Document:AZT Genocide

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New York Native
28 March 1988

[Iatrogenic: induced by a physician or medical practice. Genocide: the use of deliberate systematic measures (as killing, bodily or mental injury, unlivable conditions) calculated to bring about the extermination of a racial, political, or cultural group. (Adapted from Webster's Third New International Dictionary.)]

Five months have now passed since the New York Native published my article "AZT on Trial", which analyzed in detail the many shortcomings of the multi-center trials of AZT (now known by its trade name, Retrovir), conducted by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In my article, I maintained that the trials were invalid, and that approval of AZT based on these trials was improper and illegal. I argued that there is no scientifically credible evidence AZT has any benefits whatsoever, that AZT is a highly toxic drug, and that therefore "it is malpractice for physicians to prescribe AZT, a poison which can only harm the patient."

The article had an impact. NBC News did its own exposé on the AZT trials, following the main points of my article (without, unfortunately, giving me credit). The gay press adopted a much more critical stance towards AZT. Some people with AIDS (PWAs) rebelled against their doctors and refused to go on AZT.

However, the same old lies appear in the press; it is still claimed that AZT "extends life". AZT not only continues to be marketed, but is being promoted more heavily than ever. In New York City, nearly all doctors with an AIDS practice are prescribing AZT, some of them quite indiscriminately. According to an article by Gina Kolata in The New York Times (21 December 1987), some doctors "have no set guidelines but let the patients decide if they want the drug."

Not all patients have taken AZT voluntarily. Some have been bullied into taking it by their doctors. In Trenton State Prison, prisoners are being forced to take AZT against their will. In St. Vincent's Hospital, a patient's request not to be given AZT was ignored. And in Chicago, a hospitalized AIDS patient was declared insane because of his refusal to take AZT; the doctors said his refusal meant he didn't want to live, and he was forced to take AZT anyway.

It isn't supposed to happen like this. In fiction orthe movies, once the crime and the criminal have been exposed, the plot is almost over. The malefactors are brought to justice. End of story. But in real life, when your opponent is a wealthy, powerful, and unscrupulous drug manufacturer – aided and abetted by the stupidity, venality, and authoritarianism of the medical profession – the struggle goes on and on. A reasoned analysis, backed up by plenty of evidence, is countered with a propaganda juggernaut that shows total contempt for either reason or evidence. And it works – most people forget about facts if they haven't heard them repeated within the past few weeks or days.

This article will cover the following: what we know for sure about AZT, the NBC News exposé, the basis for calling the multi-center AZT trials "fraudulent", the lies currently being told by public health service "scientists" and by Burroughs-Wellcome, the unfolding program for iatrogenic genocide of gay men, and what we ought to do about it.

What is known for sure

Science is cumulative. The scientific ideal is to base conclusions upon an ever-increasing body of evidence, in which established fact has been rigorously separated from speculation. In the following, I'll attempt to summarize what the established facts are about AZT.

We do know for sure that AZT is a highly toxic drug – so toxic that about half of all AIDS patients cannot tolerate it at all, and have to be taken off the drug. AZT destroys bone marrow and causes anemia so severe as to necessitate frequent transfusions. We know that AZT is cytotoxic; it kills healthy cells. We know that AZT was highly positive on the Cell Transformation Assay, on the basis of which an FDA analyst said that AZT should be "presumed to be a potential carcinogen".

We know that AZT attacks DNA synthesis. I once asked a group of AIDS researchers and physicians what the implications are for the body, when DNA synthesis is prevented. One of them gasped slightly, and said that if DNA synthesis is blocked, new cells are not formed, cells do not develop – the life process in effect comes to a halt. Another physician, Joseph Sonnabend, said succinctly, "AZT is incompatible with life."

We know that the multi-center Phase II study, on which approval of the drug was based, was so flawed that no conclusions should be drawn from it. (The oft-repeated claim that "AZT extends life" is based on worthless data from these trials.) There is no scientifically credible evidence that AZT has benefits of any kind. Some doctors claim that they have "seen good results" in their patients who are taking AZT. Such claims amount to impressionism and speculation, nothing more. In San Francisco, where doctors are more critical of AZT, doctors admit to having seen horrible results from AZT: liver, kidney, and neurological damage, as well as the inevitable anemia and transfusions.

NBC News/Perri Peltz

On 27 January 1988, NBC News (Channel 4) broadcast the first in a projected three-part exposé on AZT. It was delayed for over a week, owing to pressure from the lawyers for Burroughs-Wellcome – but NBC's lawyers said for Perri Peltz and her team to go ahead, and they did.

Peltz began with a statement: "Normally it can take years for a drug to gain federal approval. Last year, after only 18 months, AZT was passed – faster than any drug in FDA history." She explained that "Many of the people you will see in this report requested that their identities be masked, their voices distorted."

With resources far beyond my own, the NBC investigators reached the same conclusions I had. The FDA-conducted trials of AZT were "seriously flawed":

• The test became unblinded almost immediately – everyone knew who was getting what. Patients (in silhouette, voice distorted) told how they could distinguish AZT from placebo by the taste. Others admitted taking their medications to chemists for analysis. A chemist described how he had analyzed capsules for participants in the trials.
• There was widespread tampering with the rules of the test: many patients took other medications. The rules of the test were violated from coast to coast – the problem was not just confined to New York.
• A government memorandum recommended that Boston, with multiple improprieties, be dropped from the study. Nevertheless, the bad data were retained. The same memorandum observed that if all patients with protocol violations were dropped, there wouldn't be enough left in the study.

In the concluding sentence of the report, Peltz said, "When preparing this report we repeatedly tried to interview Dr. Anthony Fauci and the National Institutes of Health. Both Dr. Fauci and Food and Drug Administrator Commissioner Frank Young declined our request for interviews."

Welcome to the club, Perri! When it comes to questions of HIV or AZT, the Public Health Service bureaucrats and "scientists" won't speak to me either; they have also refused to speak to the BBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio, Channel 4 (London) television, Italian television, The New Scientist, and Jack Anderson.

Fraud

After I wrote my exposé on the AZT trials, I learned of a California lawsuit that charged collusion between federal agencies and Burroughs-Wellcome, the manufacturer of AZT. If such collusion took place as early as February of 1985 (a year before AZT trials began), then it is even more likely there was collusion in the trials as well.

Following are excerpts from an article by Ray O'Loughlin: ^[1]

The two federal agencies which approve and regulate AIDS treatments are accused of colluding with drug manufacturers. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are accused of expediting the approval of AZT in exchange for a $55,000 donation by the AZT manufacturer, Burroughs-Wellcome. In July 1985, Burroughs received exclusive rights to market AZT for seven years.

The allegation is part of a class action lawsuit filed in June by San Francisco-based Gay Rights Advocates. The suit accuses the NIH of failing to spend $47 million appropriated by Congress for experimental drug treatments. In response to the government's motion to dismiss the suit, NGRA released a series of letters indicating that certain medications are put on a "fast track for approval". They charge that there are unethical conflicts of interest in the agencies' operations.

"If the judge allows this case to go forward, we will prove that government officials have been engaged in unethical and illegal conduct resulting in serious delays of promising new AIDS medications", said NGRA's legal director, Leonard Graff.

According to documents filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, Dr. Samuel Broder of the National Cancer Institute, part of NIH, encouraged Burroughs-Wellcome to fund three research positions in his laboratory.

Shortly after that, Burroughs applied to the FDA for "orphan drug" status for AZT. Two weeks later, Broder's office received the check for $55,000 from Burroughs. That same day, FDA granted the company exclusive rights to market AZT. Originally developed as a cancer treatment, AZT has been in existence for over 20 years.

"We're alleging a special cooperative relationship between sister agencies that put certain drugs on a fast track for approval", said Graf.... Broder's action, he said, "violates conflict of interest as set out in an executive order" issued by Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson in 1965. At the very least, it "indicates a cozy relationship", he said, between the agencies and the drug firm.

When I spoke to Graff last week, he said that the judge had ruled in favor of NGRA, and that the lawsuit would proceed. Regardless of the outcome, it is clear that the NIH and the FDA had far too "cozy" a relationship with Burroughs-Wellcome.

I regret not having previously characterized the AZT trials as "fraudulent". I do so now. Fraudulent is by no means too strong a word to use in describing a study which was prematurely terminated for specious reasons, in which false data were deliberately retained, in which cheating was tolerated, and in which improprieties and violations of protocol were deliberately ignored. It is fraudulent to describe an unblinded study, which the AZT trials most certainly were, as being a "double-blind" study, as principal investigators Margaret Fischl and Douglas Richman did in their reports in the New England Journal of Medicine. ^[2] Either Fischl and Richman were unaware that the study had become hopelessly unblinded, in which case they are guilty of incompetence, or they did know and covered it up, in which case they are guilty of fraud.

If someone set out to make wine, and instead ended up with vinegar, what should he call the final product? Wine or vinegar? Obviously vinegar, because that's what it is. Nevertheless, Fischl and Richman, and their confederates in the FDA, the NIH, and Burroughs-Wellcome, persist in calling the unblinded AZT trials a "double-blind, placebo-controlled" study.

Bogus mortality data

In my previous AZT article, I analyzed in considerable detail the reasons why one should be skeptical of the mortality data from the Phase II trials, the so-called "double-blind, placebo-controlled" study. Allegedly, only one person in the AZT group, versus nineteen people in the placebo group, died during the brief period (17 weeks, on the average) of the study. These dubious mortality figures were the basis for prematurely terminating the study (for "ethical reasons"), as well as for the subsequent claim that AZT "extends life". It is almost beyond the bounds of probability that the mortality data could be correct. There are many ways that errors can occur in research; however, in this particular study – in the context of sloppiness, cheating, and collusion – the most parsimonious explanation would be deliberate fraud.

For the following reasons, it is virtually impossible that the mortality data from the Phase II AZT trials could be correct:

• Deaths in the AZT group are far too low compared to deaths in other trials of AZT. Statistical analysis indicates that the probability is less than 1 in 100 that the mortality data from the Phase II study could be correct.
• The Phase II mortality data are highly suspect because the deaths were inadequately described. The FDA did not verify causes of death, did not have autopsies performed, and refused to release medical records of patients who died. This is in sharp contrast to procedures used in trials of other drugs (e.g. Ribavirin, where autopsies were obligatory, and a death report form of more than 30 items had to be filled out for each patient who died.
• AZT did not prove to be beneficial or efficacious in any way. There is no known mechanism by which AZT could produce benfits sufficient to account for the dramatic differences in mortality between the AZT group (less than 1%) and the placebo group (14%).
• There are many indications in FDA documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, that sicker patients were placed in the placebo group. ^[3] For example, according to an FDA analyst: "Two patients (both ARC patients) died very early in the study, one at 10 days and one at 21 days. It is arguable that these patients were sick enough at entry that they should not have been included in the study." Both patients just happened to be in the placebo group.

Falsehoods from Fauci

On 19 February 1988, Anthony Fauci of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, who is in charge of federal AIDS funding, appeared on the television program Good Morning America. (Molecular biologist Peter Duesberg was also to have appeared on the program, in order to debate Fauci on whether or not HIV causes AIDS, but he was disinvited at the last moment, for reasons that have yet to be explained.)

Fauci was asked why only one drug, AZT, had been made available. He replied:

The reason that only one drug has been made available – AZT – is because it's the only drug that has been shown in scientifically controlled trials to be safe and effective. It isn't a question of "there are a lot of drugs around and only one is being released". That is the only one that has been shown to be effective.

This brief statement contains several outstanding falsehoods. First, there have been no "scientifically controlled trials" of AZT; to refer to the FDA-conducted AZT trials as "scientifically controlled" is equivalent to referring to garbage as "la haute cuisine". Second, AZT is not "safe": it is a highly toxic drug – the FDA analyst who reviewed the toxicology data on AZT recommended that it should not be approved. ^[4] Third, AZT is not known objectively to be "effective" for anything, except perhaps for destroying bone marrow. Finally, there would be other drugs available if the FDA had not put them on the slow track for approval. There is no good reason why AL-271, a drug that really is safe, should not have been made available long ago.

In the interest of fairness, I have attempted to speak to Fauci, to get his side of the story. He hasn't returned my calls.

Bombast from Broder

On the same day, 19 February 1988, Samuel Broder of the NCI delivered a slide talk before the President's Commission on the HIV Epidemic. Broder is probably more responsible than anyone else for the development and promotion of AZT – and when Broder promotes, he pushes. The intellectual nadir of the entire hearings may have been reached when Broder presented a slide showing bulleted points. The points are drivel. They are not the thoughts of a scientist, but the hasty notes of a third-rate copywriter. My own comments are shown below in brackets and italics, following each of Broder's points:

• Clinical investigators who declare their patients incurable seldom contradict themselves. [Translation: Don't be passive. Prescribe something. Now, since only one drug, AZT, has been approved...]
• Skepticism is a tool of science; it is not a substitute for science. [Translation: Be gullible.]
• Lack of toxicity does not prove efficacy. [Neither does toxicity prove efficacy. AZT is highly toxic, yet there is no evidence that it is beneficially efficacious.]
• Without a controlled trial, physicians will generally agree on the toxicity of a drug before they reach a consensus on its benefit. [Unable to deal with the logic of this point, I merely point out that there has been no valid "controlled" trial of AZT.]
• The search for a perfect drug should not interfere with finding a good drug. [Comment: AZT is not a "good drug".]
• There is no substitute for a clinical result. [Meaning what? April in Paris? A coconut cream pie?]
• Getting the wrong answer in a study does not help anybody. [There is a straw dummy here, but what is it? At any rate, the AZT trials did give wrong answers, chief of which were the bogus mortality data.]

Broder showed a slide entitled "Mortality as a Function of Time in AZT-Placebo Study". As I have argued repeatedly, the Phase II trials were invalid; it is wrong to use data from them for any reason at all. However, the slide made no sense for other reasons: the top line showed mortality in the placebo group extending to the 36th week, and yet "treatment" in the AZT-Placebo study was for only 24 weeks at maxiumu – nobody, but nobody, received placebo for 36 weeks.

After Broder's presentation was over, I and the other press people gathered around him in the hallway outside. The other reporters asked obsequious questions, so I asked Broder why he had referred to the Phase II AZT trials as "double-blind", when he knew perfectly well that the study had become unblinded. Then I asked Broder to comment on the California lawsuit which charged him and his colleagues with unethical and illegal conduct.

Broder started jiggling on his feet, and broke out in a messy sweat (he had a handkerchief), but he didn't miss a beat. Without seeming to take a breath, he said that he hadn't known the study became unblinded, but anyway he had nothing to do with the multi-center (Phase II) trials. Then he said that he personally was not a defendant in the California lawsuit. Finally, he said that he had seen "good results" in several of his own patients who were taking AZT (a peculiar tack, in light of his slide point emphasizing the need for a "controlled trial"). In a way I was impressed: Broder seemed like someone who would know long in advance when to leave a sinking ship.

False and misleading advertising

On the inside front cover of the most recent issue of AIDS Research and Human Retroviruses (volume 3, number 4, 1987) appears the boxed statement: "Dear Colleague: Burroughs-Wellcome Co. is pleased to sponsor AIDS RESEARCH AND HUMAN RETROVIRUSES..." Two pages of advertising for AZT/Retrovir follow. The first enthusiastically proclaims:

News alert: A significant increase in the supply of RETROVIR^® (zidovudine). RETROVIR^® is AZT^®. All appropriate patients can now benfit from RETROVIR therapy. RETROVIR can now be prescribed just as any other medication. Since there is no longer a need for the RETROVIR enrollment program Around-the-clock production of RETROVIR was implemented Because of the growing number of AIDS and ARC patients in need of treatment The supply of RETROVIR has been increased significantly so that many more patients with AIDS and other serious HIV infections can now benefit from therapy. New clinical trials of RETROVIR are now under way Because of our commitment to improving the treatment of HIV infections.

On the second page, a warning box is followed by a section on INDICATIONS AND USAGE, in which it is stated, "Retrovir Capsules are indicated for the management of certain adult patients with symptomatic HIV infection.... This indication is based primarily on the results of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial conducted at 12 medical centers in the United States...." In other words, the "indication" for the use of AZT is "based primarily" on a fraudulent study, conducted by a federal agency charged with unethically and illegally colluding with Burroughs-Wellcome.

The allegedly "double-blind, placebo-controlled" study is briefly described, and then the statement is made: "Treatment duration ranged from 12 weeks to 26 weeks, with a mean and median duration of 17 and 18 weeks, respectively." This is a lie. In an FDA document, a table clearly shows that 23 patients finished no more than 4 weeks of treatment and 47 patients finished less than 12 weeks. ^[5]

An earlier issue of the same publication (volume 3, number 2, 1987) contains a full 8 pages of advertising for AZT/Retrovir. The copy on the second page can fairly be described as "false and misleading advertising":

RETROVIR^® (zidovudine) — New Hope for many AIDS/ARC patients.

A multi-center study proved...

RETROVIR can prolong the lives of certain AIDS and ARC patients

• In a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial (N = 281), only one death occurred among 144 RETROVIR patients vs. 19 deaths of the 137 patients on placebo (p < 0.001). The study population consisted of AIDS patients within 120 days of their first diagnosis of pneumocystis carinii pneumonia or patients with more sever manifestations of AIDS-related complex (ARC).

• The probability of 24-week survival for any patient in the RETROVIR group was 0.98 compared to 0.78 for the placebo group.

These points are false for the following reasons: First, the Phase II ("double-blinded, placebo-controlled") study was fraudulent. Therefore, it is wrong to use data from it for any reason.

Second, even if this study had been valid, it would still be wrong to use mortality data from it, since more recent data, involving much larger samples and much longer time periods, are now available. It is a principle of research that the best data should always be used.

Third, the second bullet point is especially objectionable, inasmuch as it derives from a controversial projection (Kaplan-Meier Product Limit Method) which was necessitated by the premature termination of the DBPC study. The "probability of 24-week survival" is merely a statistical guess based on fewer than 300 patients. Some patients included in the projection had been "treated" for less than 4 weeks. More recent mortality data are available, involving thousands of patients over a real time period far longer than the projected 24-week period of DBPC study. The more recent data are better in every sense except on: Burroughs-Wellcome didn't like the results.

Iatrogenic genocide

It is to be expected that Burroughs-Wellcome would wish to expand the market for their commodity. After all, the logic of the pharmaceutical industry, like any other business, is profit, not human welfare.

Nevertheless, it is difficult to avoid thinking that gay men are being targeted for destruction. Remember the Anita Bryant campaign in Florida, and the "Kill a Queer for Christ" bumper stickers in California? The orthodox Jews in City Hall, cheering at mentions of gay men dying of AIDS? The Ramrod murders in New York City? The acquittals of one murderer after another, if the victims happened to be gay men? The continued vilification of gay men in the movies?

At this point, we don't know the long-term effects of AZT; no one has taken it for more than two years. However, death within a few years would appear to be the consequence of a drug that causes severe anemia, destroys bone marrow, and blocks DNA synthesis. ^[6]

In the beginning, AZT was given only to those who had been diagnosed either with AIDS or severe AIDS-Related Complex (ARC), both conditions being poorly defined. The next step was to give AZT to healthy gay men who were "HIV infected", meaning only that they had HIV antibodies. This is already tantamount to genocide: HIV is not the cause of AIDS, the vast majority of HIV-positive people remain perfectly healthy, and AZT has no known benefits to bestow on those who are HIV-positive.

The final step has now been suggested by William Haseltine of the Dana-Farber Canncer Institute in Boston. In testifying before the Presidential Commission on 19 February 1988, Haseltine pleaded for giving AZT to all members of high risk groups. His reasoning was as follows: HIV is still confined to the present risk groups: gay men and IV drug users. However, uninfected gay men face an annual risk of becoming infected, and this in turn represents a threat to the general population. Therefore, as a containment measure, HIV-negative gay men should be given AZT in order to prevent their becoming "infected".

Haseltine's analysis is based on a false premise: that HIV is the cause of AIDS. It assumes, incorrectly, that AZT kills or somehow inhibits HIV, whereas there is no evidence that it does. Everything about Haseltine's suggestion is wrong, unless one believes it is a good thing to kill gay men. It's time for us to wake up. We – healthy gay men – are being targeted for genocide.

Where is our anger?

Why do we let them do this to us? Where is our anger?

We have become numb: From mourning, when we couldn't mourn. From held-in rage and disgust at the lies, the greed, the malice, and the incompetence of those we ought to depend on. From fear, that never goes away. From confusion, from not knowing what to do. Our wills have become paralyzed.

What about our self esteem? Do we really love ourselves, or is a hidden guilt, a hidden self-hatred, leading us to conspire in our own destruction? Several times I have performed a psychological experiment of sorts. In conversation I have suggested that a sample of healthy, HIV-antibody-negative prisoners be selected, and that they be given the same dosages of AZT that gay male AIDS patients are given. The object would be to see how long, on the average, it would take before the prisoners required transfusions, and how long before the AZT killed them. Everyone I told this to was spontaneously shocked at my "Nazi-like" suggestion, and looked at me strangely, to make sure I was being facetious. And yet, how is this different from what the medical establishment is doing to gay men who have AIDS, are HIV positive, or are just gay men? Why do we accept for ourselves, treatment we would not tolerate for others?

It is sad when a seriously ill patient cannot trust his doctor, and yet survival may depend on withholding that trust. A letter in the New York Native (25 January 1988) criticizes me for "only dealing with the negative aspects [of AZT]". The anonymous reader says that I "may be prejudicing many of us who are so impressionable to not choose to accept treatment with AZT as a way of regaining full health and function". (How on earth could he have been led to believe that AZT would restore him to "full health and function"?) His next paragraph is hauntingly pathetic:

My doctor is my friend. He presented me with facts and statistics of people with the same symptoms I had, and he gave me the information I needed to make an intelligent choice.

He trusts his doctor. And what does his doctor trust: the New England Journal of Medicine reports?... the advertisements from Burroughs-Wellcome?... pharmaceutical company detail-men?... statements from people like Sam Broder and Anthony Fauci?

I am aware that many people believe AZT is helping them. Human beings have a great capacity for self-delusion. One AIDS patient in New York City has had more than two dozen transfusions. He is frail, emaciated, with barely enough strength to stand up. His skin is a cadaverous grey-green color. Despite all that, he is convinced that AZT is the only reason he is alive today. ^[7]

Doctors and patients have been misinformed and deluded, but the reader who has followed my argument knows that it is not right for anyone to take AZT. There may be legal nuances distinguishing voluntary from involuntary poisoning, but the result is the same. We must act to prevent our brothers from being poisoned.

The time has come to express anger: An AIDS or ARC patient who realizes he has gone through great physical suffering for no good reason. A doctor who realizes that he has been lied to. A relative, or friend, or lover of someone who has been iatrogenically poisoned. An honest researcher, or writer, or physician who has been maligned for telling the truth.

When will someone seize a supply of AZT capsules, and flush them down the toilet? Or smash one of those goddman beepers? Or vigorously confront a doctor who is bullying a friend into taking AZT? Or publicly denounce an "AIDS expert" who is telling lies? A venerable legal principle holds that one has the right and the obligation to prevent others from being harmed, and that force may be used and laws broken if necessary.

The time has come for us to be honest with our friends who have been gulled into taking AZT. Without beating around the bush, we should tell them that they have nothing to gain from the drug, that they are being poisoned.

The time has come for lawsuits. AZT-prescribing doctors should be sued for malpractice. Burroughs-Wellcome should be sued for engaging in fraud and misleading advertising. Public Health Service officials should be sued for fraud. We shouldn't let them get away with it.

References and footnotes

1. ↑  Ray O'Loughlin, "Lawsuit Charges Collusion Between Feds, AZT Maker: Company Donates $55,000 for Research; Special Status Granted for Marketing Drug", Bay Area Reporter, 5 November 1987.
2. ↑  "The Efficacy of Azidothymidine (AZT) in the Treatment of Patients with AIDS and AIDS-Related Complex", by Margaret A Fischl, et al., and "The Toxicity of Azidothymidine (AZT) in the Treatment of Patient with AIDS and AIDS-related Complex", by Douglas D. Richman, et al., New England Journal of Medicine, 23 July 1987.
3. ↑  Lawrence R. Hauptman, Ph.D., "Statistical Review and Evaluation" of NDA 19-655.
4. ↑  Harvey I. Chernov, Ph.D., "Review and Evaluation of Pharmacology and Toxicology Data".
5. ↑  Ellen C. Cooper, MD, MPH, "Medical Officer Review of NDA 19-655", p. 10.
6. ↑  In addition, AZT is a known carcinogen. AZT will cause cancer because 1) Cancer is the expected biochemical consequence of DNA synthesis termination; 2) AZT is positive on the Cell Transformation Assay; 3) AZT causes cancer in rodents; and 4) There is a strong correlation between long-term AZT therapy and cancer of the lymph system.
7. ↑  He died a few months after this article was written.

© 1988 by John Lauritsen
Originally published in The AIDS War