Health Group Attacks Second Generation of Unethical Perinatal Trials in Africa

Citizen
NEWS RELEASE
EMBARGOED - NOT FOR RELEASE UNTIL 3:00 PM GENEVA TIME (9:00 AM US EAST
COAST TIME), WEDNESDAY JULY 1, 1998
Contacts:
Peter Lurie, Hotel Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Geneva (Phone: [phone]; Fax: [phone])
Sidney Wolfe, Washington, DC, USA: Phone: [phone]
Brian Dooley, Washington, DC, USA: Phone: [phone]
Booth Gunter, Washington, DC, USA: Phone: [phone]
HEALTH GROUP ATTACKS SECOND GENERATION
OF UNETHICAL PERINATAL TRIALS IN AFRICA
Researchers to Deny HIV-positive Pregnant Women Effective,
Less Expensive Drug Regimens
HIV-positive pregnant African women involved in HIV experiments continue to be denied
effective treatment, resulting in the needless infection of dozens of babies, says Public Citizen's
Health Research Group.
Despite the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s identification of a lessexpensive regimen of AZT capable of reducing HIV transmission from mother to infant by 51%,
several studies now being designed still do not plan to provide this potentially life-saving
intervention, says the group.
This and further unethical aspects of past and present perinatal HIV trials in developing countries
will be explored by Peter Lurie, MD, MPH of Public Citizen's Health Research Group in an oral
presentation at 15:00 on Wednesday, July 1, 1998 in Hall I at the 12th World AIDS Conference in
Geneva, Switzerland. In a highly unusual scheduling decision by the organizers, Dr. Hoosen
Coovadia of the University of Natal in South Africa, who has conducted some of the unethical
research, is to provide a "Reply" immediately after Dr. Lurie's presentation.
In April 1997, Public Citizen's Health Research Group criticized 15 studies, most funded by the
U.S. government, in which thousands of HIV-positive pregnant women were denied access to
AZT, a drug shown in a study in the U.S. and France to dramatically reduce perinatal HIV
transmission. The studies were designed to identify more affordable versions of the successful
U.S./French regimen that could be utilized in developing countries where the vast majority of the

500,000 annual perinatal HIV transmission occur. Public Citizen criticized the failure to provide
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