SAN FRANCISCO – A biotech company that is using prostitutes in its AIDS drug experiments is being accused of exploiting the women and giving them poor education to further its research.
Researchers in Africa and Cambodia are experimenting with Gilead Sciences Inc.’s popular drug Viread to see if it can be used as a sort of AIDS “prevention pill.” At least some of the prostitutes involved will take pills with no medicinal value to see if they contract HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, more readily than prostitutes who take the drug.
Some activists and prostitutes, demanding that the San Francisco Bay Area company halt the testing, disrupted a Gilead-sponsored seminar at an international AIDS conference in Bangkok this week.
The protesters, led by the AIDS activist group Act Up, accused the researchers of purposely providing insufficient prevention education to the volunteers because it needs infection data to analyze Viread’s potential to protect against the virus.
The protesters also demanded that the company take care of the lifetime medical needs of any volunteers who contract AIDS during the experiment.
Gilead’s research chief Norbert Bischofberger said all the overseas experiments were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, even though U.S. approval wasn’t needed, and that all participants receive “extensive counseling.”
Bischofberger also said the company isn’t compelled to provide lifetime health coverage to the studies’ participants because researchers are giving them education on condom use and other areas that will make them less likely to contract HIV.
“Many more of these women would have become positive without the study,” Bischofberger said.
Associated Press
Activists in Bangkok, Thailand, on Wednesday demand that a San Francisco-area company halt AIDS research involving prostitutes.
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