The primary drug used to treat AIDS patients was AZT. In the face of the stark failure to develop a vaccine, AZT was approved by the FDA in 1987. It was the sole AIDS drug for about 10 years. In 1996, it was subsumed into a chemical cocktail, called "HAART." It is still prescribed to patients today.
From the published literature, here's what we know about AZT.
1. It was designed in 1964 as cancer chemo. (See Horwitz , 1964).
2. It generally kills red blood cells, resulting in severe anemia. (See Richman, 1987)
3. It generally kills white blood cells, resulting in Leukopenia. (See Richman, 1987)
4. It specifically kills a subset of white blood cells (neutrophils) resulting in neutropenia. (See Richman, 1987)
5. It suppresses bone marrow. (See Inoue, 1989.)
6. It kills mitochondria, resulsting in muscle myopathy. (See Dalakas, 1990.)
7. It can be mutagenic. (See Pluda, 1990)
8. It is a transplacental carcinogen in animal studies, ie, AZT was given to pregnant mice, the baby mice got cancer. (See Olivero, 1997).
"At 1 year of age, the offspring of AZT-treated mice exhibited statistically-significant, dose-dependent increases in tumor multiplicity in the lungs, liver, and female reproductive organs." (Olivero, page 1602)."
9. It causes birth defects in newborn humans.(See Kumar, 1994.)
Given this laundry list of proven toxicities, adverse side effects, and carcinogenic propensities, my question is this:
Can you, as a human being, a researcher, or God forbid, a physician, justify giving this chemical, "for life", to people with absolutely no symptoms?
Special invitations to answer this query are extended to Doc Smith, Orac, Chris Noble, DT, Trrll, Nick Bennett, Dale and even Pharma Bawd, aka Pharma Ditz, et al.
However, the question must be directly answered, and no hand waving of the "but all drugs have side effects" etc, that we have seen ad nauseum in all the open posts here that concerned this medicine from hell in the past, will be permitted to stand.
All dodges will go as fast as me or Otis can spot em.
What bewilders me, it is that none of these biologists and doctors know the chemical properties of drugs which they use.
The azide function of AZT releases spontaneously some nitrogen to give a nitrene, which can only react with the cellular water to give a hydroxylaminothymidine after prototropy.
Now, hydroxylamines is known
1) To have powerful mutagenic effects
2) To be easily reduced (in amines by glutathion) or oxidized (in nitroso compounds by ROS) by the metabolism.
3) Thus to deplete the glutathion levels)
3)To inhibit the glutathion S-transferase, responsible for the regulation of the nitrogen monoxyde
http://www.scripps.edu/bcmd/pdfarea/issue_13_98/evelo.pdf
Posted by: Jfr | October 10, 2006 at 03:52 AM
JFR, thanks for explaining how this drug works. After a submarine overhaul, the navy always takes civilians, who worked on the boats,out on the test runs, I wonder how many of these chemists and physicians would swallow this pill? Probably not any.
Posted by: noreen martin | October 11, 2006 at 08:54 AM