TAC hails court victory over Rath and Manto

[bluegray V]

Thanks to this blog post for highlighting this piece of good news: TAC hails court victory over Rath, Manto.

The Cape High Court ruling that vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath was acting illegally was a victory for the rule of law and for science in medicine, the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) said on Friday.

In a ruling handed down on Friday morning, Judge Dumasini Zondi barred Rath from claiming his product, VitaCell, was a treatment for Aids, and declared that the clinical trials he had been conducting in black townships were unlawful.

Zondi also said Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and her department had a duty to investigate Rath's activities.

I feel another zapiro coming

[Tweefo]

Of course Manto will "spin" her way out of this as well but all in all a rare victory over woo-woo.

[wandapec]

Didn't want to create another topic for this but thought it might be of interest that Matthias Rath has pulled out of his legal case against Ben Goldacre from the Bad Science blog.

[bluegray V]

That is good news!

Ben Goldacre: The food supplement industry's stifling of debate is far from democratic

Matthias Rath today pulled out of a legal case against the Guardian which has cost the organisation £500,000 to defend. I am proud that we fought it. Rath is an example of the worst excesses of the alternative therapy industry; UK nutritionists make foolish claims on poor evidence – they can make your child a genius with fish oils, or prevent heart attacks in the distant future – but Rath transplanted these practices into the world of HIV/Aids, where evidence really matters.

The potential consequences of his actions are outrageous, but he is by no means untypical. This sector has engineered a beneficent public image for itself, a warm and friendly cottage industry; but that fantasy is not borne out by the facts.
...
The food supplement pill industry is phenomenally powerful, extremely lucrative and incredibly influential, but it has shown itself to be philosophically and commercially incapable of critical self-appraisal. Rath is its product. It is inconceivable that any individual within that industry would be brave enough to stand up and criticise his activities – and for that, more than anything else, it should be condemned.

Matthias Rath: Fall of the doctor who said his vitamins would cure Aids

Matthias Rath, the vitamin campaigner accused of endangering thousands of lives in South Africa by promoting his pills while denouncing conventional medicines as toxic and dangerous, has dropped a year-long libel action against the Guardian and been ordered to pay costs.

Rath sued over three Guardian articles that condemned his promotional activities among Aids sufferers in South African townships.

A qualified doctor who is thought to have made millions selling nutritional supplements around the globe through his website empire, Rath claimed his pills could reverse the course of Aids and distributed them free in South Africa, where campaigners, who have won a hard-fought battle to persuade the government to roll out free Aids drugs to keep millions alive, believe Rath's activities led to deaths.