Foster Kids Used to Test AIDS Drugs

Associated Press:

WASHINGTON - To gain access to hundreds of HIV-infected foster children, federally funded researchers promised in writing to provide an independent advocate to safeguard the kids' well-being as they tested potent AIDS drugs. But most of the time, that special protection never materialized, an Associated Press review has found.

The research funded by the National Institutes of Health spanned the country. It was most widespread in the 1990s as foster care agencies sought treatments for their HIV-infected children that weren't yet available in the marketplace.

The practice ensured that foster children - mostly poor or minority - received care from world-class researchers at government expense, slowing their rate of death and extending their lives. But it also exposed a vulnerable population to the risks of medical research and drugs that were known to have serious side effects in adults and for which the safety for children was unknown.

The research was conducted in at least seven states - Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, New York, North Carolina, Colorado and Texas - and involved more than four dozen different studies. The foster children ranged from infants to late teens, according to interviews and government records.

The report additionally describes the program as providing generally inadequate protection for the children with at least one study finding a "disturbing" high death rate among children in the test. An investigation on the use of foster kids as AIDS guinea pigs is being conducted by the U.S. Office for Human Research Protections which has refused to comment on the case. Unbelievably, the foster kids were used in some of the riskiest drug tests - those which determine side effects and safe dosages - without having been provided with an independent advocate to monitor their health and well-being.

This situation has "major scandal" written all over it and it sure seems that every group involved may be culpable. I don't see much difference between this event and the notorious Tuskegee syphilis studies on black men in the 1930s.