Claims of a cure for HIV come under fire.

In a 2016 paper published in the British Journal of Medicine and Medical Research, investigators led by Maduike Ezeibe (Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike, Nigeria) reported that they had found, in effect, a cure for HIV/AIDS. They wrote that ten patients went from testing positive for HIV to testing negative within months of starting treatment with medicinal synthetic aluminium– magnesium silicates. The previous year, Ezeibe and his colleague Ijeoma Ogbonna had published a similar paper in the World Journal of AIDS in which they outlined reductions in viral loads of 75–100% in four patients with HIV using the same treatment. That Ezeibe has discovered a cure for HIV seems improbable. The studies lacked control groups and randomisation, they were not approved by an independent ethics committee, no information was provided on whether patients were taking antiretroviral therapy, and there was no mention in the conflict of interests statement that Ezeibe owns the patent on the drug under investigation. When asked by The Lancet Infectious Diseases about the lack of control group, Ezeibe countered that the before-and-after comparisons served as control. He added that since his university does not have an independent ethics committee, “each physician/hospital ensured that all ethics were observed”, and that his ownership of the patent was mentioned in the reference section of the British Journal of Medicine and Medical Research paper.