ABSTRACT
Last December Rebecca Cole, assistant director of the National AIDS Hotline, got a call at home from a woman with AIDS Related Complex who wanted to get into a program testing the drug Ampligen. Of thirteen drug trials in NYC that are relevant to women, five are strictly for men. The trials that are open to both groups are primarily for AZT. Ampligen was developed by HEM Research, a small company based in Nashville. HEM went into partnership with DuPont Pharmaceutical in order to get the financing necessary to bring a drug through the complicated process required for Food and Drug Administration approval. Dr. Michael Grieco of Saint Luke's Ampligen Program cited some other reasons for women's exclusion. "The best patients," he said, have been male homosexuals. Women have less compliance. DuPont has other arguments for male-only protocols. Morris claims that most researchers want an easily handleable group and in many cases women with AIDS are IV drug users.
