by Brin, David
In 1981, AIDS was a disease of unknown origin.76 It is controllable today because of rapid scientific innovation. Pancreatic cancer, on the other hand, still kills virtually all its victims with the best hope for long-term survival being the Whipple Procedure first described in 1935.8
So why were AIDS treatments discovered so quickly while effective cancer therapies languish?
The difference was the aggressive way that experimental multi-modal therapies were implemented in HIV/AIDS patients compared to the suffocating bureaucracy that stymies cancer research.
In the early days of AIDS treatment, any therapy that might work was tried immediately on dying patients and the results evaluated and documented. These treatments were often administered by those infected with HIV who faced pending death if a cure were not discovered quickly. The FDA was cast by the wayside as AIDS activists made certain that potentially effective treatments were not obstructed by bureaucratic red tape.77
We at Life Extension are proud of the part we played in saving the lives of AIDS patients by defying FDA attempts to shut us down. An editorial published late last year in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed how HIV revolutionized the way global health is pursued, and how it resulted in accelerated delivery of innovative life-saving treatments.78
New England Journal of Medicine Praises Work of Early AIDS Activists
Allan Brandt, PhD, is a professor of medical history at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Brandt’s perspective titled “How AIDS Invented Global Health” was published in the June 6, 2013, edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.79 Here are some quotes from his perspective:
“AIDS has reshaped conventional wisdoms in public health, research practice, cultural attitudes, and social behaviors.”
“The rapid development of effective antiretroviral treatments, in turn, could not have occurred without new forms of disease advocacy and activism.”
“But AIDS activists explicitly crossed a vast chasm of expertise. They went to FDA meetings and events steeped in often arcane science of HIV, prepared to offer concrete proposals to speed research, reformulate trials, and accelerate regulatory processes.”
“This approach went well beyond the traditional bioethical formulations of autonomy and consent. As many clinicians and scientists acknowledged, AIDS activists, including many people with AIDS, served as collaborators and colleagues rather than constituents and subjects, changing the trajectory of research and treatment.”
Omitted from Dr. Brandt’s complimentary statements were the harassment, persecution, and incarceration of AIDS activists by government agencies that sought to suppress burgeoning development of AIDS therapies.80,81
We Were Jailed!
The FDA did not like our aggressive stance when it came to accelerating medical research, particularly as it related to helping AIDS victims. The FDA did everything in its power to shut Life Extension down and imprison us for life.82 According to the FDA, we were ripping off dying AIDS patients by recommending unproven therapies.
The Journal of the American Medical Association (Nov 27, 2013) featured an article describing a 54% reduction in the risk of progressing from HIV to full-blown AIDS using selenium and multi-vitamins.83 Life Extension first recommended these nutrients in the October 1985 edition of this publication (called at that time Anti-Aging News).
While the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association was conducted in a region of Africa where malnutrition is rampant, and the study had other flaws (like a 25% dropout rate in both groups), the delay in HIV-induced immune suppression in patients taking these nutrients was remarkable.
A number of previous studies support the benefits of certain nutrients in delaying HIV progression79,84–86 Even FDA Consumer Magazine eventually acknowledged the value of AIDS patients using nutrient supplements.
We also recommended a drug called isoprinosine to AIDS patients in the October 1985 issue of Anti-Aging News. This contributed to our being arrested by the FDA because isoprinosine was not an approved drug. In the June 21, 1990, edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, a study found that HIV-infected humans who took isoprinosine were eight times less likely to progress to AIDS compared to placebo.87 This was not enough, however, to keep us from being indicted in 1991.
What helped save us was the continuing publication of research findings corroborating that isoprinosine and certain nutrients significantly delayed disease progression in HIV-infected patients, thus negating the FDA’s argument that we were “ripping off AIDS patients” by recommending “unproven” therapies.
The FDA was on the wrong side when it sought to destroy us in the 1980–1990s. Regrettably, millions of Americans continue to perish from needless bureaucratic red tape from virtually all diseases except AIDS. The reason AIDS is the exception is that AIDS activists made it clear to the FDA that there would be no bureaucratic delays in delivering experimental therapies to HIV-infected patients. The FDA capitulated and this enabled rapid medical innovation to occur in a free market environment.
Cancer patients, on the other hand, sit by like timid sheep, as the FDA decides which experimental therapy they are “allowed” to try and how far their disease must progress before the experimental therapy is made available on a so-called “compassionate-use” basis. FDA’s granting of “compassionate-use” sometimes occurs weeks after the patient dies, or is so close to death that it has no chance of working.
“In conclusion, our data suggest the relevance of NK (natural killer) cells as primary effectors not only against high-risk leukemias, but also solid tumors.” 44
Quote from study published in the April 2013 edition of the journal Oncoimmunology
Not Fast Enough!
In 2010, the Life Extension Foundation® pledged a substantial amount of money to a prestigious cancer research institute to evaluate many of the components contained in our published Pancreatic Cancer Treatment Protocol. The institution eagerly pushed this project forward, generating reams of paperwork in order to obtain Institutional Review Board approval.
Here we are in 2014, and the total number of pancreatic patients enrolled in this study is zero.
Bureaucratic delays like this are beyond rational understanding. These are human lives we are talking about!
When we devised unique treatments for AIDS in the 1980s, they were provided to dying AIDS patients almost overnight. Not all of them worked, but the ones that did built on a foundation that has resulted in HIV patients living for decades, as opposed to pancreatic cancer patients who often die in a matter of months.
Contrast the rapid development of AIDS therapies to most pancreatic cancer patients who die even after enduring the Whipple Procedure that was first described in 1935. It is clear that methods employed by AIDS activists are far superior to today’s regulatory quagmire that stymies cancer research.
Citizens Should Revolt
Cancer will likely kill over 570,000 Americans this year.88
Already-approved treatments could be saving lives, such as administering moderate dose interleukin-2 early in the disease process. Yet even these simple treatment enhancements are ignored by the oncology mainstream that prefers to practice assembly line medicine.
These kinds of delays would have never been tolerated by AIDS activists, who experimented with any potentially effective drug on large numbers of dying patients to quickly discover what worked and what didn’t.
The New England Journal of Medicine credits the work of AIDS pioneers as revolutionizing the way medical research is conducted today. We at Life Extension disagree with this Pollyanna assessment, as cancer therapies we uncovered decades ago remain bogged down in FDA red tape. Many are not being pursued at all despite a continuous stream of favorable data flowing out of research facilities.
The slogan “Act Up, Speak Out… Silence = Death!” was chanted by AIDS activists who surrounded FDA headquarters in 1988 and shut down the agency for one day:89,90
Protest Now Rather Than Wait For F
unerals
I do not know why every cancer patient and their family does not march on Washington to demand the same exemption from bureaucratic suffocation that enabled HIV to become a manageable disease in a relatively brief window of time.
Perhaps cancer patients should write their family and friends and state something to the effect:
“In lieu of attending my funeral, would you mind marching on the Capitol in Washington D.C. and insist that cancer patients have unfettered access to any therapy that might work.”
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