[procaare] Vitamins against ARVs:TAC prevails over Rath

["ProCAARE" <procaare@healthnet.org>]

Vitamins against ARVs:TAC prevails over Rath
***************


Cross-posted from  Nigeria-AIDS eForum <eforum@nigeria-aids.org>


"Comrades, we won!" shouted Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) founder
and long-time HIV/AIDS activist,Zackie Achmat, outside the Cape 
High
Court in Cape Town on Friday.

In a landmark judgment, the Court ruled that clinical trials of 
multivitamins
in the treatment of HIV/AIDS by controversial vitamin salesman 
Matthias Rath
were unlawful, and banned them from continuing.

The judgment also forbids Rath from publishing any more 
advertisements claiming
that his product, VitaCell cures AIDS, pending further review by 
the Medicines
Control Council (MCC), South Africa's drugs regulatory authority.

Judge Dumisani Zoni ordered Health Minister Manto 
Tshabalala-Msimang and her
director general to take "reasonable measures" to prevent Rath from
engaging in such activities and instructed the health department to 
thoroughly
investigate Rath's vitamin trials, and "in light of the facts 
revealed
by such investigation, take further reasonable action in accordance 
with their
duty".

"This judgment is a victory for the rule of law and the scientific
governance of medicine. Over the last decade in this country that 
rule of law
has been contested by our minister of health and the president, and 
a culture
of impunity has been created such that charlatans like Matthias 
Rath can get
away with deceiving vulnerable people such that those people end up 
progressing
to AIDS and dying," said TAC spokesperson Nathan Geffen, at a media
briefing shortly after the ruling.

Geffen cited testimonies from two families whose relatives had died 
after
participating in Rath's trials. "Although this is a great victory,
let's not forget that there were real human lives lost as a 
consequence of
the actions of Matthias Rath, and more importantly, by the failure 
of
Tshabalala-Msimang and the president to stop this sort of 
quackery," said
Geffen.

In a press release, the TAC underlined the government's role in 
supporting
Rath, and called for Tshabalala-Msimang's dismissal.

The TAC has recorded five deaths as directly linked to Rath's 
trials, but
suggested the real mortality figure may be closer to 12.

Geffen stressed the significance of Friday's judgment in 
emphasising the
government's duty to "enforce the scientific governance of 
medicines
as defined in the Medicines and Related Substances Act".

"Charlatans and quacks abound. In Cape Town and other cities, 
numerous
unproven remedies are sold as cures for AIDS. The minister of 
health has
fostered this situation by creating the illusion that people with 
HIV have a
reasonable choice to make between ARVs [antiretroviral drugs] 
versus
alternative remedies," stated the press release.

The TAC put "all purveyors of untested and unregistered medicines,
especially those selling so-called 'cures' for HIV/AIDS" on notice
that they would be using Zoni's judgment to close them down. Zeblon 
Gwala,
the inventor of the alleged AIDS-remedy Ubhejane, was singled out, 
as was Tine
van der Maas and her "Africa's Solution" remedy.

Operating in South Africa since about 2004, pharmaceutical 
entrepreneur
Matthias Rath claimed that his multivitamins treated AIDS, 
heart-disease,
cancer, diabetes, bird flu and numerous other diseases. In early 
2005, Rath and
his associates opened facilities in the Western Cape township of 
Khayelitsha,
where they ran unauthorised clinical trials of a variety of vitamin
"cures" for HIV/AIDS, including VitaCell.

"People took the Rath medications because they didn't know any 
better.
And also because of the food parcels and stipends," Thembisa 
Mkhosana, a
community health advocate in Khayelitsha told IRIN/PlusNews. 
According to
Mkhosana, the monthly stipends of R750 (US$92) and parcels 
containing
"vegetables, tinned foods ... everything" were given to trial
participants.

Rath ran numerous advertisements aimed at convincing HIV-positive 
people to
take his high-dose multivitamins rather than ARVs, available 
free-of-charge
through the public health system, which he claimed were "toxic".

One of those who responded to Rath's marketing was Mkhosana's 
cousin.
"She was taking the Rath pills, and now she's sick," said
Mkhonsana. "She started losing weight, vomiting, and having 
diarrhoea. But
now she's going for ARVs. Some people are still doing Rath's work 
by the
back door [in Khayelitsha], but I hope with this ruling, it will 
stop."

In February 2005, the TAC and the South African Medical Association 
(SAMA)
lodged a complaint against Rath with the Medicines Control Council. 
After
repeated requests by the TAC that the health department investigate 
Rath's
activities were ignored, they subsequently added the department to 
the
complaint.

Rath responded by claiming that the TAC was working as an agent of
pharmaceutical companies, and in 2007 published a book called "End
AIDS!" on the topic of "pharmaceutical colonialism and its 
genocidal
consequences for people in the developing world".

"We hope people will get the message that there still isn't a cure 
for
AIDS," TAC researcher Noisa Mhlathi said at the close of Friday's 
press
conference, reiterating a message that many health officials 
worried was lost
during the course of the long and acrimonious legal battle.

Source: PlusNews

Posted by

Mayowa Joel
Email:mayowajoel@yahoo.com


Moderator's note:With this cheering news,it seems the likes of 
"Dr".Yem Kem,
Paul Olisa Ojei who calls himself a "professor of medicine" and 
claims to
have a cure for AIDS can be sent to oblivion if we all wake up and
compel Prof.Dora Akunyili to face these charlatans once and for 
all.
Thanks Mayowa for sharing this with us.



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