The Gary Null Show - Should Wikipedia Be Trusted for HIV Retroviral Therapy? - 10.04.19

Summary: Should Wikipedia Be Trusted for HIV Retroviral Therapy? David Crowe, Richard Gale and Gary Null PhDProgressive Commentary Hour, October 4, 2019 Wikipedia's entry for HIV prevention and treatment drug Zidovudine (ZDV), more commonly known as AZT (azidothymidine) and Retrovir, is largely a sanitized history about the discovery of by far the most important AIDS drug. The FDA's approval of AZT established a new drug class of nucleoside analogs, sometimes referred to as "nukes." It is also misleadingly referred to as a "reverse transcriptase inhibitor." The history relies heavily upon pharmaceutical-sponsored research, such as the Burroughs-Welcome's AZT trials that eventually led to its patent approval. On the surface, that is all fine. But as with many Wikipedia entries, it is the overriding message by the pages editors that require scrutiny. Vital information that ought to be included in an encyclopedic entry for a drug that has waged controversy ever since its discovery, is curiously missing. A review of AZT's page history indicates that efforts to present the downside of AZT retroviral effectiveness and the drug's safety record have been scrubbed. In fact, AZT is an incredibly dangerous drug, which we will see, directly interferes with DNA synthesis.