AIDS research carries stench of past studies
May 16, 2005

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After the U.S. Public Health Service was exposed for conducting a
hideous experiment between 1932 and 1972 on 399 black men in the late
stages of syphilis, it would seem the government might be a little
more careful about using humans as guinea pigs.

Now word comes that the National Institutes of Health has been doing
AIDS drugs research on foster children for the past two decades,
often without requiring any advocates on their behalf.

What do the two experiments have in common? The black men were mostly
illiterate sharecroppers. The foster children were mostly poor and
minorities.

No wonder distrust in the government runs so deep. No wonder a 1990
survey found that 10 percent of blacks believed the U.S. government
created AIDS as a plot to exterminate blacks and another 20 percent
couldn't rule out the possibility that might be true.

In 1972, a reporter for the Washington Star broke the story about the
infamous syphilis experiments, which news anchor Harry Reasoner
described as using "human beings as laboratory animals in a long and
inefficient study of how long it takes syphilis to kill someone."

Now The Associated Press has uncovered a 20-year study on how
effective - or dangerous - AIDS drugs are on children with the
disease. The drugs were known to have serious side effects in adults
and the safety for children was unknown.

The difference between the two experiments - on its face - is intent.
The Tuskegee syphilis experiment was designed to watch how disease
killed a minority population. The AIDS experiment was meant to help
children with a disease. Indeed, only 5 to 10 percent of the 13,878
children enrolled in the pediatric AIDS studies were foster children.

But the underlying problem remains unchanged. Researchers tested
vulnerable populations who were unable to defend themselves or
understand the consequences of the "research."

In the latter case, the children, including infants, were in foster
care. Everyone knows that children often bounce from one foster
family to another. Care is hardly consistent.

These children should have had unbiased advocates appointed who could
track the children's progression throughout the research - regardless
of whether their foster parents were truly engaged or ever changing.

The researchers are quick to point out that many of these children
would have gotten no treatment, and instead got some of the best
available. Sometimes.

In one study, researchers reported a "disturbing" higher death rate
among children who took higher doses of dapsone, a drug designed to
prevent pneumonia. Some children had to be taken off the drug because
of "serious toxicity." Death rates and blood toxicity were
significantly higher in children who took the medicine daily, rather
than weekly.

At least 10 children died from a variety of causes, including four
from blood poisoning, and researchers said they were unable to
determine a safe, useful dose. They said the deaths didn't appear to
be "directly attributable" to dapsone, but nonetheless
were "disturbing."

Disturbing hardly describes this kind of research. The U.S. Office
for Human Research Protections, created after the Tuskegee syphilis
experiment, is investigating the AIDS research in children.

By now, the government should know better than to permit any research
that has even a whiff of exploitation about it.