No evidence government-funded AIDS clinical trials caused foster children deaths in New York

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, has been a frequent target of misinformation throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A Dec. 20 article by the Gateway Pundit repeats rumors that Fauci funded experiments through the National Institutes of Health that resulted in the deaths of dozens of orphaned children in New York.

Fauci, according to the article, was "caught" funding deadly experiments on AIDS orphans in New York City. The story claims an investigative report on the drug trials found that 25 children died during the studies, and more passed away following the trials.

The article was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)

While the federal government did provide funding for some clinical trials involving HIV-positive children, researchers involved in an investigation into the work said many of the children were very sick when they entered the trials and the report did not find that any child’s death was directly caused by clinical trial medication.

It was this investigation that Gateway Pundit’s report relies on. We reached out to the website  for comment but did not hear back.

Here’s what we know about the studies:

Between 1985 and 2005, researchers held a number of studies to test medications for AIDS on children, many in the foster care system, who were HIV-positive. Some of the clinical trials were sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, but many were funded by Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development.

Prompted by concerns about the participation of New York City foster children, Children Services called on the Vera Institute for Justice, a nonprofit research and policy organization, to conduct an investigation in 2005. 

The report, released in 2009, noted that nearly 3,900 children were born with HIV infection in New York City between 1977 and 2006. It identified 532 such children who participated in 88 clinical trials and observational studies for AIDS-related treatments. 

The New York State Department of Health, citing confidentiality laws, did not allow Vera to access state medical records, but the organization said it was able to collect information through child welfare files, policy files, interviews and public information from the NIH.

The report identified some issues with the trials, including missing consent forms, and it made a series of recommendations. A 2005 review by the Associated Press, meanwhile, found that a significant number of foster children weren’t provided an often-required independent advocate. 

"Many children — inside and outside of foster care and clinical trials — died because of complications of HIV/AIDS during the late 1980s and 1990s," the Vera report read. "Eighty of the 532 children who participated in clinical trials or observational studies died while in foster care; 25 of them died while enrolled in a medication trial."

Instead of finding evidence that participation in the trials caused the childrens’ deaths, the report found the opposite: "Vera medical staff did not find, however, that any child’s death was caused directly by clinical trial medication."

The report added that of the 25 foster children’s deaths that occurred during the clinical trials, "22 of these 25 children had developed multiple AIDS-related complications prior to their enrollment in a clinical trial."

One of the report’s lead authors, Tim Ross, who now serves as the managing partner of a child welfare research group called Action Research, recently told the Associated Press that people suggesting that the trials were the cause for the 25 deaths were "completely misreading what we found." He added that the children who entered the trials were already "incredibly sick."