Pain without gain - sick Africans observed but not treated in medical trials

New Internationalist, April, 2001

Tongue lashing flared in Uganda after it was learned that 415 married couples, kept under observation by US researchers, were either left to contract HIV or, if already infected, received no treatment. Dr Marcia Angell revealed in the New England Journal of Medicine that for `up to 30 months, several hundred people with HIV infections were observed and not treated'. Similar revelations have occurred in the British Journal of Medicine about research into male circumcision in Kenya. A report compiled by the Africa Women and Child Information Network (AWC) has indicated that prostitutes in the Majengo slum area of Nairobi were used in a vaccine-development project without receiving any benefits.

Moto (independent Zimbabwean magazine) no 212