He's a bastard, in't he?

By Calum Nelson, MPharm

In South Africa there’s a popular comedian called Matthias Rath. Here’s one of his jokes:

“Patient: Doctor Doctor, I’m worried about transmitting HIV to my unborn baby.

Doctor: Don’t worry, just have some potatoes. Whatever you do, don’t take any poisonous anti-viral medicine which will actually cause AIDS.”

It’s a screamer eh? Ok, I lied. Matthias Rath is actually a doctor from Germany, not a comedian, and some might also say he’s a serial killer. Not a serial killer in the Harold Shipman way, but his practices have almost certainly led to the deaths of thousands of South Africans.

South Africa is a nation with a massive HIV/AIDS crisis. It is currently estimated that 11% of South Africans are HIV-positive. This means that if you walk down a busy street in South Africa, chances are 1 in every 10 people you see has HIV. This changes by province; in KwaZulu-Natal the rate goes up to 26%. With a disease this widespread, anyone able to market a treatment might end up very rich very quickly and it appears that Matthias Rath also knew this.

Having studied medicine in his native Germany, Rath went into research in California. It was here that he started making claims about the use of high dose vitamins in treatment of cardiovascular disease. He began suggesting that conventional cancer treatments should not be used as they kill patients and that they should instead take Rath’s vitamin supplements. His books developed an impressive readership throughout Europe and he sold lots of interestingly priced vitamins. Despite being criticised and fined throughout Europe for claiming his pills could cure cancer, he developed an impressive following and an impressive bank balance, allowing him to try and break South Africa. Well he broke it alright.

With all guns blazing he filled newspaper pages with his claims. “Antivirals are a conspiracy by the pharmaceutical industry to poison you. Vitamins are the true solution to AIDS. Stop taking your antivirals right now…RIGHT NOW. STOP IT. STOP TAKING THEM. SPIT IT OUT. Now don’t let me catch you doing it again.” Ok, so those weren’t his exact words, but they might as well have been. Soon he was conducting trials, recruiting poor black township residents with promises of money or food. The patients were told to stop taking their antivirals and were instead given high doses of vitamins. Guess what happened. Guess. Everyone was actually fine and they all lived happily ever after. Sorry, typo, what I meant to say was that a considerable number of the study participants quickly deteriorated and died. The South African High Court eventually found that Rath’s trial was illegal. This could have ended up being an unfortunate isolated incident in which a doctor with crazy ideas performed an unethical trial. Thousands of lives may have been saved if one of Rath’s supporters didn’t just happen to be the President of the Republic of South Africa.

And so it came to pass that thanks to Matthias Rath, a country with one of the highest HIV rates in the world was telling people to take African potatoes and garlic instead of antivirals. The country refused to roll out antiviral treatment programmes; they turned down grant money intended for the purchase of HIV medication and even turned down donations of drugs. Presidential advisors recommended banning HIV tests and denied any knowledge of an AIDS epidemic in Africa. President Thabo Mbeki himself repeatedly denied that HIV is the sole cause of AIDS and his health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang repeatedly praised Rath’s work and publicly decried antiviral therapy as being dangerous and counterproductive. Overall it’s estimated that around 330,000 people died unnecessarily in the space of 5 years thanks to the government’s policy on antivirals.

Naturally these policies encountered opposition; the Western Cape province ignored governmental advice and continued to supply antiretrovirals. Groups such as Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) did their utmost to get HIV medication to those in need. This resulted in Anthony Brink, a colleague of Rath, taking TAC to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, accusing them of genocide. In his indictment Brink set out what he believed to be an appropriate punishment for Zachie Achmat, the founder of TAC:

“APPROPRIATE CRIMINAL SANCTION

In view of the scale and gravity of Achmat’s crime and his direct personal criminal culpability for ‘the deaths of thousands of people’, to quote his own words, it is respectfully submitted that the International Criminal Court ought to impose on him the highest sentence provided by Article 77.1(b) of the Rome Statute, namely to permanent confinement in a small white steel and concrete cage, bright fluorescent light on all the time to keep an eye on him, his warders putting him out only to work every day in the prison garden to cultivate nutrient-rich vegetables, including when it’s raining. In order for him to repay his debt to society, with the ARVs he claims to take administered daily under close medical watch at the full prescribed dose, morning noon and night, without interruption, to prevent him faking that he’s being treatment compliant, pushed if necessary down his forced-open gullet with a finger, or, if he bites, kicks and screams too much, dripped into his arm after he’s been restrained on a gurney with cable ties around his ankles, wrists and neck, until he gives up the ghost on them, so as to eradicate this foulest, most loathsome, unscrupulous and malevolent blight on the human race, who has plagued and poisoned the people of South Africa, mostly black, mostly poor, for nearly a decade now, since the day he and his TAC first hit the scene.

Signed at Cape Town, South Africa, on 1 January 2007

Anthony Brink”

Fortunately Rath’s heyday is over in South Africa. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang was replaced as health minister and Mbeki was replaced as president by Kgalema Motlanthe, who stated that “the era of AIDS denialism in South Africa is over.” Despite this, a massive amount of damage was done by Rath and the other AIDS dissidents in South Africa. The lack of HIV medication is estimated to have caused 35,000 babies to have been unnecessarily born with HIV and 171,000 preventable HIV infections. Antiviral medication is difficult enough for the poorest to afford at the best of times thanks to prohibitive pricing by the pharmaceutical industry and so extra restrictions are likely to have a devastating effect. Purely for the sake of money and advancing his own career, Rath destroyed thousands of lives and thousands of families across South Africa. In a similar fashion to our own MMR scare, irresponsible claims made with a lack of evidence proved dangerous and the importance of examining evidence is once again demonstrated.

By A. Journalistnotascientist

A study/case report/article today published by a medical research group/university/charity revealed that a popular food/lifesaving medicine/controversial activity may cause/reduce risk of cancer/heart disease/stroke. It was found that some people who ate the food/took the medicine/did the activity later went on to develop/did not develop cancer/heart disease/stroke and despite that fact that no link between them has been shown, this newspaper/magazine/blog recommends immediately eating/taking/doing more/less of the food/medicine/activity. This research contradicts previous studies/case reports/articles that have shown the opposite effect, but this article will conveniently forget the results we distorted last week to cause fear and sell more papers/magazines/get more blog hits. This newspaper/magazine/blog also recommends ignoring the advice of your well qualified and experienced doctor/nurse/pharmacist and instead taking all of your medical advice from some journalist looking for a good story. Further handpicked results/inspirational tales/hate speech will follow later in the week to rile up public support/anger/disgust for whoever/whatever/wherever we’re telling you to worship/hate/throw bricks through the window of and campaign outside with poorly spelled placards this week.

While I was writing this article, I tried to think of the things that are generally offensive in 2010. I invite you to ask yourself the same question I did – what would you be offended by? Racism? Sexism? Maybe homophobia? Now imagine you were to see a young lady on the bus discreetly breastfeeding her baby. It’s a sad fact that in 2010 there are still people out there who are disgusted when a woman chooses to feed her baby in the healthiest way possible. This may well have come as a shock to Amy Wootten, a young mother from Bristol. She was kicked off a bus into the rain because she refused to stop feeding her daughter when a passenger complained. Apparently the passenger was offended by the tiny bit of breast shown by Ms Wootten and would have preferred her daughter to go hungry.

Humiliating incidents like this only serve to prevent mothers from breastfeeding their babies despite the health benefits to both mother and child. Breastfeeding reduces the risk of cot death, strengthens the baby’s immune system, reduces the baby’s risk of diabetes and reduces the mother’s risk of breast and ovarian cancers. Breastfeeding also promotes bonding between mother and child and, unlike formula milk, is totally free! For the sake of both mum and baby, I think we could all tolerate a little bit of breast being on show.

Thankfully, the law in Scotland is on the right side. Women are free to breastfeed anywhere they like in Scotland and anyone preventing them can be fined. Unfortunately for Amy Wootten, this law does not apply in England and in Scotland we still have the problem of mothers feeling uncomfortable. Attitudes are changing for the better but unfortunately there are still cases like that of Amy Wootten to deter women from breastfeeding.

Remember 1998? It was the year of Titanic, it was the year Google was founded and it was the year George Michael was found doing naughty things in a toilet. It was also the year in which The Lancet, one of the world’s most respected medical journals, published an article that seemed to show a link between the MMR (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) vaccination and autism. The world went mental. Suddenly the papers were filled with headlines about how your healthy toddler was almost certainly going to develop this disorder the second the needle went in. In 2002 alone, 1257 articles were published about the scare. Thousands of worried parents stopped their children from getting the jag, deeming it to be too great a risk. What happened? By 2008, the country was in the grip of a mumps epidemic and measles was declared endemic in the UK for the first time in 14 years. What must have been a very difficult decision for parents to make could have been made a lot easier by this week’s news. The report was rubbish.

The Flawless Logic Behind the MMR Scare

The Lancet has made a full retraction of the article, the report’s lead researcher, Dr Andrew Wakefield, is facing a General Medical Council tribunal and the newspapers’ ten year run of scare stories has been made to look a bit silly. While the medical community has known for quite some time that there is absolutely no evidence of a link between MMR and autism, the newspaper scare stories kept the fear alive. Why? Because fear sells papers. Never mind the potential damage to people’s lives, the babies killed by measles, the old lady who dies because she’s scared to take her blood pressure tablets – readers are scared of what vital information they could be missing by not buying the paper. Pick up any copy of the Daily Mail or Take a Break and turn to the health section. Every day something different is giving you cancer, a different medication is apparently unnecessary or a new treatment is going to kill you. Its irresponsible reporting and it can damage lives. These articles aren’t written by doctors, they’re written by journalists and cobbled together from hearsay, taken out of context and bent to suit their message. No-one wants to hear about the 19,999,999 people whose lives were saved, let’s hear about the one person whose hair fell out! (and whose life was also saved, but that bit isn’t important) This is what capitalism is about: make money at any cost. Its easy to get taken in by newspapers and magazines pretending to care about your health but they just want you to stay scared enough to keep buying their rag. The whole MMR scare could have been over years ago if it wasn’t for the fact that it sold papers. Check out kill-or-cure.heroku.com for a full list of what the Daily Mail says will either cause or cure cancer and you’ll soon see that either they aren’t to be believed or we’re all going to die pretty soon. And don’t forget that if you ever do worry about biscuits causing cancer, the best person to ask is your doctor or pharmacist. If only That’s Life magazine asked them, some more kids might be alive today.

Nick Griffin / Tony from Dinnerladies

It has today been revealed that recently elected British National Party MEP Nick Griffin has run into difficulties with taking his seat in the European Parliament.

The British National Party, known for “not being racist, honest”, had two of its members elected in the recent European elections. Andrew Brons, elected in the Yorkshire and Humber constituency, has already taken his seat despite initial problems finding which part of “foreign” the parliament was in.

Problems arose for Mr Griffin shortly after the election when he was required to travel to Brussels. Despite initial excitement over his election, the party leader has repeatedly said that he “doesn’t want to go” because he “won’t know anyone”. Even though he has been told that lots of people at the parliament would be new, Griffin has stuck to his guns and refuses to go. The mother of the “not racist”, Mrs Ethel Griffin (102), told us yesterday how it wasn’t the first time her son had acted in such a manner:

“He’s always been like this. I remember the first time he was supposed to go out with his friends to shout abuse at Asian families. He moaned all morning that it would be rubbish and that he didn’t want to go. Of course, when I finally managed to persuade him he had a whale of a time and needless to say he’s been at it nonstop since then!”

The European Parliament recognises that after each election many of its members will be new and possibly not familiar with their colleagues or their surroundings. For this reason the first session after elections begins by all members saying their name, their favourite food and an interesting fact about themselves. This is then translated into all of the EU’s 23 official languages and is followed by lemonade and Jaffa Cakes.

Even with these measures in place, Griffin still refuses to attend parliament. The British National Party has issued a statement saying that they are “doing all they can to resolve the situation and are not racist, honest”. Griffin himself refuses to comment and so an empty seat remains at Brussels for the foreseeable future.