In a new video on The Hill’s “Rising,” political commentator Kim Iversen analyzes Dr. Anthony Fauci’s support for azidothymidine (AZT) to treat HIV/AIDS and compares it to his current support for COVID mRNA vaccines.
Fauci, named head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in 1984, sparked panic among Americans in the 1980s when he wrote in a medical journal that AIDS could be transmitted not only through sexual contact and sharing needles, but also through “ordinary close contact” with the infected.
Iversen says Fauci’s remarks followed the discovery of an infant diagnosed with AIDS — a case we would later learn was caused when the child passed through the womb of an infected mother.
But the damage was already done, said Iversen:
“Public panic had intensified and people were fearing they could get aids from sharing a toilet seat or even from shaking hands. People living with AIDS were being alienated and ostracized from their jobs, homes, communities, and gay men, in particular, were heavily stigmatized.”
Meanwhile, Fauci and his team of scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) went full speed ahead on developing a vaccine for AIDS. However, despite promises from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that it would roll out an AIDS/HIV vaccine, Iversen says that never happened.
Realizing the potential to earn big profits, Iversen says pharmaceutical companies soon began developing treatments for AIDS.
The British drug company, Burroughs Wellcome & Co., said its failed cancer drug AZT could be used to treat AIDS.
Few studies were done, said Iversen, and the long-term side effects were unknown. But in March 1987, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved AZT, claiming the benefits outweighed the risks.
Celia Farber, who in 1989 reported on the approval of AZT and its potential health risks, wrote at the time:
“The majority of those in the AIDS-afflicted and medical communities held the drug up as the first breakthrough on AIDS. For better or worse, AZT had been approved faster than any drug in FDA history, and activists considered it a victory. The price paid for the victory, however, was that almost all government drug trials, from then on, focused on AZT — while over 100 other promising drugs were left uninvestigated.”
In 1989, Iversen said Fauci started promoting the drug not only for critically ill AIDS patients, but for anyone who tested…
Read full story [icon name=”arrow-right” prefix=”fas”] Fauci Botched the AIDS Epidemic so Big Pharma Could Profit. He’s Doing It Again With COVID. • Children’s Health Defense