"the UPCA shut-down"
can't see why dell investors would be interested in a bulletin board stock but i got curious and found the story in bloomberg.
regards
Uniprime Trading Halted; SEC Questions AIDS Treatment
Las Vegas, July 22 (Bloomberg) -- Uniprime Capital Acceptance stock trading was halted for two weeks by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which questioned the auto dealer's claim of a ``major breakthrough' in AIDS treatment.
The SEC cited ``the accuracy of public statements by Uniprime to investors concerning, among other things, a product developed by a subsidiary for treating human immunodeficiency virus.' The trading halt will be until Aug. 4.
Uniprime announced Monday that a subsidiary had developed an intravenous treatment, Plasma Plus, that reversed infections from the AIDS-causing HIV virus in five patients treated in Madrid. Its chief executive said yesterday he was uncertain about its effectiveness. ``This could be a remarkable thing, we're not sure yet,' Gary Tabb, chief executive of the Las Vegas-based company, said in an interview.
Monday's announcement fueled a four-fold rise in Uniprime's stock on Tuesday to as high as 7 15/16. Yesterday, it fell 1 7/8 to 3 1/8. It traded as low as 25 cents on March 15.
Uniprime owns 70 percent of New Technologies & Concepts, which developed Plasma Plus, a formulation of herbs, vitamins and minerals. Alfred Flores, who invented Plasma Plus at a laboratory in Portugal, said he didn't read Uniprime's press release announcing the treatment until after it was issued. ``That wasn't exactly my words,' the 48-year-old chemist said in an interview. ``My words are that I have something that didn't exist, that exists now, that needs someone else to take it from me and see if it shows the same results.'
Source of Funding
Flores said his research has been neither published nor reviewed by independent scientists. He said he won't publish his work before he finds a new source of research funding, ``so we can do this properly.'
What is a car dealer, which owns auto retailers in Rochester, New York, and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, doing in the HIV treatment business? ``I'm only qualified in helping him with the PR and finding the right people,' said Tabb, 56, referring to Flores. ``I'm not qualified at all in the research.'
The company said in its announcement Monday that Flores was an honors graduate of the University of Madrid and the University of Colorado. In an interview, Flores said he graduated from Regis College in Denver with a chemistry major and robotics minor. Janet Noller, a transcript specialist at the school, now called Regis University, said there is no record that Flores attended that school. She added that to her knowledge, the school never offered a minor in robotics.
Questions From Experts
HIV experts questioned Flores' discovery. ``Skeptical is an understatement to describe my opinion,' HIV researcher Donald Forthal, M.D., assistant professor of medicine at the University of California at Irvine Medical School, said after reading the press release and listening to the interview with Flores. ``There's no reason to believe him; there's no credible information there,' he said.
A spokeswoman for the Spanish Ministry of Health in Madrid said Plasma Plus ``doesn't produce any of the effects that Uniprime claims' and that it is a ``natural product without curative properties against the AIDS virus.'
She said neither the government nor the ministry, ``nor any of the hospitals mentioned in the information has given authorization to undertake this type of study, which as far as we know didn't take place.'
Jules Levin, executive director of the National AIDS Treatment Advocacy Project, said a false claim of a cure could encourage people to stop taking their prescribed drugs, giving the virus time to bounce back. ``That's what is sad about it,' said Levin.
Freed of Virus
The company claims five HIV patients treated with the substance in Madrid by Flores in 1990 are now free of the virus. ``All we put out was news about the five patients and the letters that they sent us documenting what happened,' said Tabb.
The patients' testimonial letters, dated July 8, were posted Tuesday on Uniprime's Web site, on a page that begins with unrelated testimonials from auto dealers. ``I want to thank Mr. Flores for curing me, since my life expectancy was hopeless,' writes Corella Suarez in one letter.
In all five testimonials, the patients write they became infected with HIV in 1995. Yesterday, Uniprime said they were treated for HIV in 1990 -- five years before the letters say they got sick. Uniprime said a ``misprint' in Tuesday's press release mistakenly said their treatment was given in 1995.
Company spokesman Ed Tabb, the CEO's brother, said the letters were also inaccurate because the patients became infected in 1990, not 1995. ``There was confusion between the date of treatment and the date of the intensified monitoring,' which he said began in 1995.
Forthal, the HIV researcher, said the testimonial letters heightened his skepticism. ``There's no way this can be real.'
¸1999 Bloomberg L.P. |
