Petrelis Files

(AIDS profiteer Dr. Paul Volberding)











AIDS Expert Volberding's Viatical Profited from Patients' Deaths

The word shame is not part of AIDS researcher Dr. Paul Volberding's vocabulary. For a long time he's accepted large speaking fees, honoria, stock options and support grants from HIV drug companies, while he's been a voting member on federal panels recommending treatments for AIDS and HIV-related infections. This sort of coziness between AIDS researchers and Big Pharma is standard practice and of concern to AIDS accountability activists who want real transparency applied to all such researchers.

One person providing much-needed sunshine on all of this is longtime advocate Mike Barr. Visit his ShillFactor.net site to learn more about AIDS transparency, and go here for a list of panels and committees on which Volberding serves and click here for most of his financial competing interests.

Barr recently uncovered documents showing Volberding was profiting from the deaths of people with AIDS back in the 1990s when he was a member of the board of directors of a viatical company. Read all about it here. The highlights:

Is there anything more ill considered? More ghoulish? An HIV doc positioning himself to profit from the deaths of AIDS patients?

Seems Dr. Volberding served on the board of directors of this San Francisco-based viatical settlement company until January 1997 when it was sold to Viaticus Inc.

As part of his compensation package there, Dr. Volberding was awarded options in the publicly traded company's stock (as many as 75,000). Dignity Partners went public in February of 1996 at a public offering price of $12 per share -- from which the company received net proceeds of $25M.

What Barr reports is news to me and after googling many ways for any news accounts or disclosure by Volberding and his employers, with nothing turning up, except court documents about Volberding's viatical company being sued, it appears as though Volberding's highly questionable relationship with a company that made lots of money off of AIDS patients deaths is not well-known or acknowledged.

Kudos to Barr for bringing Volberding's outrageous profiteering to the AIDS community's attention. Now, what we desperately need are improved financial transparency rules developed and applied to Volberding and all AIDS researchers.