AIDS Drug Tests Urged by S.F. Health Officials
City health officials are ready to begin clinical trials on drugs to treat AIDS patients but are prevented by cumbersome federal policies, the city’s chief health officer told a presidential commission on Friday.
“We could do community trials; we’d be happy to. We could get clinical trials with controls going tomorrow,” Dr. David Werdegar, director of the city’s Health Department told members of the Presidential Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic.
Large-scale clinical trials that could begin at San Francisco General Hospital, community hospitals and the UC Health Science Center are prevented by a national cooperative drug trial policy that Werdegar called “lead-footed” and “unduly long and cumbersome.”
He estimated that the city’s 4,514 AIDS patients will increase to as many as 18,000 by 1993.
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