Former General Accounting Office Assistant Director Blasts the Agency for Cover Up of Apparent Sabotage of Cancer Drug Test.

NEW YORK CITY--(BUSINESS WIRE)--August 11, 1998--

Article Appears in September Issue of Penthouse

In a series of investigative reports on the intentional mishandling of the National Cancer Institute sponsored clinical trials of the anti-cancer agent hydrazine sulfate, Penthouse magazine recently accused the G.A.O. of colluding with the N.C.I. to cover up a deliberate and inexplicable act of medical malfeasance contributing to the deaths of all 600 participants.

Barry Tice, a former top General Accounting Office investigator who quit the agency has accused his former bosses of covering up the apparent sabotage of tests of a powerful cancer fighting drug by the N.C.I..

Tice is quoted in the September issue of Penthouse magazine, on sale now, as saying that his bosses rewrote a "final draft report" of a 14-month G.A.O. investigation of N.C.I. sponsored trials of the drug hydrazine sulfate. The Tice draft was highly critical of the N.C.I. for flaws in its tests of hydrazine sulfate, but in the version of the report eventually published by the G.A.O., the institute was largely absolved of wrong-doing. The controversial drug costs less than $1 a day, and has been hailed by many medical researchers as an effective treatment in most kinds of cancer.

Tice told Penthouse interviewer Jeff Kamen he was "extremely angry" when his superiors at the G.A.O. apparently caved in to pressure from the N.C.I. to change key phrases in his report on its tests of the drug. "The impact of the changes and a few key deletions was tremendous. Those changes took N.C.I. almost completely off the hook," said Tice, referring to his finding that N.C.I. test protocols allowed patients to consume substances that rendered hydrazine sulfate ineffective and potentially fatal.

The rewrite "seemed to make a mockery of the hard work and substantial extra time I invested in this effort," Tice said. "In my almost 30 years at G.A.O. I was rarely forced to accept rewrites or deletions that I thought significantly altered a report's message." Among his complaints was that the N.C.I. refused to recognize hydrazine sulfate as an M.A.O. inhibitor, which would have significantly altered required cautions about drug interactions. Independent research has shown hydrazine sulfate to be an M.A.O. inhibitor.

Bob Guccione, publisher of Penthouse has issued a call for families of cancer patients who participated in clinical tests of hydrazine sulfate between 1989 and 1993 to become members of a class-action lawsuit under consideration against the N.C.I. Mr. Guccione says in an advertisement that appears in the September issue that "The National Cancer Institute failed to inform patients that the concomitant use of certain medications, tranquilizers, barbiturates, or alcohol during the test could deactivate the therapeutic action of hydrazine sulfate and induce morbidity and mortality in patients."

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