Dr. Henry Bauer on Food, Funding and HIV Research

Dr. Henry Bauer
Letter to New York Times
December, 2007
(refused publication)

But Halperin failed to mention the even more distressing fact that we withold food and cheap medications from participants in some clinical trials because the researchers wish to find out how HIV and malnutrition interact: see David Tuller’s piece on 25 December, “Food Scarcity and H.I.V. Interwoven in Uganda”. Starving people are being studied to see whether they benefit less from antiretroviral drugs than people who are properly fed.

Would that this were an aberration in clinical trials involving HIV/AIDS, but it isn’t. Other clinical trials in Africa, also funded and carried out in part by American researchers, study whether HIV progresses toward AIDS faster in people who are suffering from intestinal worms. Several studies have already been done and more are planned, in which viral load and immune-system cell-counts are measured in HIV and worm-infested people, some of whom receive no treatment against worms (”Treatment of helminth co-infection in individuals with HIV-1: A systematic review of the literature”, by Judd L. Walson & Grace John-Stewart). Yet no one doubts that intestinal worms are seriously debilitating in themselves, and very cheap and effective medications are available for de-worming.

The singleminded preoccupation with defeating the evil virus HIV seems to have blinded some researchers to the fact that the purpose of medical science and medical practice is to help people to better health. I am astonished that the committees that oversee clinical trials have given their approval to such studies.”