Thousands left with untested drugs and medical devices in bodies after Trump order: report

Real-life consequences over President Donald Trump’s plot to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development are emerging as the agency’s stop-work order has left thousands of people with experimental drugs and medical devices inside of their bodies – and nowhere to turn.

That’s according to The New York Times, which reported that dozens of unfinished clinical trials around the world that relied on USAID funds have suddenly shut down, leaving patients abandoned and in a state of limbo as their access to researchers is abruptly withdrawn by Trump’s executive order freezing foreign aid grants for three months.

The move is also fueling “waves of suspicion and fear” including in Africa, Asia and Latin America, the Times said in a report published Thursday.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my 40 years of doing international research. It’s unethical, it’s dangerous and it’s reckless,” Dr. Sharon Hillier, a professor of reproductive infectious diseases at the University of Pittsburgh, told the publication.

Until this week’s stop-order, Hillier led a five-year, $125 million USAID-funded trial testing HIV prevention drugs, which included “bimonthly injections, fast-dissolving vaginal inserts and vaginal rings.”

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“With the study suspended, she and her colleagues cannot process biological samples, analyze the data they have already collected, or communicate findings to either participants or the partnering government agencies in countries where the trials were conducted,” according to the report. “These are requirements under the Helsinki agreement.”

“We have betrayed the trust of ministries of health and the regulatory agencies in the countries where we were working and of the women who agreed to be in our studies, who were told that they would be taken care of,” Hillier added.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has insisted the agency is wasteful and not in line with Trump’s foreign policy agenda.

Dr. Kenneth Ngure, president-elect of the International AIDS Society, worried about the threat to trial volunteers in five countries as well as the millions of people living with HIV.

“It’s wrong on so many levels — you can’t just stop,” Ngure is quoted as saying about the trials.