Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2007. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
South African Press Association - February 24, 2007
Holford, who is currently giving a series of workshops in South Africa, claims that the vitamin is more effective in treating Aids than the antiretroviral drug azidothymidine, commonly known as AZT.
He quotes as substantiation for the claim laboratory findings by Dr Raxit Jariwalla, who was one of the speakers at a December 2005 Dr Rath Health Foundation conference in Johannesburg titled The Natural Control of Aids.
According to the foundation website, Jariwalla is "a senior researcher in nutrition and infectious diseases at the Dr Rath Research Institute in California, USA".
Sharing the platform with Jariwalla in Johannesburg were prominent Aids dissidents Dr David Rasnick, from the United States, and South Africa's Professor Sam Mhlongo.
In his presentation, according to the website, Jariwalla put forward "numerous studies by other scientists that confirm the benefits of vitamins against Aids".
Vitamin claim
Holford first made the vitamin-C claim in his book The New Optimum Nutrition Bible, published in 2004.
The claim was rubbished at the time by the Guardian newspaper's irreverent medical columnist Dr Ben Goldacre, who said a Jariwalla study Holford cited was not a comparative study of vitamin C and AZT.
"The paper doesn't even contain the word AZT. Not once," Goldacre said.
Jariwalla responded that Holford's claim was, in fact, correct, and was supported by other papers -- not the one cited in the Nutrition Bible.
The controversy resurfaced this month after Goldacre reported that Holford's online Wikipedia biographical entry had been anonymously edited by his own public relations agent. Goldacre noted that among the material deleted from the entry was all reference to the vitamin-C controversy.
In the same column, Goldacre questioned Holford's lack of academic qualifications in the nutrition arena and referred to him a "self-styled 'nutritionist'".
Holford replied in a letter published in the newspaper on February 16, repeating his assertion that the vitamin-C claim was correct.
"The real crime here is that no full-scale human trials have been funded on vitamin C to follow up Jariwalla's important finding because it is non-patentable and hence not profitable," he said.
He also denied that he had, as Goldacre claimed, conferred a nutrition diploma on himself through the Institute for Optimum Nutrition, which he founded in 1984. He said the award came from the institution's board of trustees, on which he did not sit.
'Health tour'
On his current "health tour" to South Africa, his half-day seminars and workshops, being held in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, cost between R295 and R595.
Participants, his publicists say, will learn how to improve their health and wellness, balance their blood sugar levels and burn fat.
Holford recently published a book titled Food Is Better Medicine than Drugs.
Rath and his foundation have been criticised by doctors and Aids activists for advocating that people with Aids take his commercially prepared vitamins rather than "toxic" antiretrovirals.
He has been tacitly backed by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who herself has advocated a lemon, beetroot and garlic diet for people with HIV/Aids.
Rath is suing the Democratic Alliance and its former health spokesperson Diane Kohler-Barnard over a claim that he is a "charlatan".
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