Background
Delaney, Martin Edward was born on December 9, 1945 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
Delaney, Martin Edward was born on December 9, 1945 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States.
Delaney encouraged the Food and Drug Administration to use a fast-track review procedure for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome drugs, reasoning that dying patients could not afford to wait for the results of meticulous and lengthy research.
In 1985, he founded Project Inform, an education and public policy advocacy group concerned with Human Immunodeficiency Virus and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, and continued to lead the organisation until 2008. Delaney"s efforts to streamline the United States Food and Drug Administration"s drug approval process have been credited with saving thousands of people from early Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome deaths. Delaney, who was himself not Human Immunodeficiency Virus-positive, started Project Inform in 1985, as public awareness of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome was growing but before any treatments had been approved.
Through Project Inform, Delaney brought HIVand Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome-related issues to the attention of public policy makers and the public, lobbied for an aggressive program of scientific and medical research, and encouraged regulatory agencies to speed the approval of new medications.
Approval of anti-Human Immunodeficiency Virus drugs
Delaney saw a divide between the needs of scientists, drug companies, and government agencies on the one hand and patients on the other, with the former insisting on time-consuming drug trials for scientific, litigious and public safety reasons, and the latter demanding a chance to stay alive. Delaney helped to bring about fast-track approval of several Human Immunodeficiency Virus drugs, and he encouraged research on many more.
Underground drug trials
Delaney, through Project Inform, facilitated the unofficial testing of potential Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome medications in the days before a wide variety of antiviral drugs were available to the public. With a lengthy drug approval process and what activists felt was a plodding pace of regulatory agencies, promising new antiviral agents could take many years to reach market.
When drugs were unavailable, or when people did not respond to existing medications, some with Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome relied on untested substances in attempts to cure or alleviate their symptoms.
In 1989, Project Inform ran an unauthorised trial of a drug known as "Compound Q", made from the extract of a cucumber-like plant grown in southeast Asia. Because Food and Drug Administration-run trials of the compound were thought by Project Inform to be proceeding too slowly, the group organised an unofficial clinical trial. Compound Q was flown in from China by a treatment activist and distributed to volunteers who had not responded well to approved medication.
Although initial results were positive, and some patients wished to continue receiving the substance, Project Inform closed the trial after several volunteers died.
Delaney cautioned against overly optimistic assessments of the drug. Director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci said, "Millions of people are now receiving life-saving antiretroviral medications from a treatment pipeline that Marty Delaney played a key role in opening and expanding..It is without hyperbole that I call Marty Delaney a public health hero."
Delaney died on January 23, 2009 at his home in San Rafael, California at the age of 63.
Member of American Association Medical College (member task force on finance conflicts of interest in clinical research 2001-2009).
