Glaxo faces AZT battle in SA and Ireland

by Fintan Dunne, Editor,
AidsPanelReport.com +353-87-948-9817
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Drug corporate GlaxoSmithKline has requested an extension of time until 31st July, 2001 to file their defence to a 1.4 million rand damages claim on behalf of the widow of the late James Hayman, a South African solicitor. The summons filed 4th June, 2001 by a legal team which includes barrister Anthony Brink, attributes Hayman's death to his treatment with Glaxo's AIDS drug AZT.

Brink's book Debating AZT alerted President Mbeki to the dangerous toxicity of AZT in late 1999. In October 1999 Mbeki indicted the drug's toxicity in a statement to parliament and launched an inquiry into it's safety.

The forthcoming action in the South African High Court alleges for the first time that AZT is medically ineffective and is toxic enough of itself to cause death. Hayman was asymptomatic when medicated with AZT following a HIV-positive diagnosis in July 1997. He died in June 1998 - his weight having plummeted from 68kg to 42kg - without having contracted an AIDS-defining illness.

Should the Hayman claim succeed, it would establish that the drug had no redeeming benefit to offset its potentially fatal toxicity. As most AIDS patients have been medicated with AZT, that could initiate a flood of devastating legal actions. Glaxo had sales of almost $1 billion of AZT last year.

The particulars of claim in Hayman v GlaxoSmithKline allege that:

"Towards the end of July 1997 and in Ladysmith, KwaZulu-Natal, the deceased commenced a month's course of AZT, together with a related drug, 3TC, at daily oral doses of 600mg and 300mg respectively,..."

"The AZT treatment immediately made the deceased very ill, causing intractable diarrhoea and vomiting, intense headache, profound lassitude, anaemia, muscle weakness with cramps and pain, and progressive weight loss.

"The deceased was subsequently hospitalised on three occasions for uncontrollable diarrhoea and vomiting without any specific infectious aetiological agent being detected on pathological investigation, continued to suffer profound fatigue, continued to suffer muscular weakness and deterioration, and lose muscle mass and body weight, and finally died on 8 June 1998 weighing 42kg.

"The deceased died as a direct result of the cellular toxicity of AZT."

In a March 2001 open letter to John Kearney, CEO of GlaxoSmithKline S.A, Brink asserted that many clinical studies of the drug's effectivness "flatly refuted" the company's claims that AZT prevents HIV replication. He also pointed out that thirteen studies showed that human cells cannot metabolise AZT to "anything like [the] level" required for pharmacological effectiveness.

In an answer by Glaxo's Medical and Corporate Affairs Director, Dr. Peter J. Moore, the company claimed that reviews of AZT indicated it was "an effective component of triple combination therapy".

But in reply, Brink summed up the thrust of his forthcoming legal case: "Knowing that AZT was synthesized in 1961 as a cell poison, why did you commence marketing it as an 'antiretroviral' drug in 1987 before proving that it has this latter activity in vivo? And why have you disregarded all studies published since, indicating that it doesn't. Especially knowing how harmful it is."

IRISH HAEMOPHILIACS AND AZT

Brink is currently visiting Ireland to confer with a scientific group that has filed a submission with the Lindsay Tribunal which is inquiring into the deaths of Irish hemophiliacs. The significance of the Hayman court action for the Lindsay Tribunal, is that HIV-positive Irish haemophiliacs who died were treated with AZT-based drug cocktails.

The group backing the latest Lindsay Tribunal submission includes five eminent scientists appointed to Mbeki's Presidential AIDS Advisory Panel and the Irish webmasters of AidsMyth.com, Fintan Dunne and Kathy McMahon. On 21st June 2001, the group filed a submission with the Tribunal contending that HIV-positive Irish haemophiliacs died as a result of the side-effects of their drug treatments.

Their tribunal submission says that clotting agent itself causes immune-suppression. They also maintain that side-effects arising from prolonged use of corticosteroid drugs prescribed to haemophiliacs, are indistinguishable from medical conditions arising from HIV infection. Similarly, they contend that side-effects of anti-HIV drugs prescribed to haemophiliacs can cause AIDS-defining illnesses.

According to scientists in the group, haemophiliacs are particularly prone to false-positive results from HIV-antibody tests, and furthermore could not have become HIV infected from dried clotting agent - a view supported by statements issued by the US Centres for Disease Control.

MORE ON LINDSAY SUBMISSION: FULL PRESS RELEASE

Fintan Dunne, TEL: +353-87-948-9817

SEE ALSO:

Website:
http://www.aidsmyth.com

Click for London Times story
Widow quotes Mbeki line in Aids drug suit

South African Media reports of AZT suit
http://www.suntimes.co.za/2001/07/01/politics/pol02.htm

http://www.suntimes.co.za/business/legal/2001/07/08/carmel02.asp

http://news.24.com/contentDisplay/level4Article/0,1113,2-14_1046209,00.html

http://www.bday.co.za/bday/content/direct/1,3523,879498-6078-0,00.html

Nightmare on AZT Street
http://www.chronicillnet.org/online/AZT.html

Glaxo's sham informed consent on AZT
http://www.aidsmyth.addr.com/azt.htm

Articles Questioning AZT
from Virusmyth.com
http://www.virusmyth.net/aids/index/azt.htm

AIDS Research Alliance website
http://www.aidsresearch.org/

Zidovudine (AZT, Retrovir)
http://www.natip.org/zidovudine.html