NEWS COMMENTARY

You have to hand it to drug PROs; they can always come up with a new strategy to push their wares. The latest is to move antiretrovirals (ARVs) from the morning-after treatment to the morning-before — to be blithely popped out the medicine cabinet in anticipation of unsafe sex.

AIDS drug therapy is about to undergo a remarkable retrenching — a one-a-day anti-HIV pill that drops AZT and protease inhibitors. According to a front-page Washington Post article on Jan. 19 [1] , and a study in the New England Journal of Medicine [2] the same day, researchers at Johns Hopkins University have shown that a new combination of three anti-HIV drugs is efficacious in suppressing HIV RNA copies. FDA approval is forecast for the end of 2006.

Canada:
Beginning in the early 1980s and through 1988, some 60 percent of Canadian infants born HIV-positive died of AIDS at an early age. These infants were born to mothers not receiving prophylaxis treatment with antiviral drugs to prevent transmission of HIV to their fetuses, as became recommended practice in the late-1990s. When such mothers are not treated with drugs, they are called “naïve” study subjects. However, from 1988 to 1996, the death rate among HIV-positive infants born to naïve mothers fell to 25 percent on average. The data for three subset years — 1991 to 1993 — is typically noteworthy, as seen eight and 11 years later, in Canada’s HIV/AIDS surveillance charts of 1999 and 2002. The 1999 chart of these growing children registers 28 cumulative AIDS deaths and five others for a total of 33; the 2002 chart registers 27 cumulative AIDS deaths and six other deaths for a total of 33. Thus, it is apparent that this subset’s AIDS mortality (and total mortality) had ceased by 1999, as the 2002 totals remained the same.

Since my last letter, detailing the call by our opposition political party for my banning, there’s been a bit of a wind of change.

It’s true that one radio station heeded the call to ban me. On the other hand, another station not only has allowed me on to the air waves, but various presenters have engaged me in exchanges — and even allowed me to take questions from listeners. This is a departure from previous practice, where I was allowed only to make a statement before being cut off air.

The headline that really got to me this week was "AIDS-drug drive on track, says Mseleku." (1) Let me explain why.

Here we have a president, Thabo Mbeki, who stood up in Parliament in October 1999 and said that he had serious misgivings about antiretroviral (ARV) drugs used in the treatment of AIDS. (2) He added that he had requested a report from his health minister on the issue. If such a report was ever compiled, it has not been made public. Instead, the president sent a letter to world leaders notifying them that he intended to conduct a review of HIV/AIDS so as to better understand how to manage it. (3) What we know about how this letter was received is from Mbeki himself. Answering a question in Parliament on the reception he got from world leaders, he said it would be best to ask them, but he could say that the responses were generally positive and supportive.

In recent weeks I have seriously considered giving up the privilege accorded me by Red Flags of writing this column. The main reason is the difficulty in finding something new to write about.

It’s a depressing fact that when it comes to HIV/AIDS, there is a sameness about the continuing saga that repeats old facts without adding anything. There aren’t even any new names — just the same researchers saying the same things they have been saying from the start. And the same reporters doing the same lamentable job of quoting them with no questions asked.

The AIDS Establishment Endorses The Experiments On Foster Kids At ICC

I have in front of me two certificates of death. Both were children. Both died in the autumn of 2004, while partaking in what some call a clinical trial, and others call a medical experiment, under the auspices of a well-funded “nursing facility” in Harlem for HIV-positive orphans called Incarnation Children’s Center (ICC). According to the AIDS orthodoxy, these children died of AIDS. There is no reason to believe anybody wanted them to die, least of all those who knew them and cared for them. But serious questions remain unanswered about these and other deaths that have occurred in the course of ongoing clinical trials involving foster children in the United States.

Nutrition. That’s the hot topic of conversation here. Suddenly every media outlet is engaging in the debate on the role of nutrition in maintaining health and negating the need to clock in at one of our “am I feeling lucky today?” health facilities.

Nutrition is even being promoted by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC). It used some of funders’ millions for newspaper advertisements on “nutrition” in order to change an tradition of the sole focus on drug therapy for the continent’s acute and chronically ill under the "AIDS" definition. TAC has even managed to come up with a report (methodology not described) showing that government’s ability to dispense nutrition parcels is in worse disarray than the record keeping of patients on drug-therapies. TAC blames our Minister of Health, and in a twist to its usual rhetoric has threatened to take her back to court, to force her to give unspecified nutrition to patients receiving “HIV” drugs.(1)

In one of the most straight-talking media briefings yet, South Africa's Health Minister has underlined her lack of enthusiasm for antiretrovirals in the treatment of HIV and AIDS and reiterated the priority she gave to proper nutrition.

LETTER FROM SOUTH AFRICA

Anita Allen, a journalist and communications specialist, returns to Red Flags with her "Letter From South Africa." (To read a past issue.)

Allen is based in South Africa and will be providing us with reports and news commentary on health issues that tie all continents together. One of the goals of Red Flags is to provide you with content and commentary that will help build a greater understanding of peoples everywhere as they search out better health, happiness and freedom. We believe Allen’s columns, to be published every two weeks, will greatly contribute to that goal. At the end of the letter, Anita tells us why South Africa has particular importance to world interest at this time.

A former National Cancer Institute Director, Richard D. Klausner, is being called on the congressional carpet to explain why he personally accepted money from universities and research institutes to which the NCI awarded multi-million-dollar research grants during his tenure as Director.

Arguments About Toxicity And Lack Of Drug Efficacy Do Not Seem To Appeal To Those On The Left When It Comes To AIDS. What’s Going On Here?

One of the strangest moments of my life occurred when I confronted Ralph Nader at a public talk on medicine in my home town on the subject of AZT and was accused, by him, of being a conspiracy theorist. It was particularly ironic because I have been a Green Party activist for several years and, in just about every other way, admire him for his integrity and cogent analyses of all that is wrong with society today.

The 14th International AIDS Society (IAS) and UNAIDS conference closed in Barcelona last week with two former presidents getting a standing ovation for their performances as drug salesmen.

It was a pharmaceutical PR dream come true, a double act celebrity endorsement by Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela clutching ends of the AIDS ribbon. Clinton even went the Full Monty by volunteering his services worldwide as a travelling salesman for HIV drugs. (1)