Associated Press - August 11, 2004

Health Minister Nuth Sokhom said he had been instructed by Prime Minister Hun Sen to stop the project to test the drug Tenofovir, also known as Viread DF, made by biotechnology company Gilead Sciences Inc., based in Foster City, Calif. He said the prime minister "is worried about the effect on the Cambodian people and on the human values and rights," and "is not allowing [the drug] to be tested on humans at all."

Cambodia, whose Health Ministry had approved the project last year, currently has the highest HIV infection rate in Southeast Asia, blamed largely on its flourishing sex trade.

The prime minister repeated his objection to any experiment of the anti-AIDS drug on his country's citizens, first voiced in a speech last week, and said it "should be tested on animals" instead, Nuth Sokhom told the Associated Press.

Viread is already used to treat people infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The new test in Cambodia was aimed at determining if the drug can prevent infection in those who don't already have the disease.

Partially funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the proposed trial would have recruited almost 1,000 sex workers, who are at high risk for becoming infected with HIV. The trial was to have given one group Viread and another a placebo over a period of a year to see if those taking the drug had a statistically lower incidence of HIV infection.

The trial was to be conducted by researchers from the University of California San Francisco, with additional funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the University of New South Wales.

Members of a local sex workers' rights group, Women Network for Unity, have refused to participate in the planned study, citing a lack of insurance against potential side effects.

Activists at last month's International AIDS conference in Bangkok, Thailand, also protested the test, saying the prospective participants were being exploited. The protesters, led by the AIDS activist group Act Up, accused the researchers of purposely providing insufficient prevention education to the volunteers because infection data are needed to analyze Viread's potential to protect against the virus. The protesters also demanded that the company take care of the lifetime medical needs of any volunteers who contract AIDS during the experiment.

Cambodia's current HIV infection rate is 2.6% among those aged 15 to 49 years old, the highest in Southeast Asia.

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