Læknaneminn - 01.04.1997, Page 105

The drug-AIDS hypothesis *
CDCs long catalog of AIDS-defining diseases proves
that drugs alone could be responsible for the AIDS epi-
demic (see Table 6). It is for this reason that through-
out the epidemic drug-aware AIDS researchers found it
difficult to distinguish between the drug and AIDS epi-
demics as the following titles of their articles indicate:
1) 1987: AIDS and intravenous drug use: the real het-
erosexual epidemic 145.
2) 1989: Cocaine abuse and acquired immunodefi-
ciency syndrome: tale of two epidemics 12‘.
3) 1991: The Twin Epidemics of Substance Use and
HIV 21.
4) 1991: AIDS, drugs of abuse and the immune sys-
tem: a complex immunotoxicological network 124.
5) 1993: Entangled epidemics: cocaine use and HIV
disease 123.
6) 1995: New picture of who will get AIDS is domi-
nated by addicts 146
7) 1996: Clinical features of drug use and drug use
related to HIV 40.
4. THE EPIDEMIC OF AZT AND OTHER
ANTI-HIV/AIDS MEDICATIONS
4.1. DNA terminators licensed as a cure. In 1987 the
American and European illicit drug epidemic had been
joined by a new epidemic of toxic legal drugs, the
DNA chain-terminators, such as AZT, that are pre-
scribed to hundreds of thousands of HlV-positives
together with a litany of other orthodox and unortho-
dox anti-HIV/AIDS drugs (see 4.2. and Table 7). In
America AZT was licensed in record time as an antivi-
ral drug in 1987 by the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) based on studies conducted by its sister institu-
tions from the Department of HHS, the National
Cancer Institute 147 and the NIAID 148 together with
the drug’s manufacturer Burroughs Wellcome.
The fast approval of AZT- despite its inherent toxi-
city- was a major coup of AIDS researchers 14°. By
going public more aggressively than any other scientists
before, American AIDS researchers from the NIAID,
NCI and CDC had mobilized patients, homosexual
AIDS risk groups and journalists to demand protection
from the predicted AIDS explosion at any cost. As a
result of this pressure the FDA and AIDS researchers
fast-tracked first the approval of AZT and then that of
ever-more untested anti-HIV/AIDS drugs 15°.
Surprisingly, all of these drugs were eagerly welcomed
by the medical and public press and above all by unsus-
pecting AIDS patients. The politics behind the
approval of AZT first by the FDA and the American
medical orthodoxy, and then by the rest of the world
has been described in two recent books, Good intentions
151 and Inventing the AIDS Virus ”.
AZT and other DNA chain-terminators are now
used both as AIDS prophylaxis and therapy in the hope
that they will terminate HIV DNA synthesis without
terminating cell DNA synthesis 152. However, there are
several problems with this optimistic plan:
1) The licensing study conducted in 1986 by the
National Cancer Institute (NCI) and Burroughs
Wellcome had erroneously underestimated the toxicity
ofAZT for human cells a 1000-foId 147! Although at
least 7 independent studies have since pointed out this
1000-fold error 153'155, the recommended prescription
dose has only been reduced 3-fold, from 1.5 g of AZT
per day in 1987 to 0.5 g now 160’161.
2) The initial success of the American clinical licens-
ing study conducted by the NIAID and Burroughs
Wellcome, that claimed a 19-fold reduced AIDS-mor-
tality 14s, could not be reproduced by numerous inde-
pendent studies from other countries, including the
UK 162, France 163, The Netherlands 164, Australia 165,
and also not by an independent American study that
was not supported by the NIAID and Burroughs
Wellcome 166.
3) Contrary to the manufacturer’s information,
DNA chain-terminators, such as AZT, ddl, ddC, 3TC
and d4T, were not designed to kill viruses but to kill
human cells. Most of them were originally synthesized
over 30 years ago, long before AIDS was known, to kill
human cells as cancer chemotherapy by terminating
cellular DNA synthesis 167. Thus DNA chain-termina-
tors are inevitably cytotoxic 149.
4) Even in the light of the HIV-AIDS hypothesis,
AZT treatment as anti-HIV therapy is irrational. Since
only about 1 in lOOOT-cells ofAIDS patients is infect-
ed with HIV 25,26,30’32,168’170, AZT will kill 999 uninfect-
ed T cells for every one that is infected 149,151,171t 172.
Such a therapeutic index predicts that AZT cannot be
beneficial as an anti-HIV drug. Moreover, since HIV
is postulated to cause AIDS by killing T-cells, it is irra-
tional to kill the same HlV-infected cells twice - once
with HIV and again with AZT 26.
LÆKNANEMINN
103 1. tbl. 1997, 50. árg.