Matthias Rath

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Matthias Rath
typical propaganda

Matthias Rath (born 1955 in Stuttgart / Germany) is a controversial German physician, businessman, vitamin entrepreneur, and politician. He invented an alternative medicine called "cellular medicine" (German original: Zellularmedizin) which according to Rath is able to "heal" severe diseases like AIDS or cancer.

Rath sells several products in Europe ("micronutrients" and vitamins) which are marketed from the Netherlands for legal reasons. (see: Dr. Hittich Gesundheitsmittel) Rath runs the "Dr. Rath Health Foundation" which was closely associated with "Health Now" Inc., and he also founded a "Dr. Rath Research Institute".

Rath has spent millions in advertising to portray himself as a saviour of the sick who is oppressed by pharmaceutical industry (whose products he sells!). Some of his products may indeed not be sold in several countries, e.g. in Germany, because they exceed the safety limits for vitamins in nutritional products. In this case, they will not be regarded as nutritional products but as pharmaceuticals and need to be certified as such. Studies that prove the effectiveness would have to be provided, a feat Rath was not able to accomplish for now.

Rath came into conflict with South Africa law several times since he advised persons suffering from HIV/AIDS against antiretroviral therapies and instead recommended his own cellular medicine.

Overview cellular medicine

The alleged healing properties of cellular medicine have been proven as invalid by scientific studies. In industrial nations vitamin deficiency is a very rare problem and needs to be diagnosed individually. Only then the vitamins actually missing should be substituted. An overdose of vitamins can have grave side-effects. This is especially the case with liposoluble vitamins.

This doctrine can been seen as an interpretation of orthomolecular medicine (OM) which is based on the ideas of Linus Pauling.

Pauling himself has been criticized for making overbroad claims.[1] Rath's attempts to give his own exaggerated claims scientific semblance are obstructed by the fact that even Pauling's work does not really support them. His employment with the Linus Pauling Institute ended in discord and he sued the institute for interfering with his business relationships.[2]

The case Dominik Feld

Rath with Dominik Feld
Marketing campaign

The case of Dominik Feld who developed a metastatic bone tumor and died while being treated with cellular medicine was widely covered by German media. Rath declared the cancer-ridden nine-year-old healed during various events, as a marketing scheme for the effectiveness of his vitamin pills.[3] The parents, believing in Rath, had stopped their son's chemotherapy treatment in May 2003, and hoped for better healing prospects using Rath's products. They started treatment with micro-nutrients, the vitamin products of Dr. Rath. They took their son to a clinic for alternative medicine in Tijuana, Mexico which applies treatment according to Rath's methods. The nine-year-old boy died on November 1, 2004.

Quickly, Rath placed several commercial advertisements claiming the boy did not die from cancer, but from coronary failure and malpractice - a botch-up by orthodox medicine. Unfortunately, the autopsy established a big tumor in his chest which had applied pressure on lung and heart.[4][5][6]

Rath wrote about the death of the Dominik Feld:[7]

"Jetzt bist du endlich frei, Dominik! Hier auf der Erde warst du gefangen, festgehalten auf einer Insel der Krebskranken. Wie Millionen Krebspatienten mit dir warst du angekettet an die Fesseln der Chemo-Medizin."
"Now you are free, Dominik! Here on earth you were imprisoned, held on an island of the cancer-afflicted. Same as millions of cancer patients, you were chained by the bonds of the chemotherapy"

Matthias Rath and AIDS

Demo against Rath in South Africa
RathSpiegel45-2005.jpg

Rath and his foundation saw legal investigations in South Africa after they had raised false hopes with AIDS victims and advised them not to take antiretrovirals, but instead trust cellular medicine. Rath was accused of conducting illegal experiments on humans.[8] The experiments were found to be in violation of South African law in the case "TAC vs. Rath" on June 13th, 2008 in Cape Town. The court ruled that the vitamin products of Rath must not be advertised as a cure of HIV/AIDS[9][10]

In March 2006, Rath was convicted of libel against the NRO TAC, Treatment Action Campain, in Cape Town.[11]

In an opening speech of the International AIDS vaccine conference in Cape Town in 2008, the newly appointed South African Health Minister Barbara Hogan made a clear statement that AIDS is caused by HIV and must be fought with evidence-based medicine.[12]

1,000 people die from AIDS in South Africa every day. Hogan assured to prohibit vitamin treatments of HIV positive persons. This was in direct reference to the business practices of Rath who had done advertising campaigns for his treatments in South Africa for years. In 2005, WHO and UNICEF had cautioned against this method of treating AIDS.[13][14][15]

This new South African Health policy ended a ten year era of HIV/AIDS denial which was maintained by the former president Thabo Mbeki and his Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.[16][17][18] Tshabalala-Msimang was given the nickname Dr. Garlic because of her treatment of AIDS patients with garlic, beetroot, and olive oil instead of antiretrovirals.[19] When the new SA president Kgalema Motlanthe took office, he transfered Tshabalala-Msimang to a less important position. AIDS activists celebrated this with a party in front of the parliament. Tshabalala-Msimang is blamed to have caused the death of thousands of AIDS victims.

Aftermath: The rejection of conventional AIDS therapies in South Africa has caused the avoidable death of 330,000 AIDS victims between 2000 and 2005.[20][21] According to a study published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, a further 35,000 newborns were infected because they were denied prophylaxis with Nevirapin.[22] In 2000, pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim offered to supply the medicament Nevirapin free of charge to avoid mother-child infection, but the offer was dismissed. Only two pilot projects were permitted. Donations by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tubercolosis and Malaria for the province KwaZulu Natal were blocked for more than a year according to Pride Chigwedere, who had treated HIV patients in Simbabwe before he worked for the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston.

In 2009, a shipment of vitamin pills was busted by the Department of Health investigators as part of an ongoing investigation in Cape Town, and criminal cases against Rath were opened.[23]

Rath as a politician

In June 2005, the Dr. Rath Health Foundation established a small political party Allianz für Gesundheit, Frieden und soziale Gerechtigkeit(Alliance for health, freedom and social fairness) (AGFG) in Germany which was led by Rath's PR-Manager Lutz Kliche. Rath himself was assistant chairman for some time.

Heart of the party platform are hypotheses of cellular medicine and far-reaching conspiracy theories of Rath. He views the denial of admission for his products as proof of a so called "Pharma Dictatorship" which controls politicians and scientists all over the world like a puppet master. On his website and in leaflets, he claims the pharma cartel has declared war on health and life of the entire mankind. He insinuates that vitamins and other naturopathic medicines were suppressed and defamed out of greed, to sell "ineffective drugs" which just treated the symptoms to earn more money at the expense of customers. Ostensible "proof" are excerpts from professional articles, leaflets, and news items.

This aggressive strategy was prohibited by court order in 1998. In the reasons for the judgment, the court of Berlin states:

"Bei der Broschüre handelt es sich um ein Konglomerat von Tatsachenverdrehungen, Anschwärzungen und schlichten Unwahrheiten. Sie ist in toto auf Manipulation und Täuschung angelegt."
"The brochure is a conglomerate of distortion of facts, defamation and simple falsehoods. Its purpose is to manipulate and deceive."

In a running campaign by his party AGFG started in 2006, Rath warns against an imminent nuclear war with the purpose of establishing a "Pharma Dictatorship".

He also applied an embarrassing comparison to the Holocaust: A statement by AGFG quotes a speech given by Rath, titled "Auschwitz wird zum Wendepunkt der Geschichte" (Auschwitz becomes a turning point in history). The speech was given during a visit at Auschwitz concentration camp where Rath declared Auschwitz was part of a "pharma genocide":[24]

"Auschwitz ist nicht in der Vergangenheit abgeschlossen. Es dauert noch an. [...] Die grausamen Ereignisse in Auschwitz waren und sind nur ein Teil des größeren Zusammenhangs des weltweiten Pharma-Völkermordes!"
"Auschwitz is not contained in the past. It still goes on. [...] The horrible events in Auschwitz were and still are part of a greater context of worldwide "pharma genocide".

In 2009, Rath tried to take influence on the Irish referendum on the new EU treaty. In a six-page-leaflet distributed to homes in Dublin, Rath claimed that voting "yes" will result in the militarization of Europe, and would turn Ireland into an Orwellian police state. Europe was on its way to become fully controlled by Oil and Pharma cartels. The vitamin millionaire and pharmaceutical businessman Rath portrayed his own activities as those of a non-profit organization dedicated to improving human health through research, education and the defense of patients’ rights to choose natural health therapies.[25]

Legal cases

Rath has been involved in a number of legal cases.

  • In 2000, the Court of Almelo in the Netherlands ordered Rath to stop making unfounded, false, and defamatory statements about Dutch pharmaceutical company Numico.[26][27]
  • In 2002, British Advertising Standards Authority ruled that advertisements by Rath contained a series of misleading and false claims and ordered the claims removed.[26][28]
  • In 2002, the United States Food and Drug Administration notified Rath he was promoting his supplements in a manner that violated the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, by making claims of efficacy without undergoing the appropriate scientific and regulatory review.[26][29]
  • In 2005, the Advertising Standards Association of South Africa (ASASA) issued three separate rulings against Rath, for having made false and misleading claims regarding the effectiveness of his supplements and describing his advertisements as "reckless in the extreme".[30][26] Rath continued the advertisements, leading the ASASA to rule that, "in light of the gravity of [Rath's] breaches", he was required to submit all further advertising to the ASASA for prior approval.[31]
  • In 2006, the High Court of South Africa found that Rath had defamed the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), an AIDS non-profit organization, by publicly making false and misleading statements about TAC. Rath was ordered to cease his defamatory remarks "to ensure that the TAC's continued participation in the debate is not hamstrung by defamatory and unfounded allegations."[26][32]
  • In 2006, the July 22 issue of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) published a news item reporting that Rath had gone on trial in Hamburg, Germany "for fraud" in relation to the death of Dominik Feld. However, the BMJ subsequently retracted the news item "on legal advice" and issued an apology to Rath, stating that the BMJ accepted that "the allegations we published were without foundation."[33] A subsequent libel claim by Rath was settled by the BMJ for ₤100,000.[34][35]
  • In 2006, Rath was prosecuted in Germany for distributing vitamins over the internet without a pharmaceutical licence, and for claiming that vitamins could cure cancer on his website. Rath settled the case with a EUR 33,000 fine, paid to an organisation helping disabled children, and amended the website.[36]
  • In 2007, the German Federal Constitutional Court issued a ruling in favour of Rath. The Federal Constitutional Court found that the prohibition of the brochure and poster "Stop the pharma cartel" and "Stop the codex-plans of the pharma cartel" by judgement of courts in Berlin in 2000/2001 was unjustified as it violated Rath's fundamental rights, e.g. the right of free speech.[37]
  • In 2008, the Cape Town High Court issued a verdict barring Rath from advertising his products as a treatment for AIDS, and stating that clinical tests he had been running in black townships were illegal. The ruling also ruled that "Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and her department had a duty to investigate Rath's activities."[38]
  • In 2008, Ben Goldacre and The Guardian were sued for libel by Matthias Rath for the contents of three articles describing Rath's activities in South Africa.[39][40][41] In September 2008, Rath dropped the lawsuit and was ordered to pay costs, an interim amount of about £220,000.[42] Goldacre has expressed interest in writing a "meticulously referenced" work on Rath, and South African HIV/AIDS denialism in general, based on material which had been excised from his column during the litigation.[43] A chapter of Goldacre's Bad Science, omitted from the first edition due to the litigation, was reinstated in the paperback edition in early 2009, made available on his website, and licenced for free distribution.[1]

Versions of this article in other languages

Weblinks

German:

English:

References

  1. ↑ Barrett, SJ (2001-05-05). "The dark side of Linus Pauling's legacy, Quackwatch
  2. ↑ http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/12/matthiasrath.southafrica
  3. ↑ The case Dominik Feld in German magazine "The Spiegel"
  4. ↑ German News on "Der Fall Dominik"
  5. ↑ Wikinews on Dominik Felds death
  6. ↑ German Ärzteblatt on Dominik Feld
  7. ↑ German newspaper on Dominik Feld and the investigation against Rath
  8. ↑ http://www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20031294
  9. ↑ http://www.brot-fuer-die-welt.de/downloads/fachinformationen/hintergrundpapier_rath-tac.pdf
  10. ↑ Wrong doings of Rath
  11. ↑ Treatment Action Campaign vs. Rath
  12. ↑ http://www.timeslive.co.za/thetimes/article29163.ece
  13. ↑ http://data.unaids.org/Media/Press-Statements01/ps_rath_30mar05_en.pdf
  14. ↑ http://data.unaids.org/Media/Press-Releases03/pr_rath_11may05_en.pdf
  15. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20071020134733/http://www.gwup.org/aktuell/news.php?aktion=detail&id=271
  16. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thabo_Mbeki#AIDS
  17. ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV/AIDS_in_South_Africa
  18. ↑ http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/17/mbeki-south-africa-aids
  19. ↑ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/5319680.stm
  20. ↑ http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/2008-releases/researchers-estimate-lives-lost-delay-arv-drug-use-hivaids-south-africa.html
  21. ↑ http://www.aerzteblatt.de/v4/news/news.asp?id=34133
  22. ↑ Pride Chigwedere, George R Seage III, Sofia Gruskin, Tun-Hou Lee, Estimating the Lost Benefits of Antiretroviral Drug Use in South Africa.JAIDS 2008 doi: 10.1097/QAI.0b013e31818a6cd5 Online: http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2008/11/26/harvard-universityreport.pdf
  23. ↑ http://www.iol.co.za/news/south-africa/drug-bust-at-ctn-airport-1.437824
  24. ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20080609012456/http://www.agfg.de/aktuell/2006oct/auschwitz.html
  25. ↑ http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0922/1224254989371.html
  26. ↑ 26.0 26.1 26.2 26.3 26.4 "Quackery quashed, but Rath's legacy lives" Donaldson A and Huisman B, The Times, SA, 14 June 2008 Accessed 16 June 2008.
  27. ↑ Press release describing Dutch court decision against Dr. Rath for defamation, accessed 19 Sept 2006.
  28. ↑ Ruling by the British Advertising Standards Association against Matthias Rath for false and misleading advertising, accessed Sept 19, 2006.
  29. ↑ Letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warning Dr. Rath that his marketing campaign is in violation of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. Accessed 19 Sept 2006.
  30. ↑ Matthias Rath's ads 'reckless in the extreme', by Elvira van Noort. Published in the Mail & Guardian on August 30, 2005; accessed May 9, 2008.
  31. ↑ Rulings against Matthias Rath for false and misleading advertising by the Advertising Standards Association of South Africa, accessed 19 Sept 2006.
  32. ↑ Judgement of the High Court of South Africa ordering Rath to cease making defamatory and unfounded allegations against the Treatment Action Campaign. Accessed 19 Sept 2006.
  33. ↑ Dr Matthias Rath: an apology. British Medical Journal, 23 September 2006. Accessed January 2007.
  34. ↑ News in Brief, from the British Medical Journal, 2007;334:656 (31 March).
  35. ↑ 'BMJ pays out to doctor over 'child death' story.’ Press Gazette magazine. Published June 5, 2007. Accessed April 10, 2008.
  36. ↑ Hamburger Morgenpost, October 10, 2006, Vitamin-Arzt Rath muss 33000 Euro zahlen
  37. ↑ Judgement of German Federal Constitutional Court of July 12, 2007, no. 1 BvR 2041/02. Published 2007. Accessed April 16, 2008.
  38. ↑ IOL News for South Africa and the World
  39. ↑ No way to treat an Aids hero
  40. ↑ 'Gambia's president may be weird, but AIDS superstitions strike closer to home’ The Guardian. Published January 27, 2007. Accessed July 30, 2008.
  41. ↑ 'How money is not the only barrier to Aids patients getting hold of drugs’ The Guardian. Published February 17, 2007. Accessed July 30, 2008.
  42. ↑ Fall of the vitamin doctor: Matthias Rath drops libel action, by Sarah Boseley. The Guardian, UK, 12 September 2008
  43. ↑ 'Matthias Rath drops his million pound legal case against me and the Guardian' badscience.net. Published September 12, 2008. Accessed September 20, 2008 
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