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On 28 October 1999,
South African President Thabo Mbeki ordered an
enquiry into the safety of
the AIDS drug
AZT after reading an early draft of High
Court advocate Anthony Brink’s book,
Debating AZT: Mbeki and
the AIDS drug controversy
(PDF, 1.2 MB),
then
titled ‘Debating AZT: Questions of safety and utility’.
Introducing AZT: ‘A world
of antiretroviral experience’
cites research findings published after
Debating AZT
went to print in November 2000, and liberally
quotes South Africa’s leading AIDS experts, AIDS
activists and AIDS journalists on AZT to enable you to
form your own opinion after hearing both sides
(PDF, 1 MB).
For an overview see
Why do President Mbeki
and Dr Tshabalala-Msimang warn against the use of ARV
drugs like AZT?
(PDF, 98 KB).
(Hi res version for printing in ‘Quick links’)
AZT is
extraordinarily toxic, no doubt, but does it have any
countervailing value as a medicine? In other words, do
its benefits outweigh its risks? Or to put it more directly:
is AZT really antiretroviral? An
Open Letter to
GlaxoSmithKline SA CEO John Kearney
on 26 April 2001 addresses this question
(PDF, 51 KB),
conveying the gist of
A Critical Analysis of
the Pharmacology of AZT and its Use in AIDS
(PDF, 425 KB) by Australian physicist Eleni
Papadopulos-Eleopulos and her medical colleagues,
published in June 1999 as a special supplement to
Current Medical Research and Opinion.
It’s summed up in an unpublished
letter
(PDF, 96 KB).
The AZT triphosphorylation problem examined in this
paper has been discussed by other scientists, such as
Lavie
and colleagues of the Max Plank Institute
(PDF, 451 KB)
and by
Dr Dennis Blakeslee,
a medical correspondent for the Journal of the American
Medical Association
(PDF, 783 KB).
Is AZT a DNA chain
terminator
as GlaxoSmithKline and even the drug’s
critics Professor Peter Duesberg and Dr David Rasnick
claim it is? Or is it extremely toxic for entirely
different reasons?
GlaxoSmithKline hired its fantastically
richly paid
consultant and grant recipient
(PDF, 114 KB)
Professor David Back at the University of Liverpool to
claim in an
expert report
filed in the High Court in South Africa
that AZT is triphosphorylated just like the company says
(PDF, 1 MB).
Papadopulos-Eleopulos and colleagues examined and
rebutted
his false claims
(PDF, 42 KB).
In April 2001 the Medicines Control Council
(MCC) conditionally approved nevirapine, another
exceptionally toxic drug,
for experimental use to prevent mother to child
transmission of HIV. The Treatment Action Campaign successfully applied to court to force the government to
abandon its UN-AIDS-sanctioned pilot study and to
provide the drug in the maternity wards of all
government hospitals across the country without more ado.
The trouble with
nevirapine
is a
comprehensive exposé of the whole shambles
(PDF, 1 MB).
Between June 2004 and January 2005 we addressed ten
letters to the MCC, commencing with an enquiry about the
status of its review of its special registration of
nevirapine for administration to HIV-positive women in
labour and their newborn babies, which it had announced
in May 2002 after a licensing application for similar
special registration had been thrown out two months earlier
by the American Food and Drug Administration .
We also provided the MCC with Papadopulos-Eleopulos’s et
al. seminal critiques of
AZT as an AIDS drug
(PDF, 416 KB),
and
AZT and nevirapine as
perinatal anti-HIV prophylactics
(PDF, 2.03 MB),
along with an easy-to-understand
slideshow
critically examining the notion that nevirapine
prevents mother to child transmission of HIV
(PDF, 1.23 MB).
The MCC’s response to our first letter was to issue a
recommendation that nevirapine administration to
pregnant women and their babies should henceforth always
be combined with AZT. Our further correspondence
criticized this decision in the light of the many
published studies showing how AZT harms unborn and newly
born children. On receiving our submissions, individual
members of the MCC told Health Minister Dr Manto
Tshabalala-Msimang that they’d been ‘amazed’ by our
‘detailed research’ of which they had been ‘unaware’.
Well, clearly. We can reveal that Dr Tshabalala-Msimang
read all our correspondence to the MCC with great
interest, as did President Mbeki.
Poisoning our Children:
AZT and nevirapine in pregnancy
collates our letters in a book
(PDF, 1.19 MB),
including: the MCC’s ultimate
non-response
to our submissions
(PDF, 177 KB);
an afterword reviewing the latest research reports on
how ARV drugs given during pregnancy stunt infant body
and head growth and damage bone marrow causing reduced
blood cell production in childhood; and how these drugs
are causing brain damage to South African children,
crippling them mentally and physically.
A leaflet
Why do Zackie Achmat,
Nathan Geffen and Mark Heywood want pregnant African
women and their babies to be given AZT? What AZT does to
unborn and newly born children
gives an overview of this horror
(PDF, 76 KB).
(Hi res version for printing in ‘Quick links’)
Inventing AZT
is the scoop story told to Brink by
Professor Richard Beltz, the scientist who first
synthesized AZT in 1961 – as an experimental cell-poison
to kill human cells
(PDF, 128 KB).
It relates how Brink changed Beltz’s mind about the
wisdom of giving AZT to pregnant women by drawing his
attention to what it does to their babies.
Licensing AZT
(PDF, 178 KB)
describes the fraudulent circumstances in which AZT came
to be licensed by the Food and Drug Administration as an AIDS drug in the US –
with everyone just following suit around the world, no
questions asked, our own MCC included.
Here are the
front cover
(PDF, 988 KB),
back-cover
blurb
(PDF, 15 KB),
and
prospectus
(PDF, 411 KB)
for Brink’s magnum opus in the works,
‘Just say yes, Mr President’: Mbeki and AIDS.
What killed Makgatho
Mandela?:
a press release
(PDF, 58 KB).
On 26 November 2004 the
Mail&Guardian
published an article in its special World
AIDS Day supplement entitled
Why should South Africans
continue to be poisoned with AZT?
(PDF, 167 KB),
in which we stated matter-of-factly:
• Hundreds of studies have found that AZT is profoundly
toxic to all cells of the human body, and particularly
to the blood cells of our immune system.
• Numerous studies have found that children exposed to
AZT in the womb suffer brain damage, neurological
disorders, paralysis, spasticity, mental retardation,
epilepsy, other serious diseases and early death.
The Treatment Action Campaign complained to the
Advertising Standards Authority about these statements,
as if they were untrue. The ASA declined to consider the
merits of our
submission
(PDF, 238 KB),
saying it wanted one ‘credible independent expert’ to
substantiate our statements, and not the hundreds we
cited in two lever-arch files sent up, and
banned us
from ever repeating them
(PDF, 1.4 MB).
We then provided a single
expert verification
statement
by Professor Sam Mhlongo
(PDF, 72 KB),
and followed up with a
query
(PDF, 94 KB).
When the ASA rejected Professor Mhlongo’s supporting
statement on spurious grounds, we
asked
Medicines Control Council chairman Professor Peter
Eagles to confirm to the ASA that our statements are
perfectly true
(PDF, 17 KB),
and
requested
the same of MCC Registrar Dr Humphrey Zokufa
(PDF, 24 KB)
– but no joy from either.
On 11 November 2005 the
Mail&Guardian
published Brink’s
letter
(edited a bit) about the M&G’s editorial
policy to promote AZT and the harm it does
(PDF, 20 KB).
Professor Cyril Karabus of the Red Cross Children’s
Hospital in Cape Town and a schoolboy called Alex Myers
responded the following week by
writing in
to say how dishonest and dangerous he is
(PDF, 121 KB).
Brink
replied
to Karabus
directly
(PDF, 48 KB).
A
letter
to Constitutional Law expert Professor
Pierre de Vos at the University of the Western Cape
(PDF, 36 KB).
The Judith Miller Award
for AIDS Journalism in South Africa
was won in
2005 by Kerry Cullinan
(PDF, 19 KB).
A
letter
(PDF, 90KB)
to Dr Olive Shisana, CEO of the Human Sciences Research
Council and lead author of the
South African National HIV Prevalence, HIV Incidence,
Behaviour and Communication Survey, 2005.
This
reminder
to Dr Shisana
posed more rude questions
(PDF, 30 KB).
In a
letter
to Professor Anthon Heyns, CEO of the South African
National Blood Service, Brink spelt out the logic of the
HSRC’s ‘HIV Prevalence’ report for policy at his blood
bank
(PDF, 64KB).
The day after it was sent, Heyns published an
article
in
JAMA,
the world’s leading medical journal, claiming that yes,
segregationist policy at the blood bank was the right
way to go after all; why, he’d proven it scientifically.
Unlike Brink in his ironic letter, the professor wasn’t
joking, he really meant it.
The Treatment Action Campaign arranged a
hit
(PDF, 96KB)
on Brink in the Sunday Times
on 5 February 2006, to which he
replied
(PDF, 11KB).
These are the commercial
plugs
referred to in his letter
(PDF, 18KB).
An
edited version of the
letter
was published two weeks later, leaving out
the embarrassing ‘product placement’ story
(PDF, 93KB).
Brink posed some
questions
to AIDS journalist Tamar Kahn
(PDF, 44 KB)
about an
exciting article
she wrote
(PDF, 162 KB).
And here’s a
letter
to Dr Francois Venter, president of the Southern African
HIV/AIDS Clinicians Society, suggesting a new way to
fight AIDS
(PDF, 31 KB).
The Treatment Action Campaign had a go in the Cape High
Court at shutting us up and shutting us down. Brink’s
answering affidavit
(PDF, 514 KB)
blew the TAC, its drugs and its virus out the sky
(filleted for relevance you can read the TAC’s founding
affidavits hyperlinked to it). Professor Mhlongo filed a
confirming
affidavit
(PDF, 31 KB).
Three days after seeing our
Heads of Argument
(PDF, 15 KB),
the TAC
dropped its case
against us and ran for the hills
(PDF, 202 KB).
On 4 January 2007 we
served
(PDF, 719KB)
a 59-page
draft bill of indictment
(PDF, 137 KB)
at the International Criminal Court at The Hague, in
which we applied for the prosecution of TAC leader
Zackie Achmat on a charge of genocide for his direct
criminal role in the deaths of thousands of South
Africans from ARV poisoning. It caused quite a fuss. Was
it serious? Was it a joke? Was it a serious joke? You
decide. (See ‘On Satire’, a letter to Zapiro below. And
these spoofs in the Onion:
here
and
here.)
We wrote a letter to
M&G
CEO Trevor Ncube entitled
Media Complicity in
Genocide: the Case of the Mail&Guardian
(PDF, 93 KB)
and served a copy on the ICC with
supporting annexures
(PDF, 23 KB)
under this
covering letter
(PDF, 36 KB).
The letter was an appeal to conscience but apparently no
one was home.
Brink attended a high-powered AIDS conference in Bonn,
Germany, in May 2007 and
wrote
(PDF, 46 KB)
to the organizers afterwards (head spinning from the
experience).
In October 2007, on the 50th anniversary of the
thalidomide disaster, we released a
Press Statement
on AZT in pregnancy: another tragedy of countless
children killed and maimed foretold
(PDF, 45KB).
We followed up with a
letter
to Dr Tshabalala-Msimang about it
(PDF, 133 KB),
but too late.
In Fit to
Govern: The Native Intelligence of Thabo Mbeki,
Ronald Suresh Roberts claimed that ‘Thabo Mbeki is not
now, nor has he ever been, an AIDS dissident.’ Brink’s
book
Lying and Thieving: The
fraudulent scholarship of Ronald Suresh Roberts
took him to task.
We
responded
to a request for an interview by Litsa
Delli, television producer for MEGA-TV, Athens, Greece
(PDF, 171 KB);
these are the
hyperlinks
in the letter.
Politicsweb published
Martin Weinel, Thabo
Mbeki and AZT: Bogus scholarship in the Age of AIDS: A
case study
on 27 March 2009. Here’s our
email
to his university about it on 2 April, two
answers, and our reply.
A
letter
to Essop Pahad, editor of the
Thinker.
A
letter
to psychology lecturer Desmond Painter
concerning his review of
The trouble with nevirapine
in
Die Burger.
A
reply
to Rev Julia Denny-Dimitriou’s go at Brink
in her gushing review in the
Witness
of big-time AIDS journalist
Kerry Cullinan’s
ridiculous book The
Virus, Vitamins and Vegetables. The reply was
published
on 18 May 2009.
‘Where
are all the dead Zulus?’, a letter to
the editor of the
Witness
– rejected for publication because ‘the debate has run
its course’, which is to say is over.
‘On
Satire’, a letter to Zapiro,
cartoonist for the
Mail&Guardian
and other newspapers
(PDF, 288 KB).
A letter to former Chief Justice Arthur
Chaskalson
about the nevirapine case in the Constitutional Court
(PDF, 115 KB).
A critical analysis of
child HIV prevalence as presented in the South African
national HIV prevalence survey of 2008 (HSRC June 2009)
by Chris Rawlins
(PDF, 43 KB).
Deconstructing Duesberg:
A Critique of ‘HIV-AIDS hypothesis out of touch with
South African AIDS – A new perspective’
by Claus Jensen
(PDF, 44 KB).
Transparency and
Conservative Values in Chigwedere et al.: The 6.7 Years
ARV Treatment Benefit Estimate in Chigwedere et al.
‘Estimating the Lost Benefits of Antiretroviral Drug Use
in South Africa’
by Claus Jensen
(PDF, 36 KB).
A critical analysis of
the underlying assumptions used by Chigwedere et al in
their article ‘Estimating the lost benefits of
antiretroviral drug use in South Africa’ in
JAIDS, December 2008
by Chris Rawlins
(PDF, 73 KB).
A
reply
to the TAC’s claim in a
press release
published on Politicsweb on 6 October
2010,
‘Donor shortfall will cost lives’, that unless
Western governments give the pharmaceutical industry
billions more for its ARV drugs, millions of poor will
die.
Mbeki and AIDS in Frank
Chikane’s memoirs.
On 18 December 2009 the
Californian Office of
Environmental Health Hazard Assessment
added AZT to its
list of substances
known to
cause cancer and reproductive toxicity
(PDF, 500 KB, excerpts).
Note the warning that pregnant women should avoid taking aspirin
during their third trimesters. But to the AIDS
experts AZT for pregnant women is fine, especially if
they’re African.
An HIV positive pilot was denied the renewal of his
flying license for refusing to swallow an
ARV cocktail that made him sick. Brink drew his
application
for the decision to be reviewed and set aside. Being
unanswerable it wasn’t answered, but it got dismissed
anyway; see why.
In February 2008 Rhodes University pharmacology tutor
Roy Jobson raised the subject of antiretroviral drugs on
his ‘Thought Leader’ blog hosted by the
Mail&Guardian. Brink and
others, including some doctors and another
pharmacologist,
responded.
Current Medical Research and Opinion and
‘medical publication ethics’:
The
curious case of the Perth Group’s missing AZT pharmacology paper
*
