In 1987, Dr. Fauci’s team declared the human study a success and terminated it after four months of a proposed six-month study—a record-setting speed for chemotherapy approval. That four-month observation period was far too short for researchers to detect side effects that would occur in patients taking AZT for years, or even a lifetime. But Dr. Fauci argued that his decision to abort the study was the only ethical choice: after sixteen weeks, nineteen trial subjects in the inactive placebo group and only one participant from the AZT group had died—an outcome that could be hailed as an
...more
