Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1997. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
The Associated Press; 50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020 - Wednesday, October 15, 1997; 4:33 p.m. EDT
Daniel Q. Haney, AP Medical Editor
Dr. David Ho, head of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in New York City, and Dr. Catherine M. Wilfert, a pediatric AIDS expert at Duke University, said as board members they should have been consulted about the editorial before it was published last month.
The editorial criticized several studies, mostly in Africa, that are intended to see if brief, inexpensive doses of the drug AZT will keep HIV-infected mothers from passing the virus to their babies. Some of the women are receiving dummy pills instead of AZT.
Dr. Marcia Angell, the journal's executive editor, said in the editorial that the studies are unethical. She likened them to the Tuskegee study in which poor black men in the South with syphilis were left untreated even after penicillin became available.
The editorial upset many AIDS researchers, including Ho and Wilfert, who believe the African studies are the only practical way to prove that a simple approach works better than nothing at all. Wilfert and others worried that the influential journal's criticism could bring the studies to a halt.
In an opinion piece in the Sept. 29 issue of Time magazine, Ho called the Tuskegee comparison "inflammatory and unfair." He said it "could make a desperate situation even worse."
Dr. Jerome P. Kassirer, the journal's editor in chief, fired off an angry e-mail to Ho, criticizing him for not talking to the journal before writing in Time.
Kassirer said Wednesday that Ho wrote back offering to resign. "I sat on it for a couple of days and then decided to accept his resignation," Kassirer said.
Wilfert said she submitted her resignation to take effect after the editorial board's next once-a-year meeting in December. There she said she hopes for "a very cool discussion about the role of the editorial board."
She said the journal's decision to present just one side of the controversy was a policy issue that should have been brought to the 25-member board.
"I resigned because of the way in which it was handled," Wilfert said.
Kassirer said the board members, among some of the most prominent physicians in research, are asked for advice on such policy questions as conflict of interest and Internet publishing but never on the journal's content.
"I regret this happened," Kassirer said. "On the other hand, we can't be hamstrung by trying to have decisions made by committee."
Dr. Richard P. Wenzel of the Medical College of Virginia, another AIDS expert on the editorial board, has not resigned.
Copyright 1997/The Associated Press. Reproduced with permission. Reproduction of this article (other than one copy for personal reference) must be cleared through the Permissions Desk, The Associated Press, 50 Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY 10020.
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