Joseph Sonnabend, Remembering the Original AZT Trial

An interesting article by early AIDS doctor Joseph Sonnabend, who can’t usually decide what side he’s on, but enough time has passed that he now thinks it is okay to be against AZT.
reposted from http://www.aras.ab.ca/

By Joseph Sonnabend - blogs.poz.com

From time to time I'll write about some of the earliest events in the epidemic.  I've had the opportunity to participate in some of them, both as a physician caring for people with AIDS from its first recognition in 1981 and also as a microbiologist.   Today, I'm going back 24 years to recall - with the help of a few contemporary documents, a significant event in the history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.  This was the introduction of AZT, the first drug to be approved for the treatment of HIV infection.

This is not so much about AZT as it is about the trial that led to its approval and how it made me aware that even if we then had no lifesaving treatments there was much we were able to do for our patients.

I'm certainly not writing a history of the introduction of AZT. This is just the personal account of a doctor treating HIV infected individuals at the time, who was unable to recommend AZT for his patients at least not at the huge dose then suggested by authorities who had taken on the medical leadership of the epidemic.

I'm not sure that it's even possible to adequately describe the terror and desperation felt in the early 1980s.   By 1986 nothing of any use regarding treatments had come from the Public Health Service and very little from the academic medical community.  For example, people with AIDS had to wait until 1989 for the CDC to issue guidelines for the prevention ofpneumocystis pneumonia, the most frequent cause of death among them, while this type of pneumonia had often been routinely prevented in many other individuals who were also at risk because they were recipients of kidney transplants, or were children with leukemia.  The way to prevent pneumocystis pneumonia was no secret - it had been published in 1977.  

Merck vaccine scientist Dr. Maurice Hilleman admitted presence of SV40, AIDS and cancer viruses in vaccines

by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, Editor of NaturalNews.com

(NaturalNews) One of the most prominent vaccine scientists in the history of the vaccine industry -- a Merck scientist -- made a recording where he openly admits that vaccines given to Americans were contaminated with leukemia and cancer viruses. In response, his colleagues (who are also recorded here)break out into laughterand seem to think it's hilarious. They then suggest that because these vaccines are first tested in Russia, they will help the U.S. win the Olympics because the Russian athletes will all be "loaded down with tumors." (Thus, they knew these vaccines caused cancer in humans.)

From Terry Michael: HIV is such a miraculous, all purpose retrovirus. Not only can it figure out if you are gay or African or African American or an injection drug user, and then target your immune system for collapse. Now it can cure cancer! But I thought Gallo and Montagnier were trying to figure out if retroviruses could CAUSE cancer??? I am really confused. Take a look:

An Immune System Trained to Kill Cancer

PHILADELPHIA — A year ago, when chemotherapy stopped working against his leukemia, William Ludwig signed up to be the first patient treated in a bold experiment at the University of Pennsylvania. Mr. Ludwig, then 65, a retired corrections officer from Bridgeton, N.J., felt his life draining away and thought he had nothing to lose.