AP: U.S. Officials Knew of AIDS Drug Risks

[Moloch]

WASHINGTON - Weeks before President Bush (news - web sites) announced a plan to protect African babies from AIDS (news - web sites), top U.S. health officials were warned that research on the key drug was flawed and may have underreported severe reactions including deaths, government documents show.

The 2002 warnings about the drug, nevirapine, were serious enough to suspend testing for more than a year, let Uganda's government know of the dangers and prompt the drug's maker to pull its request for permission to use the medicine to protect newborns in the United States.

But the National Institutes of Health (news - web sites), the government's premier health research agency, chose not to inform the White House as it scrambled to keep its experts' concerns from scuttling the use of nevirapine in Africa as a cheap solution, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

"Everyone recognized the enormity that this decision could have on the worldwide use of nevirapine to interrupt mother-baby transmission," NIH's AIDS research chief, Dr. Edmund C. Tramont, reported March 14, 2002, to his boss, Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (news - web sites).

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=514&e=6&u=/ap/20041214/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_aids_drug

[ivolsky]

1. Alarming

The story is alarming, especially the claim (later on in the article) that the drug manufacturer attempted to suppress information from the FDA so that the drug would be approved for domestic use.

more: www.politicalthought.net

[acmavm]

2. Oh hell, what's the big deal? A few (hundred, thousand, million???)

lives in exchange for money in the drug industry's pockets?

Where are your priorities?

<sarcasm off>