Firms Will End Claims on AIDS Prevention

Two small local companies have agreed to stop claiming their products will help prevent the spread of the deadly disease AIDS, U.S. Postal Service inspectors said Monday.

Inspectors in Los Angeles said the distributors of two brands of sexual lubricant, T.O.G. Distributors Inc. of West Hollywood, whose product is named “Rub,” and Male Marketing of North Hollywood, which sells “Conceptrol,” signed consent agreements last week promising not to advertise the products through the mail as anti-AIDS devices.

Officials of both firms defended themselves and their products in interviews Monday, pointing out that research on the lubricants’ main ingredient by federal and private researchers indicates it may be of value in preventing the spread of AIDS.

Both lubricants contain an ingredient, nonoxynol-9, a commonly used spermicide, which Mariposa Foundation, a private research laboratory in Pasadena, indicated “could kill the AIDS virus in a laboratory environment,” said postal inspector Ralph A. Cook.

Distinction Not Made

However, advertisements by the two firms in a local gay publication and flyers distributed in gay bathhouses did not make that distinction, indicating the products were of use in preventing AIDS from spreading among sexual partners, Cook said.

He said a check with local medical authorities indicated that “a lot of viruses can be killed in a test tube that can’t be killed in humans.”

Richard A. Moore of T.O.G. Distributors and Jerry Bellenger of Male Marketing both defended their products Monday.

“I believe it kills the AIDS virus, though its only been proven in a test tube,” Moore said.

Moore said that, under pressure from both the federal Food and Drug Administration and the Postal Service, he has agreed to stop advertising the product as an acquired immune deficiency syndrome preventive and notify those customers who have purchased it on that basis that its effectiveness against AIDS has not been clinically proven.

“We don’t know whether it works in humans,” Bellenger said. “It was never my intention to mislead anyone. I was hopeful it would work, and I think it does.”

In August, Bellenger stopped selling Conceptrol, simply because it did not sell well enough.

Both products went on the market after the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said nonoxynol-9 had quickly killed an AIDS virus in the laboratory.

Later, Bruce Voellner, a biochemist with the Mariposa Foundation in Pasadena, recommended that those concerned with AIDS use spermicides, readily available at supermarkets and drugstores, that contain nonoxynol-9 in concentrations of 4% to 5%.