Incarnation Children's Center

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Incarnation Children's Center (ICC) is a nursing facility for children living with HIV in New York City. From 1989 until 2000 the center operated as a foster care boarding home; since then it has concentrated on providing medical care. The ICC is a non-profit corporation affiliated with the Archdiocese of New York and Columbia University.

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[edit] Clinical trials

Between 1993 and 2002 around 60 children at the ICC took part in clinical trials sponsored by the National Institutes of Health to test the efficacy of antiretroviral medication for HIV/AIDS, alongside thousands of other children across the United States. The results of these trials contributed to the approval of new therapies for HIV-positive children.[1]

[edit] Abuse allegations

In 2004, the AIDS denialist journalist Liam Scheff alleged that the ICC was abusing children by force-feeding them potentially toxic HIV medications. He suggested that children who received these medications became ill when they might otherwise have remained healthy.[2] The story was later investigated by The Guardian and other mainstream news sources.[3] The BBC financed and aired a documentary entitled Guinea Pig Kids, which echoed Scheff's charges against Incarnation Children's Center.[4]

Staff at the center vehemently denied these claims of mistreatment, asserting that all trials were properly run and beneficial to the children.[4] The New York State Department of Health found that none of the abuse allegations was substantiated, and that the source of the accusations "appears to be a group of individuals holding the view that HIV does not cause AIDS - a view discredited by scientific and medical consensus around the world."[5]

The New York Times described the charges as "a single account of abuse allegations—given by a single writer about people not identified by real names, backed up with no official documentation as supporting proof, and put out on the Internet in early 2004 after the author was unable to get the story published anywhere else." The Times further noted that there is "little evidence that the trials were anything but a medical success" and dramatically reduced death rates among children with HIV.[4]

In early 2007 a group of scientists and AIDS activists, including Mark Wainberg, demanded a retraction and apology from the BBC, charging that the BBC documentary Guinea Pig Kids was "inflammatory, deceptive, error-filled and dangerous".[6]

The BBC upheld several of the group's complaints and apologized for deficiencies in the documentary and associated website material. The BBC acknowledged that the film made false and misleading claims, and "was biased towards the views of AIDS denialists."[7][8]

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  1. ^ ICC statement
  2. ^ The House That AIDS Built
  3. ^ "UK firm tried HIV drug on orphans", by Anthony Barnett. Published in The Guardian April 4, 2004. Accessed 16 Feb 2007.
  4. ^ a b c Belated Charge Ignites Furor Over AIDS Drug Trial, by Janny Scott and Leslie Kaufman. Published in the New York Times on July 17, 2005; accessed February 17, 2008.
  5. ^ New York State Department of Health letter
  6. ^ AIDS Activists and Scientists File Complaint Against the BBC over HIV Disinformation.
  7. ^ Letter from Fraser Steel, BBC Head of Editorial Complaints, to Jeanne Bergman, 31 July 2007
  8. ^ 'Serious concern' at BBC over flawed HIV film, published in The Guardian. Accessed October 31, 2007.
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