In late May, 2006, I received a complaint about an article I had written for Cruxmagazine in Fall 2004, on the Incarnation Children’s Center (ICC) investigation. ICC is an orphanage in New York City where orphans, often children of drug abusers, were being used in National Institutes of Health clinical drug trials, on the assumption that they had AIDS.

The drugs in use at ICC were and are extremely toxic drugs, so admitted by the manufacturers, and by years of trial results in adults. Physicians give the drugs on the remarkable assumption that the children’s death is a foregone conclusion, and that extraordinarily toxic drugs are the only thing to prolong their lives. This is the basic assumption of the AIDS diagnosis, which I find to be shocking in its arrogance and cruelty.

The belief that the drugs are absolutely necessary is so strong that the drug regimen is strictly enforced, without lenience. Children in ICC who do not want to take the drugs, which cause high rates of severe vomiting and diarrhea, have the drugs force-fed by mouth, or through nasal and surgically-inserted gastric tubes1.

The 2004 Cruxmagazine article was called “HIV Negative: Noble Doctors Try New Drugs on AIDS Orphans2.” In the
article, I predicted that “Noble Doctors” would be the title or spin on the story, if it were reported in The New York Times, apaper which has long censored fair and ethical reporting about AIDS medicine.

In July, 2005, that is exactly what happened.

On July 17, 2005, The New York Times printed a national front-page story, credited to authors Janny Scott and Leslie Kaufman, called “Belated Charges Ignite Furor Over AIDS Drug Trial”

In the story, Scott and Kaufman claim that the drug trials, though unheard of prior to my investigation, were, in fact, a rousing success, with no negatives to show. They also reported that I, the reporter who broke the story, was an internet renegade of some sort, who should not be taken seriously.

The Times piece was more notable for what it ommitted, than what it included. The Times writers, Scott and Kaufman, both interviewed me at length, but nothing of my actual interview made the paper however, except one or two comments helpfully taken wildly out of context.

In the weeks between interview and publication, I was in regular contact with the Times writers, and provided them, as per their request, with copious referenced research on the drugs and diagnosis. None of this was reported.

In fact, the Times article reported nothing negative about any drug used on the children at ICC, as though these drugs were as mild as candy, (and better for you). The Times had also interviewed legal guardians/family members of children who were or had been at ICC, but likewise omitted any mention of these interviews, or of the observations and concerns of the children’s caretakers.

The Times did interview the doctor who established the clinical trial center at ICC, Dr. Stephen Nicholas, who gave a glowing testimony in defense of the drugs and the program. In the entire Times’ piece, not a single negative or cautionary word was printed regarding AZT or any of the other drugs used on the children, though the majority of these are FDA black-box drugs, meaning they have caused severe illness and death in patients taking them. Nicholas is currently receiving funds from ICC’s parent hospital, Columbia Prespyterian, to run similar trials in the Dominican Republic3. This was also unreported.

The Times’ also ommitted any mention of the stomach surgery used on children who can’t or won’t take the drugs.

In late May, 2006, Stephen Inrig, a PhD candidate at Duke University, specializing in AIDS history, wrote Cruxmagazine to lodge a complaint against my 2004 article. He stated that my characterization of the drug AZT was incorrect, primarily because I did not report that AZT, besides being toxic, also reduced what he calls mother-to-child transmission.

That much is true. In that article, I did not get into the use of HIV tests to measure either putative infection or transmission4. I had done so, at length, in other pieces, and felt that I didn’t have to revisit that long discussion in the Crux piece.

If I had, it would have looked something like this: “There is no standard for evaluating what constitutes ‘transmission’, because there is no tandard for evaluating what is ‘HIV positivity,’ based on what we, I think mistakenly, call HIV tests.”

That’s a hell of statement to make without sufficient explanation however, and I did not want to derail the piece, which was primarily about media spin and drug toxicity.

Authored by Liam Scheff

Notes

1 The ICC Investigation Continues, section 7: | Still On Trial, NY Press 2005 | Inside Incarnation, NY Press 2005

2 HIV Negative: Noble Doctors Try New Drugs on AIDS Orphans Cruxmag Fall 2004

3 Dr. Nicholas in the D.R.

4 HIV Testing | Test Interpretation by Risk-Group | Critics on Testing and Diagnosis

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