Vitamin/AIDS controversy in South Africa

In Cape Town, South Africa, a court on issued an order banning unauthorized clinical trials of vitamin therapies for AIDS conducted by a team including a German physician Matthias Rath and U.S. doctor David Rasnick

The case was brought before the court by the lobby group Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) and the South African Medical Association (SAMA) and they accused Rath of conducting illegal clinical trials among poor blacks and profiteering by selling and distributing unregistered vitamin treatments among poor communities.

We see similar things here in the USA where there are many unsubstantiated claims and huge profits made on certain products being sold.

It was reported that Rath and his Rath Foundation promote vitamin pills and micronutrients, mainly minerals such as iron or iodine, that they say can reverse the course of HIV/AIDS, but critics say Rath's work has led to unnecessary deaths when HIV-positive people stopped using life-saving antiretroviral drugs.

In court papers, TAC and SAMA accused the South African government of not doing enough to stop Rath and failing in its constitutional and statutory duty of care to the public but the Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who has herself courted controversy by advocating garlic and beetroot instead of antiretroviral drugs, denied the allegations.

Just as in the USA, the argument before the court was that Rath's products were not really medicines but foodstuffs and therefore fell outside the Medicines Control Council's regulatory scope.