AIDS Patient Urges Use of Several Unproved Drugs

Hidden from television cameras by a screen and testifying under the pseudonym of “John Smith,” an Ohio AIDS patient told a congressional panel Tuesday that several unproved and possibly harmful anti-AIDS drugs should be given to patients whose only alternative is death.

“While we sit here and talk about whether these drugs should be made available, people are dying,” he told the House Government Operations subcommittee on human resources. “And I am one of those people,” said the 43-year-old AIDS patient, who requested anonymity because he fears retribution at his job.

The time-consuming testing of anti-AIDS drugs poses the troublesome question of whether officials should first determine whether the medications work or whether they should be administered without thorough testing in a last-ditch effort to save lives, AIDS patients and doctors testified.

Health Official Objects

But Dr. Walter Dowdle, AIDS coordinator for the federal Public Health Service, said that making experimental drugs widely available “would be unethical.”

“To authorize premature release (of experimental drugs) would expose already desperate persons to potentially noxious and toxic substances, the benefit of which has not been established,” Dowdle said.

The hearing took place a day after the federal government announced a $100-million federal program aimed at testing experimental drugs designed to combat AIDS. The money will be spent in the next five years to determine the effectiveness and side effects of as many as six drugs at 14 medical centers.

Dr. Martin Hirsch, a researcher at one of those facilities, Massachusetts General Hospital, said the program is urgently needed but remains “a drop in the bucket” considering what is needed to combat AIDS.

3,000 Patients Tested

About 3,000 AIDS patients are involved in experimental drug-testing programs, officials say, and the new federal program would add about 1,000 more.

Among the drugs to be tested are azidothymidine, also known as AZT; foscarnet; HPA-23; ribavirin; interferon alpha; and possibly dideoxycytidine.

Paul Popham, AIDS patient and co-founder of an AIDS support group in New York City, said many patients would be willing to take experimental drugs, despite the risks. Many have traveled at considerable expense to Paris for HPA-23 or to Mexico for ribavirin, he said.

One drug that had been tested in the fight against AIDS, suramin, was withdrawn from clinical trials after being found to cause serious toxic effects that worsened the conditions of some patients.