New Study Reviews Remarkable Progress Made Against AIDS By Pharmaceutical Industry

Feb. 14, 2011 - PRLog -- New York, NY – A new publication released today by the American Council on Science and Health (http://www.acsh.org), "Whatever Happened to AIDS? How the Pharmaceutical Industry Tamed HIV," explains the central role played by the pharmaceutical industry in transforming AIDS from an inevitably fatal illness to a chronic, manageable disease. This story is largely untold.

Although it is now well known that there are highly effective drugs to combat AIDS, the general public has very little idea of how this came to be. Written by Dr. Josh Bloom, Director of Public Health at ACSH, this peer-reviewed report explains the science behind the war against HIV as it occurred during the decade from the mid 1980s to mid 1990s, when the most dramatic discoveries in the fight were realized.

“Rendering AIDS manageable is one of the great success stories in modern medical history,” said Dr. Bloom. “Yet, very few know where the crucial drugs employed in this battle came from, nor do they have any idea of the scientific expertise, nor the extraordinary effort mounted by the pharmaceutical industry required to undertake such an effort, let alone, succeed in it.”

Written from the perspective of a scientific researcher in the field, the report details the painstaking, state-of-the-art research carried on inside hundreds of labs within pharmaceutical companies. It also incorporates basic principles of drug discovery as a tool for explaining how this process took place.

The effect of this work has been world-changing. Although AIDS was one of the most feared epidemics in history, AIDS is now rarely mentioned in the Western World. Further, material progress is finally beginning to be seen in Africa, where, through the use of antiretroviral drugs, the rate of transmission of the disease from mother to fetus is decreasing for the first time.

But, contrary to popular belief, it is not the government nor academia that discovered the principal drugs necessary to treat and prevent AIDS. Rather, it is the pharmaceutical industry that fought most of this battle.

Dr. Bloom’s report uses a mixture of text and detailed renderings to explain the seven steps employed by HIV to infiltrate human cells and turn them into engines of AIDS. His report explains why these complex mechanisms make HIV so difficult to prevent through the development of vaccines. Dr. Bloom then explains how scientists have used their knowledge to come up with classes of drugs designed to target and prevent the action of HIV along each of these pathways and how pharmaceutical researchers now combine drugs with varying functions to produce multiple application pills of great efficacy and relative ease of use.

According to ACSH Director of Publications Jonathan Leaf, “This report provides the first brief, clear and comprehensible account – intelligible to the laymen – of the science behind the revolution in AIDS treatment. Written by a veteran pharmaceutical scientist familiar with the range of problems inherent in commercial drug development, it tells a story which is at once heartening and of uncommon significance. The implications and importance of this report cannot be underestimated – especially at a moment when radical changes in federal drug policies are under consideration.”

Read the study here: http://www.acsh.org/publications/pubID.1937/pub_detail.asp
http://www.acsh.org

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The American Council on Science and Health is a non-profit, consumer education association promoting sound science on a wide range of public health issues, including food safety, nutrition, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and the environment.