Word: azt
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BABY AIDS For developing countries where AIDS is rampant but funds scarce: a short, cheap course of AZT (one month, $80) can cut in half AIDS transmission from infected pregnant moms to kids...
...younger half brother Devon Drew, who died of AIDS two years ago in Antigua. Its real subject is Kincaid's scalded psyche: how she felt about Devon's life (contemptuous at its waste--he was a charming, irresponsible, sexually profligate layabout); about his death (torn but loyal--she bought AZT in the U.S., and the drug gave him a remission); and about Antigua (bitter). The underlying, overflowing theme, as always, is anger...
...editorial attacked programs which issue placebos to people with AIDS when testing inexpensive low-dose AZT treatments in Africa, on the grounds that failing to offer treatment is akin to the notorious Tuskegee experiments on men with syphillis ? for which President Clinton recently apologized. Defenders of using placebos in such research say they are the only way of proving that low doses of AZT are better than leaving the disease untreated...
Hoping to find an AZT regimen they could afford, African researchers sought sponsorship from U.S. health agencies and launched a number of scientific studies in which some mothers were given short treatments with AZT and some, for the purpose of comparison, received a placebo. It is the inclusion of these placebo groups that the critics find objectionable. Giving a sugar pill to an AIDS patient is considered ethically unacceptable in the U.S. To give one to a pregnant African, Dr. Angell writes, shows a "callous disregard of [a patient's] welfare for the sake of research goals...
...with the good of their people in mind and with their informed consent. The studies were designed to be responsive to local needs and to the constraints of each study site. African scientists have argued that it is not in their best interest to include a complicated and costly AZT regimen for the sake of comparison when such a regimen is not only unaffordable but logistically infeasible. They have, instead, opted for a study design that is achievable in practice and is likely to provide lifesaving answers expeditiously, even though it includes a group of women receiving a placebo. While...