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Originally Posted by Catbert
I think the point is liver failure death from AIDS drugs is very common, that AIDS drugs aren't that miraculous: they kill you.
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That's a rather irresponsible and uninformed statement. I have known a whole bunch of people who died from AIDS back during the days when no treatments were available, and I also know a whole bunch of people with AIDS who are alive today because they were diagnosed and began a successful drug regimen. HIV mutates very quickly, and not all drugs (or combinations thereof) are effective on all patients, and sometimes a trial-and-error process is necessary to determine which drugs are most effective on each individual patient.
I have known of people with AIDS to die of every opportunistic infection you can imagine, but I have never heard of a single one dying of liver failure caused by their medication except for the person in the article you quoted. She
was in a trial to determine maximum allowable toxicity levels, and clearly the level to which she was subjected was too high. She displayed textbook symptoms of liver disease/failure, and her doctor should have taken her off the trial immediately upon seeing these.
Was her doctor irresponsible? If the article is a complete and accurate account...yes. Was her death the fault of the drugs she was given? No, it was the fault of
the amounts of the drugs she was given, and her doctor's inattention to her symptoms and complaints.
Penicillin is a "wonder drug" and can cure a vast array of infections, but to a person who is allergic to penicillin it is a deadly poison. This doesn't mean penicillin shouldn't be given to the great percentage of people who can tolerate it, and who will benefit from it.
