James Myburgh on the Virodene Affair

Even now, with so much material in the public domain, the full significance of the whole Virodene affair seems to escape informed opinion. The main issue is not - as many seem to assume - that procedural short-cuts may have been taken in the testing of the drug in Tanzania. The key question is whether the emotional and financial investment in Virodene by top ANC leaders, contaminated the South African government's response to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Click to expand...

In early 1997 the Medicines Control Council - which had halted the Virodene trials as soon as it heard about them - was an independent and highly professional body. While Peter Folb was the chairman, the two senior civil servants were Johann Schlebusch, the registrar, and Christel Brückner, his deputy. At this time, it should be remembered, many of the "levers of state" power had yet to be captured by the ANC. Over the course of the year the Virodene researchers would attempt to prevail upon the MCC to allow the human testing of the drug. They were able to persist with these efforts because - as this article will try and document - they enjoyed the support of both Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and Health Minister Nkosazana Zuma.

Click to expand...

She [Zuma] added that it "breaks my heart to see the number of letters I receive from patients who are dying wanting Virodene to be administered to them. I often cry in my office as I feel powerless. I am, however, convinced that one day I will have an enabling law that will allow me to overrule the MCC.

Click to expand...

In particular, he pointed to the memorandum which suggested that the ANC had been promised a six percent share in Virodene. This, Ellis said, showed that there were "very strong grounds for suspecting" that various interventions "by senior members of the Cabinet" in Virodene "were made to advance the financial interests of the ANC".

Click to expand...

Zuma told a reporter from The Star that the DP did not care for the majority of South Africans but "for the few that they represent". "The DP hates ANC supporters. If they had it their way we would all die of AIDS". Mbeki meanwhile claimed that "The DP cannot hide its pathological hatred of the ANC. Let us, however, not be deflected by activities of those who have no interest in the welfare of our people."

Click to expand...

On March 24 1998 Peter Folb was removed as chairman of the MCC. Johann Schlebusch, the registrar, and Christel Brückner, his deputy, were summoned - one after the other - to the office of the Director-General, Olive Shisana. They were presented with two choices: they could either sign a letter of resignation - and receive a severance package - or they would be suspended immediately and charged with misconduct. Schlebusch was then escorted to his office. He was required to surrender his office keys and entry card, his computer and cellphone. He was only allowed to take his briefcase. The same happened to Brückner. The locks to their offices were changed, and guards were placed outside Schlebusch's secretary's office. Staff at the MCC were instructed not to make contact with them.

Click to expand...

The allegations made by the Review Committee against these individuals, and the MCC as a whole, were later examined at length during an arbitration at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation, and Arbitration (CCMA), between the Department of Health and the Public Servants Association, representing Schlebusch and Brückner. The CCMA Commissioner found that the allegations made against the MCC by the Review Committee were without substance.

Furthermore, the departure of these officials had led to a collapse of the proper functioning of the MCC-a year after their removal the backlog in drug registration had quadrupled from between 400 to 800 to around 2600. "Schlebusch and Brückner had been unceremoniously removed from office," he wrote, "escorted from the premises and treated like criminals. In addition, no convincing operational reasons for this action have been shown."

Click to expand...

The last word on Virodene was seemingly uttered by Makgoba in September 1999. Presenting the MRC's annual report to parliament, he commented, "Virodene is nonsense. It does not have any scientific integrity".

Click to expand...

Govt slams Virodene story
15/09/2007 22:33 - (SA)

Johannesburg - A report in The Saturday Star that tens of millions of rands had been sourced from the presidency and pumped into the now banned drug Virodene was based on innuendo, the Presidency said on Saturday.

Mukoni Rat****anga, spokesperson for the Presidency, said the story was devoid of concrete facts and "tantamount to an attempt to discredit the public policy positions taken by the government".

He was responding to a report in The Saturday Star that millions of rand flowed from the Union Buildings to the developers of Aids drug Virodene, Olga and Zigi Visser, throughout 2000 and early 2001.

According to the report, the government's link to Virodene appeared to taper out around 2001, "shortly after the Virodene trial then under way in Tanzania was aborted".

Rat****anga said the quote attributed to him in The Saturday Star that "there was some kind of contact... between the president and the researcher of Virodene [Olga Visser]," was false.

"I did not and could not have specified a single individual as having had contact with the researchers as this was not the question that was asked of me."

Nevertheless, he said the singling out of the President seemed "intended to lend credence to the overall thrust of the story, which insinuates impropriety on the part of the President."

Click to expand...

NameOfBeast said:

Only if you can guarantee me a new liver!

Click to expand...

NameOfBeast said:

I've always thought of cows as gentle, harmless creatures....

Click to expand...

It is now generally assumed that the ANC government's prolonged refusal to provide anti-retrovirals through the public health-care system was due to Thabo Mbeki's adherence to the ‘dissident' view of "HIV and AIDS." The problem with this explanation is, firstly, that it mistakes the cart for the horse; and, secondly, that the chronology does not fit. The opposition to AZT predated Mbeki's conversion to AIDS ‘dissidence' by about a year. The following instalment will try and identify the possible motives at play when the decision to block AZT was made. It will also document how Mbeki's involvement in Virodene led into his conversion to AIDS ‘denialism'.

Click to expand...

By this time senior ANC leaders had clearly become deeply emotionally and financially invested in the development of Virodene as an African cure for AIDS. This created a massive conflict of interest when it came to assessing ‘rival' AIDS treatments from ‘competing' pharmaceutical companies. This conflict was sharpened by the Virodene promoter's belief that they had already fallen victim to the machinations of the big Western pharmaceutical companies. The MCC had blocked human trials of Virodene, it was believed, only because "other interests" had influenced their decision making. This was what warranted, in their minds, the purge of the MCC in March 1998.

Click to expand...

To conclude, throughout the period in which the government was depriving South Africans of any access to life-saving anti-retroviral treatment through the public health-care system, senior figures in the ANC were secretly involved in the development of an alternative cure for AIDS. There can be no doubt that the decision-makers remained convinced that they had discovered a potential cure right up until 2000 and beyond. Why else secretly channel tens of millions of rands into funding the phase 2 trials of the drug in Tanzania? This means of course that at the time the decision was made not to provide AZT, there was an expectation that a cheaper and more efficacious treatment for AIDS was on the way. The investment in Virodene - whether emotional or financial - also created a deep conflict of interest. It is striking that the government put a stop to the provision of AZT within weeks of the launch of phase 1 trials of Virodene in London; and would only relent shortly after the results of the phase 2 trials proved the substance to be inefficacious.

Click to expand...

NameOfBeast said:

Only if you can guarantee me a new liver!

Click to expand...