Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) - July 28, 2006
Marianne Thamm
Answering questions recently, Kotwal said he has been so "overwhelmed" by events surrounding his links to the alleged Aids remedy, Secomet V, that he is considering abandoning all research into natural products.
He added that he was confident he would be cleared of "all wrong-doing" by a UCT committee of inquiry into his research methods, although he "would take responsibility for any mistakes in judgement or management style".
UCT's decision to close and fumigate his campus laboratory was an "overreaction", he added.
But he conceded: "I am a human being trying to chart new territories and test new paradigms and hypotheses. I may not have made every decision of the thousands that I made in the past five years, a correct one."
Kotwal was suspended earlier this month after Nature magazine linked him to the herbal product, Secomet V, advertised by its Stellenbosch manufacturers as an "anti-HIV" remedy.
Secomet V has neither been registered with the Medicines Control Council nor tested in clinical trials. About 1 500 people are believed to be taking it.
Last week a preliminary UCT inquiry found prima facie evidence of misconduct and charged Kotwal with failing to apply for the approval of research involving human subjects in a collaborative study with Secomet (Pty) Ltd; failure to ensure adequate standards of care for research animals involved in studies; the misleading publication of research results in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences; and failure to maintain required laboratory health and safety standards.
Kotwal denied he was a consultant for Secomet or had anything to do with the human trials. "I do not have shares or equity or any other position in Secomet," he said, adding that the human trial "was a Secomet study".
He denied placing students at risk or failing to follow proper bio-safety precautions. Tests on Secomet's anti-viral activity had been carried out "by a recognised laboratory in San Francisco, US, called Virologic Inc", not at UCT.
He confirmed his quotes to Nature that "medical products have to go through a rigorous scientific review before they are bought, but in the meantime what do you do?" and that "countries like South Africa, China and India are vast; mainstream medicine cannot serve the entire region so they have to rely on traditional healers to do that. One has to take a liberal view, but things don't run smoothly. People sometimes die through toxicity encountered in products."
His explanation was that adverse drug reaction or toxicity "was not restricted to natural products alone and it can, on some rare occasions, also happen with anti-retroviral treatment or other approved medications".
He added that "this was not necessarily or always due to the product itself, it can often be due to lack of or improper management of the treatment".
A date for the start of the full UCT inquiry has yet to be set.
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