Is it ethical to test possible HIV cures by having subjects stop taking antiretroviral therapy and then giving them placebos rather than the experimental treatment? The answer is often yes, according to a new paper published in the Journal of Virus Eradication by Rutgers ethicists and a Harvard doctor. They argue that if stopping antiretroviral treatment to give subjects an experimental medication is ethical in a particular trial, then so is stopping antiretroviral treatments to participants in the same trial who will get placebo. “We wrote this paper because our coauthor Daniel Kuritzkes, who specializes in HIV treatment and cure research, told us that people at conferences and in the field were questioning the ethics of giving participants whose antiretroviral therapy was interrupted nothing but placebo,” said Monica Magalhaes, lead author and associate director of the Center for Population–Level Bioethics (CPLB) at the Rutgers Institute for Health. To read the full story.