The head of the Medical Research Council (MRC), Professor Anthony Mbewu, on Wednesday dismissed as incorrect a set of minutes recording that he agreed to be a medical investigator in Matthias Rath’s South African vitamin campaign.
The minutes, compiled by Rath aides, are part of a set of documents recording contact between the controversial German and the MRC in 2004, when Mbewu was the organisation’s head of research.
They were released on Wednesday by the Treatment Action Campaign, which said it received them from sources in the Rath Foundation.
In one set of minutes, dated March 23 2004, Rath and Mbewu discuss a proposed workshop at the MRC on cancer, HIV/Aids and cardiovascular disease (Mbewu’s speciality), then go on to discuss a ”protocol outline” for clinical trials.
The minutes record Rath as saying: ”We need a high number of patients which will mean good significant statistics. We usually see effects/benefits between four and six months after protocols. Unbinding of the trials should be after six months. This is open to discussion. Do you feel comfortable with investigators?”
”I never am an investigator myself usually,” Mbewu replies.
The minutes then record Rath as saying that an advisory team ”will come from Anthony Mbewu” and that the protocol for the project ”will have final say from Dr Mbewu”.
They then record that Mbewu ”will be heart investigator”, and record Mbewu as warning that ”vested interests in cardiology will take us on”.
”Level four [of the trial] will be un-charted waters and the press will use any deaths against us,” warns Rath.
Mbewu said on Wednesday that Rath approached the MRC in early 2004 with a request that it should convene a series of workshops to explore the possibility of doing research on nutrition and health together with the foundation.
This was the first that the MRC had heard of the Rath Foundation, Mbewu said.
He said the MRC was often approached by groups wanting to collaborate in research, and as a public body saw it as its duty to maintain an open door, and not to prejudge applications.
A four day workshop was held to explore the potential for research in the field proposed by Rath.
The foundation gave the MRC R200 000 to cover the costs of the event, but because the MRC spent only R37 000, it gave the rest back, Mbewu said.
”In the following few weeks the MRC scientists who had attended the workshops made it clear there did not appear to be any possibility of research collaboration with the Rath Foundation,” he said.
”So that relationship was terminated in mid-2004, and there’s been no relationship or communication since.”
He said the termination was a purely scientific decision, and had nothing to do with Rath’s reputation — which the MRC at that stage did not know about.
Asked about the statement in the minutes that he had agreed to be a ”heart investigator” in Rath trials, he said: ”The minutes are incorrect, because I didn’t agree to be an investigator.”
Asked about the statement attributed to him that ”vested interests in cardiology will take us on”, he said that part of the discussion had centred on the role of vitamin products in combating cardiovascular disease.
He had pointed out that many major drug manufacturers produced both multivitamins and heart drugs, and that often a company did not want to see one set of its products competing against another.
Rath has been criticised by health professionals for his claim that anti-retorivirals are toxic, and his promotion of vitamins as an adequate alternative treatment.
Critics claim that several Aids sufferers have died after switching to his regime, and that he has the tacit support of Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
In March the Cape High Court granted an interdict ordering him to stop claiming TAC was a front for the pharmaceutical industry; he has since called for the organisation to be banned. – Sapa