Thi

 I as

Bogeyman

ome AIDS activists are
impossible to satisfy.
While pharmaceutical

researchers toil to treat and pre-
vent AIDS, assorted protesters
demand so much that drug compa-
nies are throwing their hands up in
exasperation. Perfectionist groups
literally have halted promising
drug trials. These militants should
desist before they jeopardize even
more human lives.

This battle between “patient
advocates” and drug manufacturers
rages primarily in Africa and Asia,
where AIDS spreads as quickly as
juicy gossip. Because the Third
World includes so many AIDS

_ patients, and drugs can be studied

most efficiently where diseases
move swiftly, the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation and the Centers
for Disease Control, among others,
chose Cambodia and Cameroon to
test Tenofovir, Gilead Science’s
HIV-prevention pill.

As Marilyn Chase explained in
the May l8 Wall Street Journal,
activists insisted that researchers
guarantee volunteers “developed-
world standards of prevention”
and lifelong access to AIDS drugs
if they became infected. Normally,
such individuals would visit local

 

Facing such outrage,
researchers canceled a Cambodian
study last August and suspended
one in Cameroon last February.
The 2006 goal for determining
Tenofovir’s effectiveness has slid
to 2007. In those additional twelve
months, five million people could
needlessly contract I-IIV. How
many will AIDS kill in the same
time frame?

“What the developed world’s
activists are doing to the develop-
ing world is tantamount to murder
or genocide,” says Congress "of
Racial Equality spokesman Niger
Innis. He has visited Kenya,
Nigeria, Sudan, and Thailand to
study global health issues. Innis

' several drug companies. They did

the same thing two years earlier in
Barcelona,” says Abner Mason,
executive director of the AIDS

‘Responsibility Project. “This type

of activism slows and, in some
cases, stops the development of
new drugs. This ultimately‘ will
mean that millions of people will
have nowhere to turn when they
need therapy.” ‘

Drug companies are respond-
ing to these vandals by retiring
their test tubes. Says one pharma-
ceutical executive: “Activists who
hound drug companies, and the
incentive system that underpins
drug discovery, are directly
responsible for depressing R&D
for HIV. From a peak of 125 drugs
in development in 1998-1999, we
are now down to around 80, a 36
percent decline. This is a direct
consequence of hostile, unrelent-
ing attacks on the industry. No
matter what industry does, no
good deed goes unpunished in
HIV/AIDS.”

“We are seeing 27 percent
fewer companies working in HIV
research than there were six
years ago,” says American
Enterprise Institute resident fel-
low Roger Bate. “Companies

Wouldn't it be nice if drugs sold
at cost, or were free, despite
research and development
expenses? Wouldn’t it be nice
if grocers gave away food?

clinics. Outside demonstrators
wanted counseling, condoms, and
free needles for Thai intravenous-
drug users, plus bleach to sterilize
old needles.

“In every war, there are those
who collaborate with the enemy,”
declares an Act Up-Paris mani-
festo. “AIDS too has its collabora-
tors: [Including] those who see the
epidemic as an opportunity to
make money.”

Wouldn’t it be nice if drugs
sold at cost, or were free, despite
research and development expens-
es? Wouldn’t it be nice if grocers
gave away food?

Act Up-Paris’ s idealism some-
times disappears. At a 2004 AIDS
conference, it hurled fake blood at
and destroyed Gilead’s display

V case. “Gilead’s greed kills,” pro-

testers bellowed.

adds: “If AIDS researchers waited
for environmental and health stan-
dards in developing nations to
reach those of the West before
they conducted much-needed
AIDS trials, you could kiss good-

I bye a generation of Africans. You

can’t wait for purified Poland
Spring water to extinguish a fire
raging in your house right now.”

Act Up-Paris and the European
AIDS Treatment Group even man-
aged to terminate French, German,
and Spanish studies of Maraviroc,
a prospective AIDS therapy. The
group argued that highly immuno-
suppressed HIV-positive patients
should not try this Pfizer drug as a
first treatment.

“At last July ’s World AIDS
Conference in Bangkok, I saw
people splatter red paint on and
trash the information booths of

don’t like to be told that they
have blood on their hands and
that they back genocide. If they
are not making money on their
research, they’re unlikely to keep
funding it  These drugs will

_ not be like Lipitor, which made

$10.9 billion last year. Compared
to such a blockbuster drug, even
the best AIDS drug will not earn
anywhere near that kind of
money.”

While activists scream about
profits, AIDS silently kills
Africans and Asians by the mil-
lions. V

Matthew Veritas Tsien is the Vice- '

President of Development for the
Florida Gold Coast Log Cabin
Republicans in Fort Lauderdale,
Florida.

 

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