that “Anemia [loss of
red blood cells] developed in 24% of AZT recipients and 4% of placebo
recipients.” And added that “21% of AZT recipients” required “multiple
red-cell transfusions,” versus “4% of placebo patients” (NEJM. 1987;
317:192-197)
In 1988, the Journal of Clinical Pathology reported that, “Blood
transfusion is often necessary in patients with AIDS, especially in those
receiving AZT, a drug which produces severe anemia in a proportion of
recipients. Forty nine (36%) of 138 patients treated with AZT required
blood transfusion at least once.” (J Clin Pathol. 1988;41:711-5)
Eleven years later, the journal AIDS reported that children born to
AZT-treated mothers “are more likely to have a rapid course of HIV-1
infection compared with children born to untreated mothers, as disease
progression and immunological deterioration are significantly more rapid
and the risk of death is actually increased during the first 3 years of
life.” (AIDS, 1999, 13:927-933)
The study noted that “survival probability” – a child’s chance of living –
was lower in those born to AZT treated mothers, compared with AZT free
mothers. (ibid)
Proponents of AZT claim it offers the possibility of reduction in
transmission of HIV from mother to child. But given that children born to
mothers on AZT die faster than those not, why are we in such a rush to get
the drug into the mouths of pregnant women in the US and Africa?
Or, more to the point, should AZT be the first line defense against AIDS,
over-riding even basic necessities, like essential foods, safe drinking
water and social and economic support for disenfranchised people?
What would life have been like for the orphans at Incarnation Children’s
Center if they hadn’t been in used in drug trials? If they hadn’t received
AZT and Nevirapine?
If they had, instead, been enrolled in progressive, micronutrient studies?
If instead of having drug tubes surgically inserted for reasons of
compliance, they had been well-fed, well-schooled and nurtured?
Would it have been more or less responsible than the current state of
affairs?
GNN contributor Liam Scheff is an investigative journalist who went
undercover inside the ICC to break this story in 2003. His reporting was
featured in a recent BBC documentary “Guinea Pig Kids.” Scheff is
currently writing a book on the subject.
Posted by anthony
Anthony Lappé is GNN's Executive Editor. He's written for The New York
Times, Details, New York, Paper, The Fader and Vice, among many others. He
has worked as a producer for MTV, Fuse and WTN. He is the co-author of
GNN's True Lies and the producer of their Iraq doc,..
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