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The Balm of Gilead: Is the Provision of Treatment to Those Who Seroconvert in HIV Prevention Trials a Matter of Moral Obligation or Moral Negotiation?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Charles Weijer  and
Guy J. LeBlanc
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Extract

Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?

(Jeremiah 8:22)

In July of 2004, Cambodian sex workers staged a protest of an HIV prevention trial set to enroll 900 sex workers in Phnom Penh, charging the study planners with exploitation. The Cambodian study was one of a series of international clinical trials sponsored by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (Gates Foundation) testing the safety and efficacy of tenofovir (Viread), an antiretroviral drug produced by Gilead Sciences, Inc., to prevent HIV transmission. To date, two of these international studies have been closed and one is suspended, prompting calls for re-examination of the ethics of HIV prevention trials.

Type
Independent
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 34 , Issue 4 , Winter 2006 , pp. 793 - 808
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2006

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