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Rath drops vitamins-cure-Aids case against Guardian

zooterkin

Nitpicking dilettante, Administrator
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zooterkin
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Good news, the vitamin pill seller, Matthias Rath, has dropped his legal case against Ben Goldacre and the Guardian.

It’s just been publicly announced that the vitamin pill magnate Matthias Rath has pulled out of his gruelling legal case against me and the Guardian. He bought full page adverts denouncing Aids drugs while promoting his vitamin pills in South Africa, a country where hundreds of thousands die every year from Aids under an HIV denialist president and the population is ripe for miracle cures. I said his actions were highly worrying, in no uncertain terms. I believe I was right to do so.
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Not that Rath had a leg to stand on, but as Ben says, there's money in alternative medicine, and some of that money is being used to threaten people who question the claims made for these 'remedies'.
 
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“Dr” Rath Gets a Minor Kicking

I realise that it’s fairly small beer buts it’s nice to see a sham supplement supplier being pulled up:

From Ben Goldacre’s Web/Column:

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.
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http://www.badscience.net/2008/09/m...the-guardians-costs-i-think-this-means-i-win/

From The Guardian’s front page tomorrow:

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.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/12/matthiasrath.aids2

Enjoy

(I did)
 
Absolutely fantastic! I'm sure he (Rath) was expecting a quick out-of-court settlement.
 
[Western Comic Sidekick]"Thar's gold in them thar pills!"[/Western Comic Sidekick]
 
A small victory for the reality based community:

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
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Ben Goldacre comments

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.
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The story is the main one on the front page of the Grauniad, and also the subject of the editorial. I just went out to buy my print copy as a way of registering my support in a very small way.

ETA: The coverage takes up pretty much the whole of pages 2 and 3 of the paper too; they are treating this as a major story.
 
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zooterkin said:
they are treating this as a major story.
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And so they should. I regret however that we haven't seen the last of this unspeakable little rat's turd, who has taken the lives of who knows how many.

From the Guardian's editorial:

Few in the $50bn food supplements industry would stoop to the depths of persuading customers to give up on life-saving medicine. But they routinely profit by marketing false hope.
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Great news.

And I don't think it's small beer. Read the affidavits at the bottom of Goldacre's post. Rath is accused of being responsible for many AIDS/HIV related deaths.
 
Excellent; good for Goldacre. Fingers crossed the BCA case against Singh goes the same soon.

I did enjoy Quackometers article on it:

http://www.quackometer.net/blog/2008/09/matthias-rath-charlatan.html

Although this bit piqued my interest:

Fighting in the courts is not easy for all. But there are ways of dealing with it, but it is not pretty. There is one quack who has threatened me who is in for a nasty shock soon. People in glass houses...
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Rath intended using Britain's notoriously repressive and complainant friendly libel laws to silence criticism of his ideas. It did not work on this occasion because they were taking on a national newspaper that could afford good lawyers. If it had been an ordinary blogger threatened, s/he would have had to back down.

Britain's libel laws need to be changed - they act as a brake on free speech. I understand that the New York State government has ruled that libel awards from British courts cannot be enforced in New York. I cannot think of another instance of a democracy striking down another democracy's laws. NY State was right to take this action to protect its own citizens. I hope others take similar action. Might just shame ur government into amending the law.
 
Rath got off comparatively lightly. Here's a defamation case mentioned by Chief Justice Holt in Johnson v. Browning, 6 Mod Rep 216 at 217:
And he remembered another very lately, where a fellow brought an action for saying of him, "he is a highwayman;" and it appearing on evidence that he was so, he was taken in court; committed to NEWGATE; convicted at the next sessions; and hanged. So that people ought to advise well before they bring such an action.

And DARNELL remembered the like fate which befel a client of his.
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Acleron said:
It's a shame that below the article, a Google ad popped up advocating colloidal silver as the secret to health :mad:
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My woo inclined brother takes colloidal silver. He says it works wonders in stopping colds and virus's. I've never been sure, its hard to get any accurate info about it, some say its a miracle antibiotic, some say its pretty much poisonous. I would never have it. I think its banned anyway.
 
You know, there are times when I truly wish there were an afterlife, with a perpetual hell where people like Rath could be banished to on judgement day.
He could join Mugabe, who looks like he will evade justice in this life for the genocide he waged on his own people.
 
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