Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2005. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg) - August 30, 2005
Elvira van Noort
The ASA made its ruling after the Dr Rath Health Foundation did not obey the directorate's orders to refrain from saying that anti-retroviral drugs used by HIV/Aids patients are toxic and only vitamins will cure them.
Rath has been lobbying in South Africa against the use of anti-retroviral medicines, saying that the drugs are toxic and that people calling for greater access to them are the paid lackeys of pharmaceutical companies.
He maintains that HIV-positive people should instead take vitamins, which he claims can also cure cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
"The respondent's advertisements are reckless in the extreme, considering that they make unsubstantiated claims on a matter affecting hundreds of thousands of people living with HIV/Aids," says the ASA ruling, which was made public last week Monday.
"The respondent's marketing campaign misleads and causes great confusion among people facing a life-threatening epidemic, creating a volatile atmosphere of misinformation and incorrect medical decisions.
"For a period of 12 months, the Dr Rath Health Foundation and its allied organisations will not only have to submit their advertising prior to publication, but they also have to make a adverse publicity statement that "must appear once in each South African publication in which the respondent [the Dr Rath Health Foundation] has placed an advertisement in breach of the original ruling, being The Sowetan, City Vision and The Mercury".
"The statements must be A4 size and must appear in the main section of the newspapers," says the ASA ruling.
Khaya Buthelezi, Rath's spokesperson, was not immediately available for comment.
Treatment Action Campaign spokesperson Sipho Mthathi said: "This is an important development. He [Rath] won't be able to publish anything dangerous for public health, or something that scares and confuses people. But advertising is one thing. Rath continues to conduct his experiments, that is a bigger concern.
In June this year, the Cape High Court reserved judgement in an urgent application by the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) for an anti-defamation interdict against Rath.
Judge Siraj Desai said at the time it would take "several weeks" for him and his two colleagues to formulate their findings.
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