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Psychiatry

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I remember seeing Dr. Scolaro, in 1987, to appease my mom. I was 23, and had just been diagnosed HIV+. AZT had just been taking off the shelf, where it had been languishing as an ineffective and highly toxic cancer drug. Burroughs Wellcome pressured the FDA into fast-tracking the drug for use with HIV/AIDS patients. A botched double blind study was interrupted when it was deemed that 19 patients in a placebo group had died, as opposed to only one in the drug group. The study was unblinded, not completed, and Burroughs Wellcome's drug made many higher up folks very rich, while poisoning and killing countless people who could have had long lives, if they weren't given AZT. The numbers from that study, ended up equalizing when the placebo group received AZT.  I knew about the drug's history of toxicity, and never wanted to take it, and my amazing holistically oriented MD, never wanted me to take it, either. He also knew of its toxic history. My mom, wanted me to see an "AIDS Dr.", which Scolaro, a psychiatrist, instantly deemed himself. I went to him, to get my mom to stop bugging me to see an "AIDS Dr."; and even though I was a perfectly healthy 23-year old, with t-cells in the 1,200 range, Scolaro said I needed to start AZT. I told him that wasn't going to happen. He literally yelled at me , and said I had some nerve refusing to go on it. I walked out of there, and 34 years later, I'm here to tell the tale.  Back then, I met a lot of other very healthy 20-something folks, who were put on AZT, as monotherapy, in incredibly high doses taken every 6 hours, around the clock. It was prescribed by Drs like Scolaro, who saw HIV patients as pathologies that needed to be prescribed something, regardless of the consequences. I would be going to their funerals, within 2 years. Thank goodness I didn't listen to Scolarao. The mere fact that he yelled at me for not listening to him, was bad enough. I wasn't even his patient. He was one of the MDs that thought the letters "MD" stood for "Major Deity". Thank goodness I thought independently, did my own research, and didn't let him bully me into becoming another AIDS death statistic.

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Instructor, Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, USC School of Medicine

Psychiatry

Dr. Michael J. Scolaro, MD