The House That AIDS Built

[excerpt]

By Liam Scheff

Introduction:

In New York’s Washington Heights is a 4-story brick building called Incarnation Children’s Center (ICC). This former convent houses a revolving stable of children who’ve been removed from their own homes by the Agency for Child Services. These children are black, Hispanic and poor. Many of their mothers had a history of drug abuse and have died. Once taken into ICC, the children become subjects of drug trials sponsored by NIAID (National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease, a division of the NIH), NICHD (the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development) in conjunction with some of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies – GlaxoSmithKline, Pfizer, Genentech, Chiron/Biocine and others.

The drugs being given to the children are toxic – they’re known to cause genetic mutation, organ failure, bone marrow death, bodily deformations, brain damage and fatal skin disorders. If the children refuse the drugs, they’re held down and have them force fed. If the children continue to resist, they’re taken to Columbia Presbyterian hospital where a surgeon puts a plastic tube through their abdominal wall into their stomachs. From then on, the drugs are injected directly into their intestines.

In 2003, two children, ages 6 and 12, had debilitating strokes due to drug toxicities. The 6-year-old went blind. They both died shortly after. Another 14-year old died recently. An 8-year-old boy had two plastic surgeries to remove large, fatty, drug-induced lumps from his neck.

This isn’t Science fiction. This is AIDS research. The children at ICC were born to mothers who tested HIV positive, or who themselves tested positive. However, neither parents nor children were told a crucial fact -- HIV tests are extremely inaccurate.(1,2) The HIV test cross-reacts with nearly seventy commonly-occurring conditions, giving false positive results. These conditions include common colds, herpes, hepatitis, tuberculosis, drug abuse, inoculations and most troublingly, current and prior pregnancy.(3,4,5) This is a double inaccuracy, because the factors that cause false positives in pregnant mothers can be passed to their children – who are given the same false diagnosis.

Most of us have never heard this before. It’s undoubtedly the biggest secret in medicine. However, it’s well known among HIV researchers that HIV tests are extremely inaccurate – but the researchers don’t tell the doctors, and they certainly don’t tell the children at ICC, who serve as test animals for the next generation of AIDS drugs. ICC is run by Columbia University’s Presbyterian Hospital in affiliation with Catholic Home Charities through the Archdiocese of New York.


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Sean and Dana Newberg are two children from ICC. Their mother used drugs and was unable to care for them properly, so they were raised in foster care, until their great-aunt Mona adopted them. Mona Newberg is a teacher in the New York Public Schools, and has her Master’s degree in Education. She adopted the children when Sean was three and Dana was six. She was already raising their older brother, who was never given an HIV test or AIDS drugs. He’s now grown, healthy and serving in the Navy.

Their mother used heroin and crack cocaine since she was a teenager. She was given an HIV test in the late 80s and tested positive. “She had three children before Sean and Dana,” said Mona. “Nobody told us that the test cross-reacted with drug abuse, let alone pregnancy. It’s not a valid test.”

Because of the test result, the doctors at Columbia Presbyterian put Sean on AZT monotherapy when he was 5 months old. Use of AZT monotherapy is now considered malpractice because it can cause debilitating, fatal illness including fatal anemia.

Sean has been on life support twice as a result of the AIDS drug Nevirapine. Dana was put on AIDS drugs in 2002, even though she wasn’t sick. Since being put on the drugs, Dana has developed cancer.

Both children have been taken into ICC and kept there against their will and against Mona’s wishes for one reason – Mona has questioned the safety of the AIDS drugs AZT, Nevirapine and Kaletra and stopped giving the drugs when they made the children ill. In the summer and fall of 2003, I visited Mona, Sean, Dana and ICC. I spoke with Mona about her experience and her decision.

Liam Scheff: What led you to question the safety of the drugs?

Mona Newberg: When I first got Sean at three years old, he was a vegetable. He’d never eaten solid food. He had a feeding tube that went through his nose into his stomach. AIDS medications change the taste buds. AZT, especially, makes it so kids can’t stand the taste of food and won’t eat. The nurses fed Sean AZT, Bactrim and six cans of Pediasure a day through this tube, which stayed in his stomach for over two years. Nobody ever bothered to change it.

When I got Sean, I continued to give him the drugs as prescribed for about 5 months. But after each spoonful, he got weaker. I thought, wait a minute – this stuff is supposed to be making him better, why is he getting worse?

[Mona eventually decided to take Sean off the drugs, and found that his health improved gradually but steadily. The Agency for Child Services didn’t approve of her choice – to refuse AZT for Sean, even though it made him ill, and signed him up with a doctor at Beth Israel].

Mona: An ACS worker came to my door, and told me I had to register the kids with an infectious disease doctor – Dr. Howard at Beth Israel. I was taking Sean and Dana to a Naturopathic MD, and they were both healthy and strong. I told them that we had a doctor. They said, “Too bad, you have to see Dr. Howard now.”

Howard was terrible for the children. He ignored the only thing that actually bothered Sean – his lung condition, and insisted that he go on a new drug for HIV. He said, “There’s a new miracle drug. It just came on the market. I guarantee if you give it to Sean, you’ll watch the miracle happen”.

LS: What was the miracle drug?

Mona: Nevirapine. Howard put Sean on Nevirapine. Sean’s health immediately deteriorated. He got sicker, his lungs congested, he lost weight, his cheekbones sunk, his liver and spleen started to go. Six months after he went on Nevirapine, he had complete organ failure. He was on life support for two weeks at Beth Israel Hospital. Then I did some research on Nevirapine, and found out that it caused organ failure and death. When Sean finally got out of the hospital, Howard discharged him on hospice care. Six months earlier, he was healthy. Now they were telling me to prepare for his death.

[Mona was able to get Sean out of the hospital and bring him home. She stopped giving the Nevirapine, and Sean gradually improved. She was then approached by an ACS worker to put Sean into ICC.]

The ACS worker told me I should put Sean into Incarnation Children’s Center until he was stronger. They told me that ICC was this wonderful place. They said in four months he’d be strong enough to come back home. ICC took Sean off the Nevirapine and put him on Viracept, Epivir, Zerit and Bactrim. Sean improved off the Nevirapine, but the new drugs definitely made him sick – just not as badly. He had trouble walking, and his arms and legs got even thinner.

I visited Sean at ICC for five months. Then, when I wanted to bring him home, they said, “We don’t recommend that Sean leave here. You have a reputation for not giving meds.”

LS: ICC refused to let Sean come home?

Mona: Right. They kept him for a year and a half. I had to get a lawyer to get him out.

LS: What was it like for Sean at ICC?

Mona: There were children in wheelchairs, on crutches, with deformations. There were AZT babies. Their heads have a different shape, with the eyes spaced wide and sunken in. The drugs cause severe developmental problems. Many children have misshapen, weak limbs and distended bellies. Many are learning disabled. The kids at ICC are constantly medicated with all kinds of drugs. When children refuse the drugs the nurses hold them down and force feed them. Sean wanted to get the hell out of there.

During my visits I noticed that many children at ICC were walking around with tubes hanging from their undershirts, and I wondered what they were. Then one day, I saw the nurse come in with a whole tray of medications and syringes, and I watched her inject this medication into the tubes coming out of their stomachs. I couldn’t believe it. I thought, my god, what’s going on here?

Every child who had a stomach tube took their medication that way, from the three-year-olds to the teenagers. It horrified me. I couldn’t understand it. When I found out what was being done, I thought, surely this must be illegal. There’s no way they could be doing this legally.

I expressed my concerns to Sean’s ACS case worker. I said, “Do you know what they’re doing to those kids in there? This reminds me of Nazi Germany.” He said, “They’re doing wonderful things for these children.” I called Albany, the state capital, and talked to [name withheld] at the State Department of Health’s AIDS Institute. He said, “What are we going to do if these little children refuse to take the medication? How are we going to save their lives if we don’t perform this operation?”

LS: Who performs this operation?

Mona: The children are sent to Columbia-Presbyterian for the operation. The surgeons there do it.

[Mona described the children who’ve died at ICC. Two children, ages six and twelve, had strokes from drug toxicity. One went blind, and they both died shortly after. Amir, a nine-year-old, has had repeated operations to remove fatty lumps from his neck and back. The fist-sized lumps (lipodystrophy) are caused by AIDS drugs called protease inhibitors. “The children at ICC who don’t have the tubes tend to be a whole lot healthier and live a whole lot longer than the ones with the tubes,” Mona said].

You can read the rest here. The pictures of the children and the effects that the experimental drugs can have on them are particularly disturbing.