It wasn't a failed "chemotherapy" drug that was deemed "too toxic".
Its targeted mechanism was supposed upon the research of Temin and Baltimore et al's al environmental retrovirus-to-cancer theory.
It turned out that cancers aren't based on human retroviruses, (aside from HTLV), ergo, it wasn't a useful treatment in its current form (it was however broken down and used in other anti-tumor based treatments).
AZT has side effects, but it has saved a lot of lives.
I don't think every day people understand just how hard, how many mechanisms and biological processes are involved when you have retroviruses, more specifically Lentiviruses. It's not at all an easy thing to treat and the fact that we have something that does work, even if it does have some side effects in some people is astounding.
OP's meme claim that people died from AZT more than AIDS is so outstandingly ignorant, factually incorrect and just patently stupid. I could go on, but I know people will probably dislike this comment because it flies in the face of their confirmation bias, but oh well.
It was never approved by the FDA in its current form prior to becoming an AIDS treatment, if you don't want to call it failed then you can use the more delicate term "unsuccessful" due to "lack of efficacy and an unacceptably high side effect profile", but it didn't work. The drug wasn't completely useless for AIDS, but it needed tweaking as the doses they were giving long term resulted in the side effects and didn't prevent death. Sure it was better than nothing short term, but to claim everyone who tested positive should get on this drug was terrible advice and, given its incredibly high cost, looked more like an opportunistic cash grab than a measure for public health. That's why Fauci gets shit for his recommendations back then, and his current behavior promoting high cost treatments and vaccines over inexpensive, widely available, safer alternatives is even worse. There are much better treatment options or drug combinations for HIV/AIDS now, and the worry with the covid vaccine is that it will be ineffective and will be looked back on as a similar mistake where we "didn't know any better yet" while a few pharma companies raked in billions with legal immunity. The difference is the vaccine isn't being given to a few thousand terminally ill patients, they're trying to push it to the entire US (and eventually world) population. I don't disagree with you and you obviously know what you're talking about, but regardless of how you think Fauci and his contemporaries handled AIDS, what they've been doing the past year is criminal.
That isn't exactly true.
It wasn't a failed "chemotherapy" drug that was deemed "too toxic". Its targeted mechanism was supposed upon the research of Temin and Baltimore et al's al environmental retrovirus-to-cancer theory.
It turned out that cancers aren't based on human retroviruses, (aside from HTLV), ergo, it wasn't a useful treatment in its current form (it was however broken down and used in other anti-tumor based treatments).
AZT has side effects, but it has saved a lot of lives.
I don't think every day people understand just how hard, how many mechanisms and biological processes are involved when you have retroviruses, more specifically Lentiviruses. It's not at all an easy thing to treat and the fact that we have something that does work, even if it does have some side effects in some people is astounding.
OP's meme claim that people died from AZT more than AIDS is so outstandingly ignorant, factually incorrect and just patently stupid. I could go on, but I know people will probably dislike this comment because it flies in the face of their confirmation bias, but oh well.
It was never approved by the FDA in its current form prior to becoming an AIDS treatment, if you don't want to call it failed then you can use the more delicate term "unsuccessful" due to "lack of efficacy and an unacceptably high side effect profile", but it didn't work. The drug wasn't completely useless for AIDS, but it needed tweaking as the doses they were giving long term resulted in the side effects and didn't prevent death. Sure it was better than nothing short term, but to claim everyone who tested positive should get on this drug was terrible advice and, given its incredibly high cost, looked more like an opportunistic cash grab than a measure for public health. That's why Fauci gets shit for his recommendations back then, and his current behavior promoting high cost treatments and vaccines over inexpensive, widely available, safer alternatives is even worse. There are much better treatment options or drug combinations for HIV/AIDS now, and the worry with the covid vaccine is that it will be ineffective and will be looked back on as a similar mistake where we "didn't know any better yet" while a few pharma companies raked in billions with legal immunity. The difference is the vaccine isn't being given to a few thousand terminally ill patients, they're trying to push it to the entire US (and eventually world) population. I don't disagree with you and you obviously know what you're talking about, but regardless of how you think Fauci and his contemporaries handled AIDS, what they've been doing the past year is criminal.