With alarming new statistics on the increases in the spread of AIDS in South Africa, yet another team of scientists has announced the development of a drug intended to prolong the lives of people with AIDS.
It comes against a background of various scams to treat the disease, an erratic approach to the epidemic by the government, and an increasingly cynical but desperate public.
The announcement, made by a team from a small university known as Medunsa (The Medical University of South Africa), was aimed at the public through a well publicised press conference after a five day trial on human beings.
Professor Wimpie du Plooy, professor of pharmacology at Medunsa, told a now sceptical public that the drug, called Inactivan, was an anabolic steroid which stops HIV from replicating in white blood cells.
Few in South Africa are ready to accept the findings of the team as it follows hot on the heels of the now infamous episode when two little known, ill qualified scientists claimed to have found a cure for AIDS (6 June, 1998 p 1696).
Virodene, as the drug was called, was in fact a toxic industrial solvent.
South Africa’s minister of health, Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, tarnished her reputation by associating herself with the drug, which had been through none of the usual research protocols, peer review, or drug regulatory mechanisms.