When Ethics Refused to Wait: The AZT Trial and the Price of Doing Nothing

In 1988, a new drug promised to protect babies from HIV. But medicine’s pursuit of scientific proof came at a moral cost.

In 1988, I was directing an obstetric unit in Harlem that cared for one of the largest groups of HIV-positive pregnant women in the United States. It was a time of fear, loss, and daily ethical confrontation. We had no effective treatment to protect mothers or babies from the virus. Then came zidovudine—AZT—a drug that showed early evidence of reducing …