Harvard researchers have accused vitamin entrepreneur Matthias Rath of deliberately misinterpreting their findings to bolster his campaign against anti-retrovirals.
”Anti-retroviral therapy saves lives, and its scale-up should be vigorously pursued in all countries,” the researchers, Wafaie Fawzi and David Hunter, said in a statement.
Rath, who has links with Aids dissidents, is facing a defamation action by the Treatment Action Campaign, which he has accused of being a front for drug companies.
Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang has recently come under fire for refusing to condemn Rath and the activities of his Dr Rath Health Foundation.
In his publicity material, Rath has repeatedly quoted a study carried out in Tanzania by Fawzi and Hunter, who are attached to the Harvard School of Public Health.
”The study showed that inexpensive multivitamin treatment is more effective in staving off disease among HIV-positive women than any toxic Aids drug,” Rath says.
However, Fawzi and Hunter said while nutrition is important in the management of HIV/Aids, nutritional supplements alone cannot replace the need for comprehensive treatment and care.
Anti-retroviral therapy significantly improves chances of survival, reduces the incidence of opportunistic infections, and improves quality of life for people with HIV.
”We condemn these irresponsible and misleading statements [by Rath] as in our view they deliberately misinterpret findings from our studies to advocate against the scale-up of anti-retroviral therapy,” they said.
They said their work and other studies show that multivitamins slow the progression of HIV at earlier stages of the disease, and could prolong the time before the start of ARV treatment.
”However, it is important to underscore that the multivitamin supplements should not be considered as an alternative to ART [anti-retroviral therapy], but as a complementary intervention that is part of a comprehensive care package,” they said.
”Individuals who are advanced enough in their disease to warrant anti-retroviral therapy as per national guidelines should be provided with anti-retroviral drugs.”
Democratic Alliance spokesperson on health Dianne Kohler-Barnard on Tuesday called on the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef), the UN Joint Programme on HIV/Aids (UNAids) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) to join the Harvard researchers in condemning what she said is the manipulation of material by Rath’s foundation.
”The DA will be writing to these organisations to request that they do so,” she said in a statement.
”These organisations need to act not only to ensure that South Africans are properly informed, but also to prevent themselves from being tainted by association with Rath.”
She said that in his advertisements Rath makes use of a Unicef global report on vitamin and mineral deficiency, as well as WHO guidelines on nutritional requirements for people living with Aids.
He also quotes from a speech by Peter Piot, head of UNAids.
Kohler-Barnard said the South African Advertising Standards Authority found that Rath’s claims to be able to cure Aids with vitamins — and his claims about the dangers of anti-retrovirals — were reached by wildly misquoting published information in order to come to radically different conclusions to those reached in the original documents.
”The Harvard School of Public Health has been the first of these organisations to officially distance itself from Rath. The various UN-linked organisations who Rath takes advantage of must do the same,” she said. — Sapa