HIV Drug Tests Overseas Assailed

The United States is paying for experiments in poor countries that could allow 1,000 babies to die of AIDS unnecessarily by withholding a protective drug from HIV-infected pregnant women, the patient advocacy group Public Citizen charged. The government says the studies are ethical because they are the only way to find new HIV protections that poor countries can afford. Pregnant women in developing countries today do not get the AZT therapy that American AIDS patients use to protect their unborn children. The government insists a placebo comparison is the only way to prove potential new therapies are better than no treatment.