Social media users are once again sharing the long debunked notion that Fauci, the face of the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, advocated decades earlier for a drug to combat the emerging AIDS epidemic that turned out to be more deadly than the virus itself.
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CLAIM: The majority of AIDS patients died from medication developed when Dr. Anthony Fauci led the nation’s response to the emerging epidemic, not from the virus itself.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. While it’s true that Fauci had been a leading researcher when AIDS emerged in the 1980s, the claims that azidothymidine, commonly known as AZT, killed more people than the virus itself are baseless. Public health agencies from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to the World Health Organization, as well as prominent AIDS organizations and researchers, told The Associated Press the drug remains in use today as it’s been shown to be effective at keeping HIV in check when used in combination with other medications.
THE FACTS: Social media users are once again sharing the long debunked notion that Fauci, the face of the nation’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, advocated decades earlier for a drug to combat the emerging AIDS epidemic that turned out to be more deadly than the virus itself.
Kathy Donbeck, a spokesperson for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the false claim has “long been trotted out by AIDS ‘denialists’ and debunked repeatedly over the years.”
Chanapa Tantibanchachai, a spokesperson for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which approved the antiretroviral drug in 1987, concurred, adding that AZT remains an approved drug for the treatment of HIV.
She noted that the FDA-approved package label for Retrovir, the brand name for the drug, which is also known as zidovudine, states that the drug wasfound to reduce the risk of HIV progression compared to a placebo.
A New England Journal of Medicine study from 1987 also concluded that patients who received AZT died at a much lower rate compared to those who received placebo.
(This is an NIAID document) Although some individuals maintain that treatment with zidovudine (AZT) has compounded the AIDS epidemic (Duesberg, 1992), published reports of both placebo-controlled clinical trials and observational studies provide data to the contrary (Table 4).
Leer esta página en español. AIDS denialists claim that HIV does not cause AIDS, that the risks of antiretrovirals outweigh their benefits or that there is not a serious HIV epidemic in sub-Saharan…
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