Anti-AIDS Drugs Being Smuggled In From Mexico, Paper Says

Amateur smugglers are supplying hundreds of San Francisco Bay Area AIDS victims with two drugs legal in Mexico but banned in the United States, the Oakland Tribune reported Thursday.

“The AIDS drug runners are buying isoprinosine and ribovarin from Mexican pharmacies and hiding the drugs as they cross the border,” according to the newspaper.

The drug traffic has become so frequent that in the past few months, U.S. Customs officials have been searching anyone suspected of being a homosexual, often confiscating several hundred dollars worth of drugs, said Richard Rector, of the San Francisco activist group, Mobilization Against AIDS.

The Food and Drug Administration confirmed Wednesday that Newport Pharmaceuticals of Newport Beach, Calif., filed an application earlier this week to market Isoprinosine. The company said the drug can stimulate the working of the immune system in people who do not have AIDS but who have indications that they may develop it.

But a National Institutes of Health scientist specializing in AIDS said that studies have not confirmed any effective use for the drug against the deadly disease.

The scientist, Dr. George Galasso, said studies of Isoprinosine that he has seen “essentially have all been controversial or negative. . . . As far as I know, there have been no studies in this country that show that it does anything at all. There has not been a definitive, statistically significant study showing that it does anything.”

AIDS, or acquired immune deficiency syndrome, destroys the immune system, leaving the body defenseless against diseases such as cancer. As of Monday, the federal Centers for Disease Control had recorded 12,932 cases of AIDS in adults, of whom 6,481 had died. No one has recovered.

The Tribune said the demand for the AIDS drugs has become so great in the United States that “there’s even talk among Bay Area gay leaders of setting up a big-time smuggling operation and opening a secret distribution warehouse.”

The newspaper interviewed a smuggler identified only as “Wayne,” who said he had made three runs into Mexico, sometimes with the help of his sister.