The Truvada disaster

“Hundreds of thousands” of victims

Before diving in, I would like to remind the reader that the total number of HIV-positive individuals in the United States is estimated to be 1.2 million. Hundreds of thousands of victims of iatrogenocide in the form of serious adverse effects of anti-HIV medication is hardly insignificant in light of this statistic; furthermore, these are only the victims we know about. 23,000 plaintiffs in just one class action lawsuit represent 2% of the American HIV-positive population. The Truvada experiment is likely to make history as one of the most egregious forms of deception in the history of medicine.

Eight patients who took the popular HIV/AIDS drug Truvada and similar tenofovir-based drugs have sued Gilead Sciences, Inc., claiming the giant pharmaceutical company deliberately withheld a much safer version of these drugs from the market for more than a decade in a patent-timing scheme to maximize profits.

As a result, "hundreds of thousands of HIV-infected patients experienced serious, permanent and sometimes fatal complications that may have been avoided had the company been honest about the safer alternative it had in the wings.

"Instead, Gilead chose to squeeze all the profits it could from the older drugs before their patents expired and then file a new patent on the safer drug, this way extending its dominance in HIV/AIDS anti-viral drugs to 2038," said attorney Robert K. Jenner, Jenner Law, of Baltimore, MD. 

The suit also alleges that Gilead Sciences withheld from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) clinical trial results and adverse event reports showing HIV/AIDS drugs using its formulation known as tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) caused far more serious complications than the company reported. Drugs using this formulation were developed and marketed between 2001 and 2015 as Truvada, Viread, Atripla, Complera and Stribild.

—Gilead Lawsuit

The following represents only a tiny sampling of the “hundreds of thousands” of victims of Truvada and similar medications.

Michael Lujano and Jonathan C. Gary took Truvada and Atripla for several years. In May 2018, they filed their lawsuit in California state court.

Lujano took Truvada from 2004 to 2009. Then, he took Atripla from 2009 to 2015. At the age of 35, doctors diagnosed him with osteopenia and osteoporosis of the spine, neck and hip.

Gary took Truvada from 2001 until 2011. Doctors diagnosed him with Fanconi syndrome and osteopenia and osteoporosis.

Gilead tried to have the case dismissed, but in Feb 2019, Judge Carolyn B. Kuhl allowed the claims to continue on all actions except strict liability. The case will proceed on negligence and breach of warranty claims.

—Michael and Jonathan’s stories

—Content of the lawsuit

Christopher Pierot filed his case July 2018 in Louisiana federal court. He took Truvada to manage his HIV from 2008 to 2009.

Pierot was 26 when he started taking Truvada. By age thirty, he suffered bone necrosis and bone loss so severe that he needed to have both hips replaced. He suffered a great deal of pain after each surgery.

Pierot’s lawsuit claimed Gilead’s studies showed levels of TAF in target cells were about 10-fold and 30-fold greater than with TDF. It was also more efficient and barely detectable after the body used it. But TDF remained in blood plasma, a marker that it could be toxic to non-target cells.

Despite this knowledge, Gilead continued to sell the less effective, more toxic TDF and withhold TAF from patients.

—Christopher’s story

The plaintiff, Eric S., has named Gilead Sciences Inc. as the defendant that manufactured and produced the medication which he alleges caused his Truvada bone density loss.

According to the Truvada bone density loss case, Eric S. was HIV-negative at the time he was prescribed the drug regimen, and he remains so to the present day. The plaintiff was encouraged to start taking Truvada as part of a preventative prophylaxis program in 2016 by his physician. The HIV combination drug was thought to lower the risk of having the virus transmitted to him while he remained sexually active.

The narrative of the lawsuit indicates that Truvada works in the HIV-positive recipient to discourage the virus from replicating in the patient’s system. This lowers the chance that the infected person will transmit the disease and, without replication, the immune system is not constantly taxed.

Relying upon Gilead’s presentation of Truvada and its benefits, the decision was made by Eric and his doctor to prophylactically ingest the drug from 2016 to 2018.

The complainant was not yet 40 at the time he started taking Truvada on a preventative basis. Had Eric had the full information at his disposal, the lawsuit narrative indicates that a different decision might have been made or he might have opted not to participate in the prophylaxis treatment altogether.

According to the report, Eric had what should have been an inconsequential fall in January 2018. This fall resulted in his forearm being shattered in several places with bone protruding through the skin. He needed surgical intervention and the addition of plates and screws to repair the arm. Eric says this injury was made worse due to the loss of bone density allegedly caused by Truvada.

— Eric’s story

Another plaintiff in the class action suit, Ricardo Wohler, says he has lost 17 teeth in just three years due to the drug. The 52 year-old real estate agent from Marin took TDF for 12 years and was never made aware of its potential side effects, he said.

"I learned how to smile without opening my mouth, how to speak without showing my teeth. This had an entire impact on my life, my self security, my self esteem, but also on my finances."

—Ricardo’s story

Vanessa L. Naisha filed a Truvada lawsuit against Gilead in Delaware on July 11, 2019. Doctors diagnosed Naisha with HIV in 1986, and she began taking Truvada as soon as the drug hit the market in 2004.

By 2009, Naisha experienced severe pain in her hips and loss of balance. In 2010, she had to use a wheelchair after her hips failed.

She had two hip replacement surgeries in 2011 and suffered complications during the second surgery. She had to go to the Intensive Care Unit for a blood transfusion and did not regain consciousness until hospital staff ran electricity through her body seven times.

Doctors said her bone mineral density was osteopenic. It wasn’t until 2018 that she discovered Truvada might be to blame.

“[Naisha] put her trust in [the] Defendant with hopes of getting treatment for HIV. She was oblivious to the fact that all these years she was ingesting poison,” the complaint said.

—Vanessa’s story

Furthermore, the dangers of these drugs are not limited to bone and kidney damage, but include cardiovascular disease and neurological disruption.

More than half of HIV-positive patients taking medications like Truvada, Stribild and Atripla will eventually develop a neurocognitive disorder associated with the disease and the drug cocktails used to treat it, according to the findings of a new study.

Chinese researchers published a study in the European Journal of Pharmacology in February, which explored why more than half of all HIV-infected patients who take viral suppressant medications that include the active ingredient tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) will develop HIV-associated neurocognitive disorder (HAND).

The widely used drugs include Truvada, Viread, Atripla and several others. Most are combinations of several drugs required to suppress the viral load in HIV and AIDs patients

HAND affects mental and motor function, with increasing severity over time, and is often a sign of the transition from being HIV-positive to having a full AIDS diagnosis. In early stages, symptoms are minimal, including slowed extremity movements that do not impair activities. However, in the later stages it can render victims into a nearly vegetative state.

Previous studies have found that highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART), such as treatment with drugs like Truvada and Atripla, is linked to the progression of HAND. However, it is unclear in previous studies whether the condition is linked to the known neurotoxicity of those drugs.

—HAND

Also, PrEP drugs are mysteriously being touted as almost perfectly effective at preventing seroconversion, despite the lack of evidence in the literature for this claim.

A San Francisco man was infected with a partially resistant strain of HIV despite consistent use of Truvada (tenofovir DF/emtricitabine) for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP), a researcher said here.

After a year on PrEP with apparently good adherence according to blood and hair sample tests, the young man was infected with an HIV strain that was resistant to emtricitabine, but still susceptible to tenofovir, reported Stephanie Cohen, MD, of the San Francisco Department of Public Health.

“HIV infections during PrEP use are extremely rare," Grant [Robert Grant, author of the iPrex PrEP study] told MedPage Today. "There are only a few cases reported worldwide after hundreds of thousands of people have used PrEP and tens of thousands of HIV infections have been prevented. Almost all people who use PrEP stay free of HIV, and a handful of others are diagnosed early and promptly and successfully treated."

—“Rare” PrEP failure

However, when one reads the results of the clinical trial itself, run by Dr. Grant, it is clear that PrEP failure cannot possibly be “rare.” The iPreX study enrolled 2,499 HIV-Sero negative men and transgender women. Over the course of the study, there were fully 100 seroconversions—36 in the TDF group and 64 in the placebo group—reflecting a “44% reduction” in HIV incidence. How this translates into almost perfect efficacy “in the wild” boggles the mind.

Indeed, a look at the disturbing PrEP ads—the constantly patronizing, creepy ads that shamelessly target African Americans and gay men—indicates that the pharmaceutical companies that produce these ads do not themselves believe the myth that PrEP has near perfect efficacy, since they never actually come out and say a number, instead preferring to say that it might “lower the chances of getting HIV through sex”—but not by how much.

Indeed, virtually no clinical trials of PrEP indicate anywhere near a 99 percent efficacy rate. This doesn’t stop AIDS activists and pharmaceutical companies from their obsessive desire to get every member of a “risk group” onto a lifelong regimen of medication whose side effects were known by companies such as Gilead, but covered up in order to maximize profits. It would not be out of line to ask if one can trust Gilead when they claim Descovy to be “safe,” when in reality the dose of active ingredient in the drug has simply been lowered.

Curiously, it seems that members of risk groups may have an inkling that embarking on a lifelong regimen of chemotherapy designed to treat a condition they don’t even have might be unwise, since as recently as 2018 it was reported that only 4% of sexually active gay and bisexual men even used PrEP. And while that number may have increased since 2018, the fact remains that a clear majority of “risk group” members are just saying no to PrEP.

For more information on the “science” behind PrEP and HAART, preorder The Real AIDS Epidemic.