Sunday Times, South Africa - September 26, 1999
Carol Paton

PROFESSOR Malegapuru Makgoba, president of the Medical Research Council, has finally said what many scientists before him dared not: "Virodene is nonsense."

Makgoba's comment, made in Parliament this week, is the last chapter in the Virodene debacle - a protracted saga that became so clouded by politics it seemed unlikely that the truth about the drug would ever be established.

And although the truth about Virodene might have been selfevident from the start among the scientific community, the ambiguity expressed by politicians and the ongoing media coverage that the drug's developers enjoyed meant that among the public it was not.

The truth was also hampered by the unstated political reality of the transition: the more emphatically scientific figures associated with the old order proclaimed Virodene useless, the less those associated with the majority party seemed to believe them.

Makgoba's frank rejection of Virodene as "nonsense" and as being "without scientific integrity" is therefore significant - not least because it comes from a credible black figure.

But the fact that Virodene was completely lacking in scientific integrity meant that it was more than just a drug that didn't work: it was a remarkably convincing ploy that conned not just the then Minister of Health Nkosazana Zuma but also then Deputy President Thabo Mbeki and the national executive of the ANC.

So how did the developers of Virodene - an unremarkable laboratory technician from the University of Pretoria named Olga Visser, her husband Zigi and two Pretoria cardiothoracic surgeons - manage to convince the likes of Zuma and Mbeki that they had stumbled across a cure for AIDS?

How Visser first got access to Zuma is unknown. But their association goes back to the middle of 1996, at just the time when the scandal over Sarafina! 2 - an ineffective theatre production about AIDS on which Zuma's department spent the sum of R10,5-million - had for months been gnawing away at Zuma's reputation.

Just when it seemed that Zuma would be saved by an anonymous donor who offered to pay back the money, the plan was cancelled after the Public Protector set certain conditions for the acceptance of anonymous donations.

Shortly after the donation fell through, Zuma "encouraged" the Virodene team to "show their research to the Cabinet".

With her AIDS policy under scrutiny and seriously wanting in comparison to poorer, less developed African countries, Virodene may have presented itself as the quickest route out of a disastrous situation.

The press responded to the news that the Cabinet had received a presentation from local scientists on a cure for AIDS with reckless triumphalism.

Technical illustrations showed how Virodene acted to kill the immunodeficiency virus and even "pull people with fullblown AIDS back from the brink of death".

Interviews with some of the 11 people illegally treated with Virodene quoted astonishing results. One man, for instance, claimed to have gained 10kg in three weeks and said the boils that had infested his body had vanished.

Sober voices from the scientific fraternity, complaining that the Virodene researchers had violated ethical codes by performing trials and by not first presenting their work to their scientific peers, were hardly heard above the din.

In short, there was elation.

But a serious investigation followed.

Performed jointly by the Gauteng Health Department and superiors of Visser's at the university, the investigation found that Virodene was nothing more than an industrial solvent and that no scientific evidence existed to show that it would act against the immunodeficiency virus.

The investigative committee also said it found the lack of specific scientific expertise in the fields of internal medicine, virology and toxicology among the group of Virodene researchers a matter of concern.

But the harsh response of the scientific community was not enough to lay the matter to rest. On the contrary, the fight over Virodene began to get ugly.

Professor Peter Folb, the chairman of the Medicines Control Council, which is responsible for decisions to allow clinical trials on new drugs, was replaced as head of the council after prohibiting further research into Virodene.

New legislation reducing the powers of the MCC appeared shortly afterwards, and leading ANC politicians made telling statements about how the council's powers needed to be curbed.

There was also an accusation made against the ANC that it stood to benefit from the production of Virodene after documents showing that the party had a six percent share in Visser's company landed in the hands of the Democratic Party.

The ANC denied the allegations and claimed that the allocation of shares had happened without its consent. But the truth of how the shares were allocated to the ANC was never conclusively determined.

After the MCC rejected the protocols submitted by the Virodene developers, the ANC called on the council to expedite the process that would allow clinical tests to be conducted.

The ANC's conviction that there was integrity in Virodene was also borne out by Mbeki's astonishing involvement in the issue. After the Virodene producers split into two camps - a battle which eventually landed up in court - Mbeki held several meetings between the two groups to broker an agreement between them.

Taken together, the subtext of the ANC's message was clear: authorities from the old order were strangling an initiative backed by the government in unnecessary red tape.

Following the replacement of Folb with a new chairman, Helen Rees, the Virodene team tried another three times to have their protocols accepted for clinical trials, and each time were refused.

The protocols, submitted in two boxes, were badly prepared and the council spent "an unusual" amount of time examining the Virodene protocols, Rees said when asked about the drug. It also spent more time examining Virodene protocols than other proposals to develop AIDS vaccines because of the "tenacity" of the researchers in submitting their protocols, said Rees.

In June last year, more than a year after news of the Virodene miracle cure had hit the papers, the council was still considering its protocols.

At about that time, the council made the ambiguous statement that the "drug had made progress but there were still quality and efficacy concerns to be resolved".

Recurring snippets of news about Virodene have also helped to keep up the profile of the drug and, with it, the ambiguity over its efficacy.

A story about illegal trials using Virodene in Portugal by a company partly owned by Visser surfaced, and the court dispute between the Virodene camps and rumours of black market traffic in the drug also kept its profile up as the months went on.

What added to this problem was Zuma's refusal to back down or state unequivocally that the drug held no hope for people with AIDS.

It all makes Makgoba's by-theway dismissal of Virodene more significant.

While his rejection of the drug is no different to its rejection by the first investigation by academics at the University of Pretoria or the implicit rejection of it by the MCC, this time it comes from a source more likely to have a resonance in circles suspicious of white officialdom.

But if the last word on Virodene is that it is "nonsense", it still leaves one issue unresolved: why did the 11 people who took the drug in its initial illegal trials show such remarkable improvement?

AIDS experts say that this was quite likely due to the "placebo effect" - a phenomenon experienced in medical research where even people given dummy drugs show a remarkable improvement because they believe that what they are getting will cure them.

The end of the Virodene issue is the end of a story that saw government policy-making go wrong and also showed the consequences of what happens when independent authorities are not believed because they lack credibility.

Perhaps the growing presence of more credible figures in statutory bodies and government watchdogs will in future help to keep the mavericks and chancers at bay.

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