Let’s perform a completely unscientific, sloppy study of our new drug, then conveniently forget to tell the president about the bad results

MSNBC: Officials warned of concerns about AIDS drug

But U.S. sent medication to Africa anyway, documents show

Weeks before President Bush announced a plan to protect African babies from AIDS, top U.S. health officials were warned that research on the key drug was flawed and may have underreported severe reactions including deaths, government documents show.

The 2002 warnings about the drug, nevirapine, were serious enough to suspend testing for more than a year, let Uganda’s government know of the dangers and prompt the drug’s maker to pull its request for permission to use the medicine to protect newborns in the United States.

But the National Institutes of Health, the government’s premier health research agency, chose not to inform the White House as it scrambled to keep its experts’ concerns from scuttling the use of nevirapine in Africa as a cheap solution, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

It’s nice to know we’ve got fine, ethical people working at the National Institutes of Health.

Jesus.

Also, isn’t it nice how drugs with potential side effects are okay for Africa, but not for the US? Nice little double standard there.

[T]he German-owned company [Boehringer Ingelheim] no longer is seeking FDA permission to use nevirapine for protecting U.S. infants because better treatments have emerged, [Dr. Patrick Robinson, a top Boehringer AIDS specialist,] said.

I guess our babies are more important than African babies.

What a load of shit.