Fred, an individual with AIDS, finds it difficult to walk the five steps from his bed to his bathroom. "I would just lie there for two hours; I couldn't get up to take those five steps. When I was taken to the hospital, I had to have someone come over to dress me. It's that kind of severe fatigue.The quality of my life was pitiful. (Farber 7)." While Fred suffers from AIDS, his severe fatigue is not a side effect of the disease. Rather, it is one of the many side effects of the medication Azidothymidine (AZT). For over a decade, AZT would be the only drug approved by the FDA for the treatment of HIV and AIDS, despite the flawed research used to support this drugs effectiveness, despite the studies that disproved this drugs usefulness in the treatment of HIV and AIDS, and despite the severe side effects it produced in most HIV and AIDS patients.
AZT was first used in 1964 as a form of chemotherapy for cancer patients, but it was discontinued because it was toxic, expensive to produce, and ineffective against cancer (1). In 1983, nearly twenty years later, the same drug was pulled off the storage shelf and declared as a promising new drug for AIDS treatment. At this time it was found that AZT was able to kill the HIV virus in vitro (1).
In 1983, researchers discovered that AZT had the power to kill the HIV virus in vitro. Upon this discovery, the British pharmaceutical company Burroughs-Wellcome sent AZT, known then as compound S, to the National Cancer Institute where further testing could be conducted (1). The first major testing began in February 1986. There were fewer than 300 subjects in the original testing. The participants were divided into a placebo group and a group that received AZT treatment (Burkett 5). Six months into the study, 19 placebo patients and only 1 AZT patient had died. With these prelimanary results so promising, it appeared unethical for researchers to continue the study; so research was stopped immediately, and all subjects were started on AZT (5).
AIDS IN AFRICA AIDS is the number one cause of death in Africa and the fourth globally (Mayell 27). AIDS is a disease caused by HIV-a virus that attacks the white blood cells of the body, which help fight off infections. AIDS breaks down the body's immune system. AIDS is technically known as ...
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are azidohymindine (AZT) and dideoxyinosine (DDI). "AZT interferes with the virus replication and has been found to prolong life significantly in some patients and delay the onset of full-blown AIDS in persons with no symptoms, but its potentially toxic side effects may preclude uses in many cases. DDI acts similarly but is recommended for those who cannot tolerate AZT." ...
Aids in the 20th Century Aids are a fatal plague that is increasingly killing our society. Aids are an impairment of the body's ability to fight disease. It is acquired, not inherited. (Gong p. 24) It caused by two groups called retroviruses. The groups infect white blood cells and helper ce...
The most promising drug is one called AZT (Zidovudine). AZT prevents reverse transcriptase making DNA from RNA, which thus prevent HIV from making viral DNA from viral RNA so it is not inserted into the host cells DNA to form the provirus. ...
Drugs such as AZT can limit the risk of transferring HIV to the fetus through birth, being one third of the children with AIDS acquire the virus from their infected mothers. ... Drugs such as ZDV, AZT and 3TC have been proven highly effective in prolonging victim's lives. ...
The problem now is how to identify HIV-infected pregnant women at an early enough stage, so that the use of AZT could drastically reduce the chances of the baby being born with HIV. ... It is certain that those who test positive and accept treatment with AZT would have a decreased transmission rate, but according to some, this notion takes into account only the child and not the mother. ...
