THIS JUST IN: It Might Not Be So Good To Be Non-White
If the AIDS Don't Get You, The Bureaucrats Might...
From the AP comes more news today that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Dr. Jonathan Fishbein, formerly of the National Institute of Health, testitifed today that a U.S. funded study on AIDS medication in Uganda was so flawed and careless that it may actually have put the lives of hundreds of mothers and their babies at risk. Is the capital of Uganda Tuskegee?
Dr. Jonathan Fishbein said officials at the National Institutes of Health overlooked problems with the way the study was conducted on the drug, nevirapine, which was being used to protect babies in Africa from HIV infection during birth.
Fishbein testified before a panel of scientists at the independent Institute of Medicine NIH, which maintains that the drug is safe in single doses, asked the institute to conduct the review.
Recently, President Bush okayed $500 million worth of funding to use nevirapine throughout Africa.
Fishbein testified that the study was not merely careless, but that it revealed "a callous indifference to the fate of Africans. African life, it would appear, is not to be valued as highly as American life."
If you've never heard of nevirapine or heard of it being used to treat AIDS and HIV here in the States, well, now you know why.
Of course, what are we to expect from a country that historically has knowingly disseminated smallpox laden blankets to Native American tribes, that has knowingly given syphillis to African-American men with no intention of ever curing them, what do we expect from a country that regularly invades and bombs nations of black and brown people, and dropped the deadliest weapon in the world on a nation of "yellow" people?
The irony here, if there is one, is that in a lot of cases, nevirapine seems to help treat the symptoms of AIDS/HIV, especially among infants. One wonders though, if that's just a happy accident...
Peace.
(Click here for the entire AP article on the Uganda field study.)
From the AP comes more news today that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Dr. Jonathan Fishbein, formerly of the National Institute of Health, testitifed today that a U.S. funded study on AIDS medication in Uganda was so flawed and careless that it may actually have put the lives of hundreds of mothers and their babies at risk. Is the capital of Uganda Tuskegee?
Dr. Jonathan Fishbein said officials at the National Institutes of Health overlooked problems with the way the study was conducted on the drug, nevirapine, which was being used to protect babies in Africa from HIV infection during birth.
Fishbein testified before a panel of scientists at the independent Institute of Medicine NIH, which maintains that the drug is safe in single doses, asked the institute to conduct the review.
Recently, President Bush okayed $500 million worth of funding to use nevirapine throughout Africa.
Fishbein testified that the study was not merely careless, but that it revealed "a callous indifference to the fate of Africans. African life, it would appear, is not to be valued as highly as American life."
If you've never heard of nevirapine or heard of it being used to treat AIDS and HIV here in the States, well, now you know why.
Of course, what are we to expect from a country that historically has knowingly disseminated smallpox laden blankets to Native American tribes, that has knowingly given syphillis to African-American men with no intention of ever curing them, what do we expect from a country that regularly invades and bombs nations of black and brown people, and dropped the deadliest weapon in the world on a nation of "yellow" people?
The irony here, if there is one, is that in a lot of cases, nevirapine seems to help treat the symptoms of AIDS/HIV, especially among infants. One wonders though, if that's just a happy accident...
Peace.
(Click here for the entire AP article on the Uganda field study.)
posted by Reggie E. Scott at 4:23 PM
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