Careful With Babies

MUMBAI, May 21: It is unfortunate that a controversy has developed over the testing of anti-AIDS drugs at public hospitals in Mumbai and ...

MUMBAI, May 21: It is unfortunate that a controversy has developed over the testing of anti-AIDS drugs at public hospitals in Mumbai and Pune. No one will deny the urgent need for remedies for AIDS in India where the fatal illness is believed by many Indian and international experts to be spreading more rapidly than the official statistics show.

Indeed some figures cited by these experts suggest the situation is critical and that India could soon, if it does not already, have the largest number of HIV-positive persons in the world. In light of the slow response of state health departments to this as to most public health crises and of the poverty and ignorance of large sections of the population, fears have been expressed about an AIDS epidemic in the country.

Whether that picture is alarmist or not, the simple truth is that the battle against AIDS is not being taken seriously enough. Therefore a project undertaken by doctors in public hospitals with the aim of protecting a high-risk group, in this casebabies born to HIV-positive mothers, should in the normal course be welcomed.

If the project led by Dr K E Bharucha of the J J Hospital has run into trouble instead, it is not because of doubts about the good faith of the doctors involved but because of other factors. Although questions are asked about the accuracy of data on which the project is based, the two key issues are the ethics of drug-trials on babies and testing drugs which have not been approved by the Drug Controller of India.

The effects of administering each of the two cited anti-AIDS drugs to adults are known; the effects of the two in combination administered to babies starting when they are one-month old are not. The results of similar tests which have apparently been conducted in other countries are not available. Even were DCI approval for each of the drugs obtained, this does appear to be experimenting on babies and in conditions, at out-patient departments, where close monitoring will be difficult. The inquiry being conducted bythe government8217;s medical education and research department should look not only into the project design, safety and necessity, it must address the ethics of drug-trials on babies. It is a matter of confirming that unsuspecting people will be protected from fatal disease and from unsafe experiments with cures.