German vitamin conman Dr Matthias Rath has set up two clinics in the Western Cape which lure people living with HIV/AIDS with food parcels and then trick them into being human guinea pigs, according to a Sunday Times article that appeared on September 4 2005.

Rath has reduced people to lab rats in what seems to be a crusade for money, apparently telling them to stop their antiretroviral (ARV) treatment and start taking dangerously high doses of vitamins instead.

Rath is running these clinics illegally – without the requisite approval from the Medicines Control Council to conduct a trial, and without registering its products, including Vitacor Plus, Epican Forte, Lysin C Drink Mix and Vita Cell.

According to the Sunday Times, the Rath Foundation hasn’t even bothered to apply for the necessary registration. And, if the responses of other countries to his products is anything to go by, it would be unlikely that he would receive the go-ahead here:

“Germany and Switzerland don’t allow the sale of Rath products because … the vitamin doses are too high for nutritional supplements, they haven’t passed the necessary scientific trials to be medicines and the claims that they heal disqualify them as food products.”

The article, supplied by the credible Health-e News Service, goes on to point out that Rath’s claims that vitamins are more effective than ARV treatment have been condemned by the World Health Organisation (WHO), UNAIDS, Harvard University, the SA Medical Association and the HIV Clinicians’ Society of Southern Africa.

Rath, who founded the allegedly ‘non-profit’ Rath Foundation in 2002, has made similar claims about vitamins curing heart disease and cancer in the past.

Rath established his two clinics in the Western Cape townships of Khayelitsha and Nyanga, which have been hit hard by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. People are lured to these clinics – ironically via recruiters from the South African National Civics Organisation (Sanco) - with the hope of being cured, or at least of living a better life.

According to the article, Sanco members have been acting as agents for the Rath Foundation, apparently being paid for every patient they lead to the foundation’s doors.

If the HIV-positive “volunteers” knew that they were going to be asked to strip to their underwear and be photographed, would they have agreed? Would they have gone to one of Rath’s clinics if they knew that they would be asked to stop their life-prolonging ARV treatment? Did those volunteers have any idea that this doctor and his institute are the only ones publicly advocating this new health plan, which even goes against research done by the exemplary Harvard University ? With all this in mind, it would be hard to believe that many of these people would have sacrificed themselves for “Science”.

There has been plenty of opposition to Rath’s approach, but desperation, and the hope that accompanies a new ‘miracle’ treatment, can be almost too much to resist, even if we do know better.

Médicins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) disagree with Rath’s findings and his campaign, according to an SABC news report in May 2005. This international NGO, which runs an ARV clinic in Khayelitsha, argues that ARVs are the only hope of survival for those at the onset of AIDS and that nutrition alone will not save one from dying of an AIDS-related illness.

The World Health Organisation (WHO), the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) and UNAIDS earlier this year all accused Rath in a public statement of irresponsibly, linking their names to claims that vitamins and nutrition therapy can prevent AIDS deaths. They all agree that vitamins alone cannot take the place of ARV treatment.

The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) has also had several run-ins with Rath. The NGO served him with an interdict in May 2005, after he accused it of being funded by the pharmaceutical industry and promoting ‘extremely toxic’ AZT (see the SABC report at the time). Not many would argue that nutritional supplements are disadvantageous (even Zackie takes his vitamins everyday!), but the dosages that Rath prescribes are way above the recommended nutritional limit.

The South African Communist Party and Congress of South African Trade Unions have also publicly denounced the Rath Foundation, saying that they will only endorse products which have been approved by the Medicines Control Council, and although they believe the vitamins to be advantageous, they believe that the public health vitamins which are provided for free are good enough, compared to Rath’s expensive vitamins.

According to a TAC statement condeming Rath, advertising authorities in South Africa and the United Kingdom have ordered Rath to withdraw unsubstantiated claims. (See more about this in the Journ-AIDS treatment factsheet, under nutrition.) The TAC similarly notes that the Health Professions Council has laid a charge against him, because he has violated the Health Professions Act by running clinics in Khayelitsha and Nyanga, which are not registered. Furthermore, the NGO claims that Rath is under investigation by the German government for his role in the death of a young boy who died after taking his vitamins and not the prescribed medical treatment he was meant to be taking.

Even the Sunday Times is outraged by Rath’s claims and actions. An editorial on September 4 2005 stated:

“we find it deplorable that one Matthias Rath is said to be pulling HIV-positive people off their antiretroviral regime and replacing these with dosages of vitamins. A number of people have already died.

It is our sincere belief that those who pull the antiretroviral lifeline from deserving people are guilty of murder.”

The question begs: why is the government allowing a man to run private tests and research that hasn’t been approved by the Medicines Control Council and that has been condemned by respected roleplayers in the ambit of HIV/AIDS both nationally and internationally?

While Rath has been condemned by senior ANC officials like Kader Asmal and Ben Turok, Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has entered the fray by refusing to distance herself or her department from Rath. This is what she says in a report on IOLonline:

“I will only distance myself from Dr Rath if it can be demonstrated that the vitamin supplements that he is prescribing are poisonous for people infected with HIV.”

Well, this goes a long way to answering the question posed above: denial, denial, denial. As long as it plagues our health department and senior government officials, poor people will continue to be used be used as pawns in this sickening game of political opportunism by quacks like Matthias Rath. - Lunga Madlala

This entry was posted on Monday, September 5th, 2005 at 7:17 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.