Brian
Deer:
VaxGen's AidsVax
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| Materials
gathered by Brian
Deer
from his investigation
for The Sunday Times of
London of VaxGen
Inc of
California, and its
"world's first Aids
vaccine" which
flopped in two
controversial clinical
trials in 2003 |
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| The VaxGen
Experiment:
During a three-continents Sunday Times
investigation of the proposed Aids
vaccine AidsVax, which
in February and November 2003
failed in trials, Brian Deer found a
crushing scientific consensus that
VaxGen's controversial technology
couldn't work, but had been promoted
through political pressure and private
deals. The Sunday Times Magazine
October 3 1999 |
Evidence
for the prosecution: During
his inquiries, Deer was passed documents
dated March 22 1999
which showed that, long before VaxGen
offered shares to the public, the most
important government cheerleader for
AidsVax - Dr William Heyward,
head of HIV vaccine research at the
Centers for Disease Control - had a
secret deal to join the company. Out of
public duty, Deer gave some to the inspector-general,
health and human services,
who launched a formal inquiry
Go with
the flow:
From CDC in Atlanta, Heyward had lobbied
policymakers and approved $8m in
grants for VaxGen. But the
company had already drawn this chart
on his future duties, and in January
2000, he joined ex-CDC staffer Dr
Donald Francis, VaxGen
president, who also hired former CDC
deputy director Dr Walter Dowdle
to head its influential data monitoring
board
United
States v William L. Heyward: With
Deer's papers, federal attorneys brought
charges against Heyward, accusing him of
violating anti-graft laws intended to check
corruption in public service. Heyward,
now a VaxGen vice-president, eventually
admitted the conflict, paid a $32,500
fine and escaped a high-profile
criminal trial that might have proved
devastating to the AidsVax project
Mission
accompliced: While
Heyward was still in government
employment, the company directed
journalists to him - as these media pack
pages show - giving themselves his
apparently independent endorsement. CDC's
prestige also helped the stock
price of VaxGen Inc to soar
following an October 1999
press announcement about the
agency's involvement. Heyward had
championed VaxGen's position for years,
as in a string of science papers |
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| Animal
magic:
Ex-company chief Dr
Donald Francis claimed
chimps "are mirrors
of what happens in
humans." |
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Deep
shit:
Heyward. In a 49-second
interview with Deer, he
said:"I don't know
what you're talking
about."
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Investor
lawsuits (1):
[pdf file] Following the federal
prosecution of the VaxGen vice-president
Dr William Heyward, the company was hit
on March 17 2003 with the first class
action lawsuit alleging securities
fraud. This complaint filed by
attorneys Milberg Weiss
in US District Court for Northern
California alleges that the company
concealed facts, made false
claims to cause VXGN stock to
trade at inflated prices, and made
misleading statements on trial data.
VaxGen rejected the action as
meritless
Investor
lawsuits (2):
[pdf file] A second, third and fourth
legal complaint, also rejected by VaxGen
Inc, were filed by law firm groups headed
by Green & Jigarjian,
Haldenstein Adler and Glancy
& Binkow. Others followed
Of chimps
and chumps:
Company claims in its IPO prospectus [pdf] as to why
they say they believed AidsVax would work
rested on antibodies in volunteers during
small-scale tests, and two unverifed
experiments described by AidsVax inventor
Dr Phillip Berman in
chimpanzees. Preparing a Sunday Times report for March
16 2003, Brian Deer raised with
VaxGen these experiments, carried out at
Genentech Inc before that company abandoned AidsVax as not
worthy of further development
AidsVax's
political history:
Given the controversies gathered on these
web-pages, one obvious question is: how
did this fiasco happen? In 1998,
New York Newsday reported on the
intensely political background to Aids
research in general and the quest for a
vaccine in particular. Legal process will
now try to resolve whether, against this
background, VaxGen misled
investors over the possibilities for
AidsVax to actually have an impact on the
disease. Many critics are now asking:
will the law succeed where science has
failed? |
| VaxGen
product AidsVax "forgets one century
of science" says expert when
interviewed by Brian Deer |
Scientists
caught napping: On
February 24 2003, VaxGen broke with its
declared plans for unveiling data and
announced the failure of
its US clinical trial in the middle
of the night, ET, giving
themselves a clear run with off-hours
media staff. Aids activists were outraged by
the stunt, and scientists who might have
challenged VaxGen's spin on the data were
for the most part asleep
Playing
the race card: According
to VaxGen's results, the trial
failed to show efficacy, but
under company subgroup analysis it was
claimed that among blacks and Asians the
vaccine had astounding protective powers.
VaxGen slides, however,
revealed a weird clustering of infections
in the placebo group - caused by
one Chicago man - and message board chat raised
anxieties over race
Berman's
big moment: On
March 31 2003, AidsVax inventor Dr
Phillip Berman made a rare
appearance at one of Vaxgen's many
conference calls - this time from a
symposium in Canada. During his 30-minute
presentation of material from the US
trial, the stock market responded, as
this chart shows. In January 2004, Berman
quit VaxGen, with founding president Dr Donald Francis |
| Work in
progress: The
$8m CDC grant went to five of the US
centers participating in the VaxGen
clinical trial. At this link, an April
2001 CDC press notice backgrounds the crucial
project Heyward was involved in
setting up. This substudy of VaxGen's
trial may have been badly distorted by selective
recruitment of volunteers who behave
abnormally compared with controls -
suggested by this chart |
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Longtime
observer: Since
reporting in 1981 the first recognized
death in the UK from what would
later be known as Aids, Brian
Deer has followed both the
epidemic caused by HIV and issues
connected with other vaccines, such as
the DTP-DPT. His
investigations for The Sunday Times in
the field of medicine
won him a British Press
Award in 1999, the UK version of
a journalism Pulitzer Prize |
Vehement
denials: In reply
to the criticisms, VaxGen Inc argued that
the failed trials of AidsVax would help
battle Aids, regardless of their outcome.
At this link the company
denies any conflict of interest by Dr
Heyward, and at this link it offers its
own account of the fierce
opposition AidsVax has encountered,
suggesting that criticisms were
themselves motivated by conflicts of
interest
Stansberry
spam: For all the
incredulity among vaccine scientists, one
man who stood above the herd with Drs
Francis, Heyward and Berman was Porter
Stansberry, an Agora "investment
analyst" who hyped the
stock and claimed to have "proof" that
AidsVax worked. Even as insiders and
institutions dumped VaxGen, Stansberry's
mailshots promised miracles. He
later challenged Brian
Deer
Contact
Brian at this link: Were
you misled by CDC's apparently
disinterested endorsement of the
"world's first Aids vaccine"?
Do you feel the company told you the full
story? To contact Brian Deer
about these, or anything else, please
email him through this link |
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Maker
of failed Aids vaccine in
fraud claim
The Sunday Times,
March 16 2003
Brian Deer
The firm behind the
world’s first
vaccine claIming to offer
protection against Aids
faces allegations of
securities fraud after a
four-year trial of the
drug ended in failure
last month.
Milberg Weiss, the
American law firm leading
the pursuit of the energy
company Enron, plans to
file a multi-million-
dollar claim against the
medical firm this week.
It will allege that
VaxGen, of Brisbane,
California, cheated
thousands of small
investors in the firm by
allowing
"favoured"
insiders to sell stock
before it was announced
last month that the
vaccine did not work.
After the news, VaxGen's
shares fell from a
12-month high of $23.25
to $3.
The company said last
week that the allegations
would be contested
vigorously.
VaxGen began large-scale
tests of its AidsVax in
1998, recruiting 5,400
subjects. The trial was
launched amid excitement
among investors but
incredulity among many
Aids experts.
“The whole thing was
ridiculous,” said Dr
Robert Gallo,
co-dicoverer of HIV, last
week. “I don’t
know of a serious
scientist in the world
who would have expected
this to work.”
Nevertheless, AidsVax was
launched by medical
entrepreneurs fronted by
Dr Donald Francis, a
former employee of the US
government's Centers for
Disease Control and
Prevention. Francis, who
grossed nearly £4.5m
from VaxGen in its first
three years, was backed
by his old government
employer, which gave the
trial £5m and helped the
firm to brush aside
high-level opposition.
In 1999 The Sunday Times
revealed that a
government official who
played a vital role in
securing the £5m grant
for VaxGen also had a
secret deal to join the
company. This official -
Dr William Heyward - was
later prosecuted under
federal conflict of
interest laws and was
fined £20,500.
Milberg Weiss will allege
that Francis, Heyward and
others in the firm knew
the trial was set to
fail. It is focusing on
institutional stock sales
before the results were
announced on February 24,
including sell-offs by
Vulcan Ventures, owned by
Paul Allen of Microsoft.
Small shareholders say
they were encouraged by
company statements that
all volunteers in
small-scale trials
"developed
neutralising antibodies
to HIV"; and that
AidsVax had
"protected"
chimpanzees.
What the company did not
emphasise was that an
evaluation of HIV
infections among
volunteers found
antibodies to be weak,
transient and too
narrowly type-specific to
protect. Last week Vulcan
Ventures declined to
comment on the
allegations about VaxGen.
A spokesmen for VaxGen
said: "If indeed
this lawsuit exists, the
fact that the lawyers
gave it to a newspaper
before VaxGen speaks
volumes about its lack of
merit. VaxGen has
complied with all
securities laws and, if
need be, will defend
itself vigorously."
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