Incarnation Children's Center
Encyclopedia
Incarnation Children's Center (ICC) is a nursing facility for children living with HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. 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
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

.

Clinical trials

Between 1993 and 2002, approximately 60 children with HIV
HIV
Human immunodeficiency virus is a lentivirus that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome , a condition in humans in which progressive failure of the immune system allows life-threatening opportunistic infections and cancers to thrive...

/AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

 at the ICC took part in clinical trial
Clinical trial
Clinical trials are a set of procedures in medical research and drug development that are conducted to allow safety and efficacy data to be collected for health interventions...

s sponsored by the National Institutes of Health
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...

 to test the efficacy of antiretroviral medication
Antiretroviral drug
Antiretroviral drugs are medications for the treatment of infection by retroviruses, primarily HIV. When several such drugs, typically three or four, are taken in combination, the approach is known as Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy, or HAART...

, alongside thousands of other children across the United States. In 2004, AIDS denialist Liam Scheff alleged on his blog, and later in an article in Hustler
Hustler
Hustler is a monthly pornographic magazine aimed at men and published in the United States. It was first published in 1974 by Larry Flynt. It was a step forward from the Hustler Newsletter which was cheap advertising for his strip club businesses at the time. The magazine grew from a shaky start to...

, that the ICC was abusing HIV-positive children enrolled on clinical trials by forcing them to take HIV medications, suggesting that children became ill when they might otherwise have remained healthy. The story was later investigated by The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

, while the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 financed and aired a documentary entitled Guinea Pig Kids, echoing the charges against Incarnation Children's Center.

Staff at the center vehemently denied the allegations of mistreatment, arguing that all trials were properly run and beneficial to the children. The New York State Department of Health investigated and concluded that none of the abuse allegations were 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."

The New York Times described the allegations against ICC as "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. Subsequently, an independent investigation by the Vera Institute of Justice
Vera Institute of Justice
Founded in 1961, the Vera Institute of Justice is an independent nonprofit national research and policy organization. Based primarily out of New York City, Vera also has offices in Washington, DC, and New Orleans...

 concluded that no "children died as a result of the trials or that the foster children were selected because of their race", as had been alleged. However, the New York State Department of Health
New York State Department of Health
The New York State Department of Health, ', is the governmental body responsible for public health in the state of New York. The cabinet-level department is headed by the Health Commissioner, a position held since January 24, 2011 by Nirav R. Shah, M.D., M.P.H.....

 cited confidentiality laws in limiting Vera's ability to review clinical trial research or medical records.

In early 2007 a group of scientists and AIDS activists, including Mark Wainberg
Mark Wainberg
Mark A. Wainberg, is a Canadian AIDS researcher and activist. He is the Director of the McGill University AIDS Centre at the Montreal Jewish General Hospital and Professor of Medicine and of Microbiology at McGill University. His laboratory primarily studies HIV reverse transcriptase, and the...

, demanded a retraction and apology from the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

, charging that the BBC documentary Guinea Pig Kids was "inflammatory, deceptive, error-filled and dangerous". The BBC upheld several of the group's complaints, apologizing for "serious breaches" of accuracy and impartiality in the documentary. In particular, the BBC review noted that the only "expert witness" interviewed in the documentary denied the link between HIV and AIDS, although the audience was not told that his views were rejected by the scientific community nor was the widely accepted scientific understanding of HIV/AIDS presented. The BBC also noted that the documentary created and contributed to "false impressions" about the enrollment of children on clinical trials at Incarnation, and about the effectiveness of antiretroviral treatment. The BBC published a correction advising readers that it had identified "serious failings with this programme and ruled that some of the online material based on it was misleading."

In his book Denying AIDS which reviews AIDS denialism, social psychologist and director of the Southeast HIV/AIDS Research and Evaluation (SHARE) project project Seth Kalichman
Seth Kalichman
Seth C. Kalichman is a clinical community psychologist and professor of social psychology at the University of Connecticut, who researches HIV/AIDS prevention and care....

describes the film as "instigated by Liam Scheff" and that "the story ultimately resulted in children being removed from HIV treatment. The BBC came to learn they had been led astray by Scheff and apologized for producing the documentary."
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