1000 Foreign Infants to Die Unnecessarily in US-Funded HIV Studies: Human Experiments are Tuskegee Part Two, Says Health Groups

The dangerous double standard being practiced here is underscored by
the fact that both of the U.S.-funded studies being conducted in this country provide
AZT or other known effective anti-HIV drugs to all women, while only one of the 16
studies in the developing world provides AZT to all study groups. Providing AZT
prophylaxis to pregnant, HiV-infected women in research studies in developing
countries is dearly feasible; six developing country studies other than the one
mentioned above provide AZT to some (but not all) of the women in the studies. In
each of these six studies, one group of women is given a placebo instead of AZT.
In essence, the U.S.-funded researchers are conducting experiments
abroad that would never pass ethical muster in the U.S. For your department to
maintain a double standard in which it funds studies that on the one hand routinely
provide life-saving drugs to Americans, while on the other deny these drugs to
thousands of citizens of developing countries, conveys to the international community
the impression that the U.S. government places less value on the lives of
non-Americans.
Many people will hear in these experiments echoes of the notorious Tuskegee
syphilis study, in which poor, rural African-Armerican men were denied effective
treatment for syphilis for decades so that researchers could describe how the
untreated disease progressed in African-Americans. This time, the people of color
affected are babies from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, many hundreds of whom will
die unnecessarily in the course of this unethical, exploitative research.
Thus, even as the administration moves toward offering a belated apology for
the atrocity of Tuskegee,2 it is perpetrating a new African-Asian-Caribbean Tuskegee
in which many more people will die.
These experiments are in clear violation of all of the major international, ethical
guidelines. The WVVorld Medical Association's 1975 Declaration of Helsinki states
unequivocally that "In any medical study, every patient-including those of a control
group, if any-should be assured of the best proven diagnostic and therapeutic
method." It also makes lear that the guidelines are for "physicians all over the world."3
In addition, the research violates at least four of the ten principles of the Nuremberg
2 Baker P, Fletcher iA. Binding an untreated wound: Clinnton to apologize to blacks
victimized in Tuskegee Syphilis Study. Washington Post, April 9, 1997, p. Al.
3 VVorld Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki: recommendations guiding
physicians in biomedical research involving human subjects. Adopted by the 18th World
Medical Assembly, Helsinki, 1964 and revised by the 29th VVorld Medical Assembly, Tokyo,
1975, the 35th World Medical Assembly, Venice, 1983 and the 41st World Medical Assembly,
Hong Kong, 1989.

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