SCIENCE BY PRESS RELEASE

By John Lauritsen

New York Native 21 Aug. 1989

AZT has fallen from favor over the past year or so, for good reasons. Even very powerful delusions, supported by massive pro- paganda campaigns, must eventually yield to reality. Through shared experience, people with AIDS (PWAs), as well as their friends, family, and physicians, are coming to realize that AZT does not extend life, does not protect from opportunistic infec- tions, and does not improve the health of those who take it. On the contrary, PWAs on AZT are dying in great numbers, after suffering truly hideous side effects.

But the AIDS Industry has not given up on the drug. There is apparently a huge stockpile of AZT, and billions of dollars of sales depend upon a continued, and expanding, market for the com- modity.

The media gave much coverage last week to "findings" allegedly demonstrating that AZT benefitted people who were "infected with" (had antibodies to) human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). A chorus of praise to the resurrected miracle drug was sung by the usual Public Health Service (PHS) officials, physi- cians, "AIDS activists", and AZT hucksters.

The story was featured prominently in the major newspapers, and in television and radio news. Typical was a front-page New York Times article by Gina Kolata, "Strong Evidence Discovered That AZT Holds Off AIDS". It begins: "For the first time researchers have strong evidence that the drug AZT can signifi- cantly delay the onset of AIDS in people showing mild symptoms of immune system damage."(1)

According to the story, a double-blind, placebo-controlled study had been conducted on people who met the following qualifi- cations: they had HIV antibodies and they had "mild symptoms of immune system damage". That is to say, the subjects were in a gray area: they were not perfectly healthy, but at the same time, they were not sick enough to qualify for a diagnosis of either AIDS-related complex (ARC) or full-fledged "AIDS" (both of which are defined in extremely vague and contradictory ways). Half of the subjects received AZT and the other received a placebo.

As the story goes, 36 of those who received placebo, but only 14 of those who received AZT, got sicker -- that is, went on to qualify for a diagnosis of either ARC or AIDS. These results so excited officials in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which had sponsored the study, that they terminated the study and recommended that all of the study participants be given AZT. NIAID then issued a press release, in which Director Anthony Fauci called the results "exciting" and urged that AZT be given to all of the estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Americans who, like the study participants, are somewhat sick and have HIV antibodies. Another study is currently in pro- gress, testing the effects of AZT on perfectly healthy people who have HIV antibodies. If equally "exciting" results can be obtained from this study, the AZT market may explode to as many as 1,500,000 hapless Americans.

After a little investigation I found out that the much touted AZT study has not been published in any form, very little is known about it, and much of what was said in the media reports is not true. As I'll discuss below, NIAID's press release was reprehensible in many ways.

Information or Propaganda?

Those of us who have been trying hard to get out the truth about the "health crisis": -- the weaknesses of the HIV hypothesis, the dangers of AZT, the epidemiological lies about "AIDS" -- have been demoralized and disgusted, time and again, by the dishonesty and cowardice of the media. When an article of mine in the New York Native -- and later an NBC documentary -- revealed that AZT had been approved for marketing on the basis of fraudulent research, why didn't the mainstream media pick up on the story? When the renowned molecular biologist Peter Duesberg argued cogently against the hypothesis that HIV causes AIDS, in the pages of Cancer Research, the Native, Biotechnology, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, why didn't the media cover this obviously important and newsworthy controversy?

Perhaps it is naive to expect the media to champion the truth in the face of powerful vested interests. In their recent book, Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky put forward a "propaganda model", according to which the media "serve to mobilize support for the special interests that dominate the state and private activity". Herman and Chomsky write:

In contrast to the standard conception of the media as cantankerous, obstinate, and ubiquitous in their search for truth and their independence of authority, we have spelled out and applied a propaganda model that indeed sees the media as serving a "societal purpose," but not that of ena- bling the public to assert meaningful control over the pol- itical process by providing them with the information needed for the intelligent discharge of political responsibilities. On the contrary, a propaganda model suggests that the "societal purpose" of the media is to inculcate and defend the economic, social, and political agenda of privileged groups that dominate the domestic society and the state. The media serve this purpose in many ways: through selection of topics, distribution of concerns, framing of issues, filtering of information, emphasis and tone, and by keeping debate within the bounds of acceptable premises.(2)

Although government censorship can and does occur, it is seldom necessary; the media voluntarily stay in line:

The U.S. media do not function in the manner of the propaganda system of a totalitarian state. Rather, they permit -- indeed, encourage -- spirited debate, criticism, and dissent, as long as these remain faithfully within the system of presupposi- tions and principles that constitute an elite consensus, a system so powerful as to be internalized largely without awareness.(3)

With regard to AIDS coverage, the media are exquisitely cog- nizant of an "elite consensus" -- the consensus of the AIDS Establishment. The consensus consists of a paradigm, an ela- borate mythological system, which, though its tenets sometimes change, is so well internalized by most AIDS writers that they could recite the basic catechism in their sleep: AIDS is a deadly new diseases, which is invariably fatal, which is caused by HIV. Intravenous drug users got AIDS by "sharing needles". Gay men got AIDS by being "promiscuous". AZT "extends life" and is the "best hope". All or nearly all of those who are "infected with HIV" (have HIV antibodies) will get AIDS. Africa is a con- tinent ravaged by the AIDS epidemic, with millions of people sick and dying. And so on. Facts that don't fit into the official paradigm transmute into unfacts and go down the memory hole.

The propaganda model suggests that mainstream AIDS coverage might best be understood as collusion between the media and parts of the Medical Industrial Complex. It suggests that we always keep in mind the economic underpinnings of the epidemic.

Business...is a dirty business

On Friday the 4th of August, the day after the NIAID press release, the entire London market was buoyed by a surge in the stock prices of Wellcome PLC, the parent manufacturer of AZT. The Wellcome PLC share prices jumped 13%, in response to NIAID's claims that AZT was effective in treating patients in the "early stages of AIDS symptoms".

So, if on Thursday one of the many nouveau millionaires in the AIDS establishment had invested a million dollars in Wellcome stock, he'd have made $130,000 overnight. That's pretty "excit- ing", isn't it?

Burroughs Wellcome spokeswoman, Kathy Bartlett, was quoted by Gina Kolata as saying that "the company had adequate supplies of the drug to treat the patients with mild symptoms."(4) In other words, Burroughs Wellcome has a huge stockpile of AZT -- one which could "treat" the estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Ameri- cans "with mild symptoms", as well as the 50,000 or so patients who are currently taking the drug. Ms. Bartlett said that a year's supply of AZT currently costs about $7,000. Therefore, if 250,000 people were put on AZT, the gross sales would amount to $1,750,000,000 per year.

But that's not all. Another study that NIAID is conducting concerns the effects of AZT on healthy HIV positive people. The PHS estimates that a million people or more fall into this category. So, if one and a quarter million people were put on AZT, the gross sales would then reach $8,750,000,000 per year. Now that's really exciting!

Even here it doesn't end. Such "AIDS experts" as nouveau multimillionaire William Haseltine have advocated giving AZT to perfectly healthy, HIV negative members of "high-risk groups" -- like gay men -- in order to prevent us from becoming "infected". Over a year ago I referred to this policy as "iatrogenic geno- cide", and I have not changed my opinion.(5)

I am not engaging in frivolous speculation. People in the AIDS Establishment really think this way. According to an arti- cle in the San Francisco Chronicle:

At the request of researchers at the National Insti- tutes of Health, officials at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services are trying to determine the cost of pro- viding AZT to a million HIV-infected Americans.(6)

Much Ado About Nothing

To return to the NIAID press release and the news reports it spawned: it is amazing how little is known about the study in question. For instance, nowhere in any of the news stories or the NIAID press release does it state how many people were in the AZT group and how many were in the placebo group, although the total for both groups combined is given at 713. Presumably the number in each treatment group is approximately half of 713, but this is not good enough. Any competent analyst wants real numbers, not guesses or approximations. I spoke at length to a woman at NIAID, who was supposed to be knowledgeable on the study; she didn't know the answer either, and couldn't understand why I wouldn't settle for "approximately half". For answers to this and other questions, she said I should talk to Margaret Fischl in Miami. Fischl coordinated the trials, and is also the women who coordinated the fraud-ridden Phase II trials of AZT, which I have analyzed at great length.(7) When I spoke to Fischl on a previous occasion, she was unable to answer some very simple questions about a report which she herself had allegedly written, and she referred me to Burroughs Wellcome for answers. It is scandalous that someone of her caliber should ever again be allowed to supervise clinical trials.

Then there is the matter of the time frame. The news reports simply said that people were treated anywhere from 3 to 20 months. I learned from the NIAID spokeswoman that the median treatment time was 9 months. Did the original study design call for a specified length of time that each subject would be treated? Apparently not -- the researchers just let the study go along until they saw results that they liked. Then they ter- minated it. This is not the way that research ought to be con- ducted.

And then there is the matter of symptoms -- both the symp- toms that qualified for entry into the study and the symptoms that were interpreted as meaning that the subject had gotten sicker. The NIAID press release didn't list the symptoms in each category, and the NIAID spokeswoman didn't know what they were. At times she referred to "mild ARC" as opposed to "serious ARC", and yet she could offer no definition of either category. What this means is that the study design was rotten at its core through sheer subjectivity. The "exciting" results were based entirely on perceived progressions from milder to more serious symptoms -- on progressions from gray to gray. If no one at NIAID even knew what the qualifying symptoms were, one can only imagine the cognitive chaos that must have prevailed in the field, when physicians had to decide if a particular configura- tion of symptoms qualified as mild ARC, serious ARC, AIDS, or none of these.

And then there is the issue of "side effects". In the New York Times article, NIAID Director Fauci is quoted as saying, "Only a very small percentage of the patients taking AZT had serious side effects -- less than 5 percent."(8) This is not only highly improbable, it is wrong. An article in the Wall Street Journal also got it wrong, stating that "only 5% of the AZT-treated group suffered serious side effects such as anemia."(9) In fact, the 5% did not refer to the AZT treatment group, but rather to the total sample, including the placebo treatment group as well. The NIAID spokeswoman was quite firm on this point, and the Associated Press release also stated correctly that "Fewer than 5 percent of the [total] participants experienced serious side effects." A placebo is by definition an inert substance, and should not cause any serious side effects, such as anemia (although it might psychosomatically cause a headache). Therefore it is reasonable to assume that a much greater proportion of the AZT patients, perhaps as high as 10%, experienced "serious side effects". It is hard to tell if Fauci and his media lackeys were deliberately being misleading in this case, or if they were just being incompetent as usual.

Aside from the sloppiness of the NIAID press release, and the stunning lack of information, I believe that it was improper to issue it in the first place. Physicians who have the awesome responsibility of deciding whether or not to prescribe a very toxic drug have the right and the obligation to look at a pub- lished report -- one which has gone through the peer review pro- cess, which has a proper description of study design and metho- dology, and which contains all of the facts and numbers. In this case the physician has nothing but propagandistic second and third-hand versions of a skimpy press release.

The New York Times: "All The News That Fits The Myth"

From time to time I and others have called the New York Times to point out mistakes they have made in their AIDS arti- cles. They will sometimes admit they were wrong privately, but never in print. And the same mistakes keep happening, week after week, year after year. For example, a recent article by Bruce Lambert, "AIDS Insurance Coverage Is Increasingly Hard to Get", refers repeatedly to being "tested for AIDS".(10) This is wrong, for there is no such thing as a test for AIDS. The test referred to is a highly inaccurate test for antibodies to HIV, a retro- virus that probably plays no role whatever in causing AIDS.

It may be instructive to examine Gina Kolata's article more closely, as it is an example of how sloppy is the AIDS coverage of the "newspaper of record". I have already pointed out her error on "side effects".

Kolata summarized the main findings as follows: "So far, 36 patients taking the inert substance have progressed to full- fledged AIDS, but only 14 of those taking AZT developed the full disease." This is untrue, and wrongly implies that the results were much more clear cut than they were. In actuality, the pro- gression in some cases was only to ARC rather than to "full- fledged AIDS". It was a poorly defined progression from rela- tively minor to relatively serious symptoms.

Kolata obtained comments on the study from two New Yorkers, a physician with a large AIDS practice, and the director of the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC). On the first she writes:

"This sounds very exciting,' said Dr. Nathaniel Pier, a New York doctor with a large AIDS practice. "It's going to help us clinicians a lot. It confirms the clinical consensus that early intervention is logical and helps answer the question of what to use to intervene."

This gives the impression that Pier had studied the NIAID research and had come to his own, expert conclusions. I spoke to Pier at length, and it seems that his only knowledge of the research came from what Kolata herself had told him over the telephone.

Kolata goes on to present Pier's comments in the form of indirect quotation:

Dr. Pier said many people had been reluctant to be tested to see if they were infected with the AIDS virus because they hesitated to face the possibility that the test would show infection and that they would simply have to wait for the inevitable serious illness. [Emphasis added.]

I asked Pier what the basis was for his statement that peo- ple with HIV antibodies "would simply have to wait for the inev- itable serious illness". He emphatically denied having made the statement, and said that Kolata was expressing her own ideas, not his. In fact, Pier is not convinced that HIV is the cause of AIDS, and sees no reason why healthy people with HIV antibodies should not remain healthy.

And then Kolata quotes Richard Dunne, executive director of GMHC, as having fatuously said that "the new finding put AIDS treatment into 'a new age'". She has him saying:

We have always argued that early intervention made sense, but now we have data, very strong compelling data, that shows [sic] it.

Dunne did not return my telephone call, so I have no idea whether Kolata quoted him accurately. Presumably Dunne was com- menting on either the NIAID press release or what Gina Kolata had told him over the telephone. Either way, it would be absurd to refer to "very strong compelling data". The data in question are wimpy and utterly uncompelling.

Recapitulation

The NIAID press release may have resulted in effective pro- paganda, but is a poor substitute for a proper report. In no way do the "findings" indicate that it is desirable to give AZT to HIV positive individuals with "early symptoms".

Lives are at stake, and it is important not to forget what we already know about AZT. I am in the process of writing a reply to the AZT pushers within our own community. In this arti- cle I will rebut the claims being made for AZT and summarize what I have learned about the drug. For now, I stand by three main conclusions:

• AZT is a highly toxic drug, the long-term use of which is incompatible with life.
• AZT was approved for marketing on the basis of fraudulent research.
• There is no scientifically credible evidence that AZT has benefits of any kind. *

References

1. Gina Kolata, "Strong Evidence Discovered That AZT Holds Off AIDS", New York Times, August 4, 1989.

2. Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent, Pantheon Books, New York 1988, p. 298.

3. Ibid, p. 302.

4. Gina Kolata, op. cit.

5. John Lauritsen, "AZT: Iatrogenic Genocide", New York Native, issue 258, March 28, 1988.

6. Randy Shilts, "U.S. Studying Cost of Wider Use of Drug AZT", San Francisco Chronicle, June 16, 1989.

7. John Lauritsen, "AZT on Trial: Did the FDA Rush to Judgment -- And Thereby Further Endanger the Lives of Thousands of People?", New York Native, Issue 235, 19 October 1987. Another highly critical review of the Phase II trials was written by Joseph A. Sonnabend, "Review of AZT Multicenter Trial Data Obtained Under the Freedom of Information Act by Project Inform and ACT-UP", AIDS Forum, January 1988.

8. Kolata, op. cit.

9. Marilyn Chase, "Big AZT Study Says Drug Slows Onset of AIDS", Wall Street Journal, August 4, 1989.

10. Bruce Lambert, "AIDS Coverage Is Increasingly Hard to Get", New York Times, August 7, 1989.