Word: azt
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...doctor, and the patient is dying from AIDS. A new drug called azidothymidine (AZT) might temporarily suppress the virus and prolong his life. But you hesitate: AZT may do nothing for his manifestation of the disease. It could even hasten death. And prescribing the drug could bring malpractice suits, since AZT has so far worked only on AIDS sufferers with symptoms different from this patient...
These questions took on new urgency last week when the Anti-Infective Drugs Advisory Committee of the Food and Drug Administration recommended by a 10-1 vote that the FDA approve AZT as the first commercially available treatment for AIDS. The news generated heavy demand from America's 13,000 AIDS victims. For among potential AIDS drugs being tested, only AZT seems to prolong life, specifically for people with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP). The prospect of public release intensified ethical concerns surrounding not only drugs for AIDS treatment but also vaccines to prevent...
Indeed, an ethical concern prompted researchers last year to cut short clinical experiments on PCP patients. In six months only one of 145 AIDS patients given AZT died; many of the others grew stronger and regained some sense of well-being. (Since then, eight more have died.) In a like-size control group given only medically inactive substances, or placebos, 16 perished. These dramatic results prompted Burroughs Wellcome, the North Carolina firm that developed the drug, to call off the trial and immediately begin giving AZT to all the test patients. Many doctors hailed the decision, including Charles Schable, chief...
...halting the test robbed researchers of the chance to judge, under controlled conditions, any long-range effects of AZT, which might be as dangerous as the untreated disease. In fact, some people taking AZT have developed anemia and suffered bone-marrow degeneration. "AZT may be a genie that we are letting out of the bottle," says Dr. Itzhak Brook, chairman of the FDA advisory committee and the only dissenter in the vote. Dr. Maxime Seligmann, a French immunologist who has experimented with AZT at the Hopital St.-Louis in Paris, agrees: "There simply isn't enough knowledge about the benefits...
...have had PCP (about 60% of all victims). Without further tests, doctors cannot tell what the effects will be on those with other variations of the disease. Says Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases: "There is an ethical dilemma of doctors using AZT beyond the categories where the drug has been proven safe and effective...