Petrelis Files

March 8, 2005

Dr. David Ho
Director
The Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center
New York, NY

Dear Dr. Ho:

I wish to extend hearty thanks to you for helping set a high standard of transparency in HIV research, which you did in an article in the New York Times recently. The paper reported you had fully disclosed your ties to the ViroLogic biomedical firm, a basic component of transparency.

However, the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center's (ADARC) web site has not posted any information about these ties and how extensive they are. In this new information age, scientists such as yourself can and should fulfill the promise of full transparency through consistent public disclosure.

You have taken a great stride forward in this matter and appeal to you to go further in helping people living with HIV, including myself, achieve transparency with AIDS researchers who have great influence over our health and choice of medicines.

But I believe you must go beyond disclosing ties with ViroLogic only to a New York Times reporter. Whatever disclosures you made to the reporter should be available on the ADARC site.

As a person with AIDS who daily must grapple with this disease, I am entitled to have as much information as possible about the treatments I take and the individuals responsible for creating AIDS drugs, tests to judge their effectiveness, and help set public policy.

These are my recommendations for you to consider in the interests of AIDS transparency:


1. DISCLOSURE PAGE

Creation of a comprehensive financial and ethical disclosure page for you on the ADARC site, listing all of your past and current affiliations with pharmaceutical and biomedical firms.

This should not be a difficult endeavor, considering you must provide this information to medical journals when you publish any of your frequent articles. All it would take really would be for your web masters to post the information.

(Source: http://www.adarc.org)


2. TIES TO VIROLOGIC

Include full disclosure of ties to the ViroLogic firm; how long on their scientific advisory board, family connections, any stock options, and number hours devoted to the company's advisory needs.

I cannot praise you enough in revealing your affiliations to ViroLogic to the Times, but patients, the public and members of the press should have no trouble locating the ties on ADARC's site.

Disclosure of the information should not be dependent on doing a costly search on the Times web site.

(Source: http://www.virologic.com/520.asp?show=520)



3. AFFILIATION WITH GLAXOSMITHKLINE

Post all news releases about your seat on the GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) Discovery Award Panel from the biomedical corporation.

As you can imagine, being a person living with HIV, I am keenly aware of drug options, and the lack of new ones when my current AIDS drug cocktail fails, so GSK's Drug Discovery and Research Grant program may lead to better anti-AIDS medicines.

You have served on the GSK panel for four years, and in three of those four years, the panel award grant money to researchers in your lab at ADARC, which, frankly, makes the GSK program seem something of money funnel to ADARC.

Starting in 2001, your GSK panel gave $100,000 to ADARC; for 2003 the amount was $125,000; and in 2004 $250,000 went to your ADARC colleagues. Grand total, so far, is $475,000, and I won't be surprised if this kind of fiscal support from GSK to your lab continues.

Your GSK disclosure page should also highlight how the drug manufacturer in February signed a three-year agreement for $7.5 million with ViroLogic to support GSK's drug development of improved AIDS drugs.

(Sources: http://www.dddresearchgrant.com/review_board.html , http://www.dddresearchgrant.com/past_rep.html and http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=VLGC&script=410&layout=-6&item_id=283042)


4. HONORARIA

Disclose all instances of when you received honoraria, including those from drug manufacturers and biomedical firms, and/or were reimbursed for travel expenses to speak at scientific conferences by the firms, amount received and hours spent for speaking engagements, traveling, etc.


5. TAX REPORTS

Post all available IRS 990 tax forms for ADARC. The IRS requires all tax exempt charities to file an annual 990 form, detailing overall budget, revenue, large expenses and contracts, and salaries. Providing all of ADARC's IRS 990 forms since its inception will go far in meeting a basic tenet of fiscal transparency for AIDS researchers and their laboratories.


6. TIES TO JAIDS

Since it is not well-known among the people with AIDS community that you coedit the peer-review Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, state on your disclosure page your association with JAIDS.

Disclose an annual breakdown, since you've been editing the journal, advertising amounts spent by biomedical, technological and pharmaceutical manufacturers.

Transparency for the world of AIDS research also means patients should know how much money you are compensated for this work.

(Source: http://jaids.com/)


7. CHAIRING CONFERENCES

You served as chair for the recent retrovirus conference in Boston, where you presented data and answered questions about your research.

Were you compensated for your chairing duties? If so, how much?

As chair of this respected and influential conference, it's vital to know which firms underwrote the expenses of it.

Please disclose any honoria, travel expenses, or any other forms of financial compensation you received as chair, along with a list of the underwriters and how much they each contributed to the conference's expenses.

(Source: http://www.retroconference.org/2005/Home.htm)


8. ADARC BOARDS

The ADARC web site presently only lists the names of officers, and members of the board of directors and the center's scientific advisory board.

Biographical and institutional facts about those who serves as officers or as members of either board guiding ADARC is sorely lacking, along with details about full financial disclosures and competing interests.

(Source: http://www.adarc.org/about/officers.htm)


9. COMPETING INTERESTS DISCLOSURE

Your January 18 article in the PLoS Medicine journal about giving a shot in the arm to AIDS vaccines was accompanied by the following erroneous statement:

"Competing Interests: The author declares that he has no competing interests."

Readers of your article have not been adequately informed about your competing interests and I think it's necessary for you to urge the editors of PLoS Medicine to quickly print a correction with your full financial disclosures.

(Source: http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020036)


I ask that you immediately post all of this requested information on the ADARC site, in the name of AIDS research transparency and full disclosure from researchers, diligently working to find a cure.

People with HIV infection or full-blown AIDS, our families and loved ones, millions of at-risk individuals around the globe and concerned citizens of our planet deserve transparency from researchers.

A prompt reply is respectfully requested.

Sincerely,
Michael Petrelis
San Francisco, CA