Cambodian PM orders anti-AIDS drug test halted; cites human values

Cambodia (AP) – Cambodia’s prime minister on Wednesday ordered a halt to plans for human trials of an anti-AIDS drug that would have recruited hundreds of local sex workers to determine if the medicine could prevent new HIV infections.

Cambodia (AP) – Cambodia’s prime minister on Wednesday ordered a halt to plans for human trials of an anti-AIDS drug that would have recruited hundreds of local sex workers to determine if the medicine could prevent new HIV infections. Health Minister Nuth Sokhom said he had been instructed by Prime Minister Hun Sen to stop the project to test the drug Tenofovir, also known as Viread DF, made by the California-based biotech company Gilead Sciences Inc. He said the prime minister “is worried about the effect on the Cambodian people and on the human values and rights,” and “is not allowing (the drug) to be tested on humans at all.” Cambodia, whose Health Ministry had approved the project last year, currently has the highest HIV infection rate in Southeast Asia, blamed largely on its flourishing sex trade. The prime minister repeated his objection to any experiment of the anti-AIDS drug on his country’s citizens, first voiced in a speech last week, and said it “should be tested on animals” instead, Sokhom said. Viread is already used to treat people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The new test in Cambodia was aimed at determining if the drug can prevent infection in those who don’t already have the disease. Partially funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the proposed trial would have recruited almost 1,000 sex workers, who are at high risk for becoming infected with HIV. The trial was to have given one group Viread and another a placebo over a period of a year to see if those taking the drug had a statistically lower incidence of HIV infection. The trial was to be conducted by researchers from the University of California San Francisco and the University of New South Wales, with additional funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Members of a local sex workers’ rights group, Women Network for Unity, have refused to participate in the planned study, citing a lack of insurance against potential side-effects. Keo Tha, a group leader, said Wednesday her group has already sent the prime minister a letter thanking him for shutting down the study. “We are very happy that he has supported our women,” she said, adding that the test’s researchers “should take the plan back where it’s from, because we are not a trash container for their test here.” Activists at last month’s International AIDS conference in Bangkok also protested the test, saying the prospective participants were being exploited. The protesters, led by the AIDS activist group Act Up, accused the researchers of purposely providing insufficient prevention education to the volunteers because it needs infection data to analyze Viread’s potential to protect against the virus. The protesters also demanded that the company take care of the lifetime medical needs of any volunteers who contract AIDS during the experiment.Cambodia’s current HIV infection rate is 2.6 per cent among people of 15-49 age group, the highest in Southeast Asia. (Source: The Canadian Press, August 2004)