This is an archive of the Treatment Action Campaign's public documents from
December 1998 until October 2008. I created this website because the TAC's
website appears unmaintained and people were concerned that it
was becoming
increasingly hard to find important documents.
The menu items have
been slightly edited and a new stylesheet applied to the site. But none of the
documents have been edited, not even for minor errors. The text appears on this
site as obtained from the Internet Archive.
The period covered by
the archive encompassed the campaign for HIV medicines, the civil disobedience
campaigns, the Competition Commission complaints, the 2008 xenophobic violence
and the PMTCT, Khayelitsha health workers and Matthias Rath court cases.
The Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASASA) has ordered Rath to withdraw his unsubstantiated claims following a complaint by TAC.
http://tac.org.za/newsletter/2005/ns14_03_2005.htm#asasa
There are three ASASA rulings against Rath. They can be found here.
The British Advertising Standards Authority has forced Rath to remove his advertising for treatments as they were unsupported by evidence and misled the public.
http://tac.org.za/documents/BritishASARulingAgainstRath.pdf
The Food and Drug Administration in the USA has cautioned Rath for advertising some of his products in contravention of US law.
http://www.fda.gov/cder/warn/cyber/2002/CFSANvitacor.htm
The South African Medical Association, the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society, UNAIDS, WHO and UNICEF have condemned Rath's misrepresentations. The Western Cape Government has issued a condemnation of people undermining the antiretroviral rollout which, without mentioning his name, is clearly aimed at Rath.
http://tac.org.za/newsletter/2005/ns23_03_2005.htm
The South African Council of Churches has condemned Rath.
http://www.sacc.org.za/news05/rathads.html
The Swiss Study Group for Complementary and Alternative Methods in Cancer have found no proof that any of Rath's products have any impact upon human cancer.
http://www.swisscancer.ch/dt_fr/content/orange/pdf/skak/04_rath_e.pdf
A British Medical Journal article has examined the claims made about one of Rath's products and found no evidence to support them.
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/317/7165/1069
Rath was interdicted by a full bench of the Cape High Court from making false defamatory allegations against TAC.
Cape High Court Judgment (Full Bench) Interdicting Rath
Rath was ordered by a Dutch court to stop making improper allegations against a company called Numico.
http://www.report-scams.cc/MLMAdv25.htm
Rath is being investigated in Germany in connection with the death of a boy. The boy had cancer but was taken off chemotherapy and treated by Rath with multivitamins. Rath used the boy to market his medicines. The boy subsequently died.
http://www.swr.de/report/archiv/sendungen/041115/02/frames.html
and
http://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/THE_FOUNDATION/true_story_dominik.html
Rath campaigns against pharma patents. Interestingly, here are Rath's US patents: 6693129, 6686340, 5650418, 5278189, 5230996. To verify, go to google and type:
US patent 6693129
Then follow the link to the US patent office.
The Harvard School of Public Researchers has condemned Rath's misleading advertising in which Rath misrepresents research done on multivitamins by Harvard researchers in Tanzania.
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/press/releases/press05062005.html
Rath sells his products at exhorbitant prices. We decided to investigate just how outrageous Rath's prices are. We obtained a quotation from a vitamin manufacturer in the United States for a product with the identical composition to Rath's main product, Vitacor Plus. Rath sells Vitacor Plus for $29.95 for one's bottle (a month's supply), yet we were quoted $3.85 for the equivalent amount. Admittedly the quote we obtained did not include labelling and distribution, but these additional expenses cannot be more than a dollar per bottle.
Links to the prices of the three potions he gave to TAC members who went to his premisses. They are far more expensive than equivalent vitamin products. We were hesitant to put links to Rath's products on our website, because we certainly do not want to advertise them (or any pharmaceutical product for that matter), but we want to show the evidence for all our claims about Rath.
WARNING: THESE PRODUCTS ARE NOT TESTED. THEY MIGHT BE DANGEROUS ESPECIALLY IF CONSUMED IN THE AMOUNTS PRESCRIBED BY MATTHIAS RATH AND HIS AGENTS. WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU DO NOT PURCHASE THEM.
Vitacor (Warning: This untested product is not known to have any benefit against any disease.)
Epican (Warning: This untested product is not known to have any benefit against any disease.)
Lysin C (Warning: This untested product is not known to have any benefit against any disease.)
TAC alleges that Rath has broken the law in the following ways:
1. He has established medical practices in Cape Town even though he is unregistered with the Health Professions Council of SA.
2. He has run adverts making false claims on medicines, which is against the law.
3. He has distributed unregistered medicines.
4. He has conducted an experiment on humans, with AIDS denialists David Rasnick and Sam Mhlongo, without Medicines Control Council approval.
We have affidavits and other evidence supporting these allegations.