Your editorial “What’s justified in fighting AIDS?” (Oct. 20) defends the use of placebos in anti-HIV drug trials being conducted in the developing world. Yet these experiments amount to an offshore dumping of risk that Americans themselves would be unwilling to face.
These trials will result in the birth of hundreds of babies with AIDS, cases of AIDS that could be avoided. That outcome would never be accepted in the United States because the drug AZT is the identified standard of care for pregnant women with HIV. Asking women with no other alternatives to accept a gamble that they might or might not get this drug is unethical. The forced choice is all the more unethical because the trials would produce useful data even if they did not use a placebo.
The researchers involved in this trial use women’s social deprivations as the justification for treating them in ways American women would never be treated. The use of placebos in these trials should be suspended immediately. Finding less costly ways of preventing HIV infection is essential, but the risks of experimentation should not be borne by the women of the world least able to bear them.
