VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE
HOW GIANT DRUG FIRM FUNDS THE AIDS LOBBY
By Neville Hodgkinson
The Sunday Times (London) 30 May 1993
Wellcome, the giant drugs company that makes the controversial anti-AIDS
drug AZT, is facing growing criticism over the pervasiveness of its influence
on AIDS education, treatment and research.
The company stands accused of using its unique position of power in
the British medical establishment, via its close links with the Wellcome
Trust, the world's richest medical research charity, to establish AZT as
the "gold standard" of AIDS treatment, even though research suggests
the drug is not the breakthrough it was thought to be.
As sales of AZT have grown last year reaching £ 213m the company
has extended its own funding to a huge range of AIDS organisations, including
a parliamentary group to which it has contributed £ 65,000.
Critics say the result has been to foster a climate in which the anti-viral
approach to AIDS has squeezed out almost all other lines of inquiry. This
is despite scientific evidence from a recent Anglo-French trial, named
Concorde, that AZT does not help in the early treatment of people who have
HIV, and despite strong question marks over its safety and effectiveness
in dealing with AIDS.
The issue is being taken up in parliament by George Galloway, Labour
MP for Glasgow, Hillhead. "The British health service rolled over
on its back for Wellcome, spending millions of taxpayers' money on this
drug," he said. "In my opinion the health service has been well
and truly shafted. The hegemony Wellcome have built up ... may turn out
to be one of the greatest medical scandals of the century."
A campaigning group, the Steering Committee Against AZT Malpractice
(SCAM), which wants the drug withdrawn, is holding a one-day inaugural
conference in London next month at which Professor Peter Duesberg, a world
expert on viruses, will participate. He argues that destructive lifestyle
factors, especially drug abuse, are the commonest cause of AIDS in Western
countries.
Another anti-AZT group, called Gays Against Genocide (GAG), is to picket
the Great Ormond Street children's hospital in London on Wednesday to protest
against the experimental use of AZT on HIV-positive babies. GAG has been
picketing for six weeks the offices of the Terrence Higgins Trust, the
most prominent AIDS charity, because it is annoyed that the trust has been
producing pro-AZT papers with the company.
Wellcome rejects the criticisms, arguing that funding has not been confined
to people who hold particular views on AIDS. Dr Martin Sherwood, group
public relations manager, said: "I don't see that our support for
community organisations is doing anything other than trying to get to a
better understanding of disease management."
According to Martin Walker, a research worker who is to open next month's
SCAM conference, part of the problem lies in the special relationship between
the drugs company, known as the Wellcome Foundation, and the Wellcome Trust.
He believes the trust's enormous power of patronage it has more than £
200m a year for distribution helps to open doors at the highest level.
The trust is forbidden from supporting the activities of the company,
and there is no suggestion that it has distorted its funding to benefit
the firm. However, some of the trust's work has a direct bearing on HIV
and AIDS. It recently set up the Wellcome Centre for Medical Science, which
this month ran an AIDS conference for teachers and school governors. The
main scientific speakers were Professor Anthony Pinching, who conducted
early AZT trials, and Professor Roy Anderson, a Wellcome grant recipient
and a governor of the Wellcome Trust.
Walker's inquiries have shown that academic institutions at the forefront
of AIDS research have been long-term recipients of trust money. These include
the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University College
and Middlesex School of Medicine.
The trust is also funding an important study of sexual behaviour and
lifestyles, one aim of which is "to provide data for ... mathematical
models of the spread of HIV in the population". The study is being
conducted through Imperial College, London, whose biology department is
headed by Anderson.
Anderson, an outspoken advocate of the view that AIDS is set to explode
internationally, has contributed extensively to the work of the All-Party
Parliamentary Group on AIDS, which has a membership of more than 150 parliamentarians.
Over the past five years, the group has received £ 65,000 from the
Wellcome Foundation, plus extra help for specific projects.
Another opinion-forming recipient of Wellcome Foundation cash is the
British Medical Association Foundation for AIDS. It received a grant of
£ 144,000 in 1988.
The Wellcome Foundation helped the Terrence Higgins Trust to set up
a fund-raising division, and backed production of four AIDS "health
education" booklets. The first describes AZT as "the first drug
shown to be effective against HIV". The fourth contains nine pages
about the purported benefits of AZT.
The foundation says in its annual report that it has been "active
and imaginative" in promoting its products to opinion-leaders and
prescribing physicians, and adds: "Through our work with HIV and AIDS
groups in many countries, we are learning to communicate effectively with
wider audiences." *
VIRUSMYTH HOMEPAGE