16 November 2007
Merck, the international
pharmaceutical company, suddenly stopped its widely-hailed drug-trials for a
"HIV-vaccine" in September 2007 in South Africa and elsewhere when
participants became infected with the human-immune-deficiency virus which
eventually kills people of infectious diseases due to
acquired-immune-deficiency syndrome (AIDS).
Participants had been assured - by jubilant advance publicity -- that they
would be immune from the deadly infection while being injected with these
drugs. Five clinics in South Africa participated in the trials.
These failed Merck HIV-vaccine trials were announced amidst a blaze of
jubilant pre-publicity about this 'promising HIV-vaccine which holds out
hope for millions."
Poor black participants in South Africa also were lured by the relatively
large sums of cash handed out during such human drug trials. A couple of
thousand dollars isn't all that much money in Western countries - but in
South Africa, it's a small fortune to unemployed shack-dwellers who can't
even afford the bus-fare to the local hospitals.
Now, just one month after the Merck HIV-vaccine fiasco, yet another two
antibiotics, both 'promising TB-treatment candidates' are being
market-tested in Cape Town, South Africa.
http://www.tballiance.org/newscenter/view-innews.php?id=741
This time the companies testing the two new drugs are Chiron in California
and the New-Jersey-based Bayer Pharmaceuticals, working with a non-profit
organisation called "The TB-Alliance".
http://www.tballiance.org/home/home.php
Being tested are a drug designated only as PA824, developed by Chiron, and
the antibiotic doxifloxacin, being hailed by Bayer as 'one of the most
advanced potential new TB drugs in development."
It has just launched the so-called RemoxTB trials with some '2000
volunteers' in Kenya, SA, Tanzania and Zambia."
In the Moxifloxacin trials, these 2000 TB-patients will be subjected to
replace their current standard four-drug cocktail's ethambutol or isoniazid
with this antibiotic moxifloxacin for a period of 4 months.
Then they will assess whether this approach gives better results in their
African guinea-pigs i.e. whether they would become more willing to continue
taking this horrendous cocktail of drugs.
This trial is being backed up by University College London and the British
Medical Research Council.
The PA824 trial is much smaller: it involves 60 NEWLY-DIAGNOSED TB-AIDS
patients. Thirty patients will be given PA-824 for 14 days before starting
standard treatment. The rest will get the standard treatment straight away.
There will not be a healthy control group to test whether the drug has any
side-effects in healthy people.
Scientists want to compare how well PA-824 fought the TB bacteria infection in the first fourteen days of treatment.
Neither of these two so-called TB-vaccines were designed to cure anything -- they only hope to shorten the treatment period for drug-resistant Tuberculosis by two months with these experimental drugs.
Yet once again the press releases are jubilant and the SA news media remains totally uncritical -- blithely publishing these claims by the TB Alliance. Dr Maria C Freire, the CEO of the TB Alliance, is widely quoted as saying that 'there are now two promising new TB drugs in our portfolio moving forward in clinic trials; and that it's 'a historic milestone in our accelerated drive to develop new TB drugs that fight the disease in different, faster and better ways to help save millions of lives...'
What she doesn't say -- although she should -- is that in South Africa, her 'groundbreaking' new TB-drugs are going to be tested on yet another batch of empoverished, often poorly-educated human beings who will get large bonuses.
Only one of these two new TB drugs, PA-824, tries to address the co-epidemics of drug-resistant TB + AIDS. The much larger trial with Moxifloxacin ignores the AIDS-factor altogether.
These two experimental drugs are only hoped to shorten the time of treatment for the TB patients so that the patients will "comply" better.
The problem here does not lie with the drugs and 'non-compliance' -- but with the SA government's policy which states that they do not want such infectious XDR-TB patients to be placed in enforced isolation, claiming that their individual human rights are being violated while totally ignoring the rights of the entire community to be protected from infection. This is a political issue - not a medical one.
Said Freire: "A shorter TB regimen, which COULD be possible with new drugs such as moxifloxacin and PA-824, SHOULD lead to improved patient compliance...'
I urge the TB-alliance to by all means, go and test these drugs on human
beings in other parts of the world and make certain that these people are
much better-informed, more literate, far less poor and far less desperate
than those South African patients.
The incredible suffering of these TB+AIDS infected S. Africans does not need to be increased by holding out false hope in drugs-trials which aren't even designed to try and begin to cure their conditions.
I urge drug companies and the TB Alliance to stop lying to these people and to above all, stop using the African continent as one gigantic human laboratory. Africa isn't Auschwitz.
TB alliance's "Compassionate/Emergency Use of Experimental TB Alliance Drugs outside the scope of clinical trials"
http://www.tballiance.org/downloads/publications/Compassionate_Policy.12.6.06.pdf