AIDS "Boost For Clinical Trials" In UK

A major consequence of the development of AIDS in the UK, and of the public response to it, is the substantial impetus which has been given to clinical trials, according to a new report, AIDS in the UK: The Making of Policy 1981-94. Like war, AIDS has crystallized issues and achieved change, says the author, Virginia Berridge, Reader in History in the Department of Public Health and Policy at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

For example, as a result of the development of AIDS, not only have clinical trials of new drug treatments in the UK been debated and modified (and subsequently re-modified) but the entire clinical trials industry has achieved a substantial impetus, according to the study. Also, genitourinary medicine has expanded and risen in status, the UK Public Health Laboratory Service has been saved, and the Blood Products Laboratory has been funded to move towards self-sufficiency. Biomedical and epidemiological research has expanded and, most importantly, scientific and clinical expertise has defined the parameters of the policy response to AIDS, with medical values by and large underpinning policy formation and determining its focus.

Role Of The Media AIDS has demonstrated the process whereby controversial research findings become "scientific facts," accepted, and taken for granted, according to Ms Berridge. The role of the media has been significant in mediating scientific perceptions of the syndrome, with its talk of "breakthroughs" and possible "magic bullets." AIDS has also provided a case study of the reporting of health and medicine, in which the role of medical correspondents has, in most cases, simply legitimated dominant perceptions of science, she says.