By 1987, AZT was being given routinely to patients diagnosed with AIDS.(69) Over the next few years, other DNA-inhibitors were similarly approved by the FDA for the treatment of AIDS, like "ddI" and "ddC." (Anthony Fauci, director for AIDS research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, admitted in 1995 that "ddI has never been compared with a placebo in a large study."(70))

What happens to these patients on AZT? Does AZT actually cure AIDS, or prolong the life of the patient, or increase the quality of the patient's life?

Not according to all the studies. Instead, the patients experience all the usual side-effects of immunosuppressive chemotherapy: hair loss, muscle degeneration, anemia, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, weight loss, impotence, leukopenia, hepatitis, Pneumocystis pneumonia, and cancers such as lymphoma.(71).

The fact is that AZT recipients develop lymphoma 50 times more often,(72) and 25% more patients die if they are taking AZT(73) -- and they die 33% faster(74) -- than non-AZT patients. Want proof?

In a French study on hundreds of AIDS patients taking AZT, one-third experienced a worsening of their AIDS conditions, and others developed new AIDS opportunistic diseases. On AZT, one out of every five patients died within nine months.(75)

In England, on a study of thirteen AIDS patients taking AZT, all thirteen developed severe anemia.(76)

In Australia, more than half the patients taking AZT developed a new AIDS opportunistic disease during the first year. Half needed blood transfusions to survive. One-third died within eighteen months.(77)

A Dutch study found that three-quarters of the patients on AZT died within fourteen months.(78)

In the United States, a 1994 study found twice as much dementia in AZT-treated patients.(79) Also in 1994, HIV Positive hemophiliacs taking AZT had a 2.4 times higher mortality rate and a 4.5 times higher AIDS risk rate than HIV Positive hemophiliacs not taking AZT.(80) In 1995, a study found that HIV Positive male homosexuals on AZT treatment had anywhere from two to four times the risk to develop Pneumocystis pneumonia.(81)

Usually, only three percent (3%) of AIDS patients get lymphoma (cancer). But 50% of those patients taking AZT in the original (Phase I) FDA approval trials developed lymphoma three years later.(82)

Even one of the biggest proponents of AZT, Paul Volberding, wrote a report in 1994 that the T-cells of a placebo group in an AZT study had increased gradually over two years, while the T-cells of those taking AZT had decreased.(83) Volberding finally admitted in 1995 that "AZT does not significantly prolong either AIDS-free or overall survival."(84)

In short, we're giving a drug to AIDS patients that not only does them no good, but actually worsens their condition and shortens their life. Why in God's name would we continue to do this?

Someone had a bright idea -- if these DNA-inhibitors are so bad, let's start hiding them in a drink with a "fun" name and call them "new."(85) So as of 1996, HIV Positives are now being given "cocktails" made from an elaborate combination of DNA-inhibitors and protease-inhibitors -- although the long-term consumption of protease-inhibitors alone, or in combination with DNA-inhibitors, has yet to be determined in animals or in humans. (The HIV/AIDS establishment has been unusually silent on the current status of the first group of test patients to try protease-inhibitors in 1995.)(86)