Word: azt
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...executive order by President Clinton that Washington would refrain from enforcing U.S. patents on AIDS drugs in African countries battling the disease. That would leave those countries free to license or develop far cheaper generic versions of the patented drugs - already in Brazil, for example, a generic version of AZT sells for about 10 percent of the patented drug's price on the U.S. market - which pharmaceutical corporations fear could eventually eat into their global market share...
...South Africa's own medical and AIDS-activist community, Mbeki has invited Berkeley molecular biologist Peter Duesberg and his colleague David Resnick - who maintain that the HIV virus is harmless and not the cause of AIDS - to serve on a panel advising the government over whether to make AZT available to pregnant HIV carriers. Duesberg and Resnick argue that the high incidence of AIDS in Africa is based less on unprotected sex than on such poverty-related conditions as undernourishment...
...wipe out a full 25 percent of South Africa's population by the year 2010, the current debate has arisen over the government's responsibilities in treating the disease. Despite growing pressure from the South African medical and AIDS activist communities, the government refuses to make available the drugs AZT or Nevirapine to rape victims and pregnant women. Some 22 percent of pregnant women in South Africa are HIV-positive, and AZT and Nevirapine have been successful in preventing mother-to-child transmission of the virus. "AZT has been shown to prevent transmission of the virus to unborn children," says...
...South African government maintains the drugs are too expensive and potentially harmful. As the protests escalated, Mbeki and his aides have invoked Duesberg's theories and his claim that AZT does more harm than good, and have accused their critics of promoting profiteering pharmaceutical corporations. And the president has rationalized his stance by invoking Duesberg. While proclaiming himself undecided on Duesberg's arguments, Mbeki insists that they ought to be debated and instructed his AIDS advisory panel to consider questions ranging from the merits of treatments such as AZT to "whether there's this thing called AIDS, what...
...causes AIDS. Of course, treatments that cost some $10,000 per patient each year are way beyond the reach of the overwhelming majority of South Africa's HIV sufferers - and of their government, which would have to spend its entire medical budget on providing the drug cocktails. But AZT is a lot more within their reach. And scientists fear that attempting to resurrect the credibility of skeptics such as Duesberg sends a message that could prove disastrous to education efforts to stop the spread of the virus in South Africa. "If the problem with supplying people with AZT is financial...