Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2006. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Sunday Times (Johannesburg) - July 2, 2006
Nashira Davids, Ilse Fredericks and Philani Nombembe
The university is taking disciplinary action against Professor Girish Kotwal, the principal investigator in its Medical Biotechnology Department.
This week international journal Nature exposed Kotwal's links to Secomet V, which is being sold by health shops and traditional healers. Nature alleged that:
* UCT received royalties from the sale of the tonic, which is branded as Ithemba Lesizwe (Hope of the Nation);
* Three people had died while using the tonic, two of whom were not taking antiretrovirals and had died from sudden liver failure at an Aids hospice in Stellenbosch; and
* As many as 30 HIV-positive people were using the tonic in an observational study in Pinetown, KwaZulu-Natal.
The tonic is made by Stellenbosch company Secomet, and sold at a cost of about R200 for 500ml.
Secomet's website claims that plant acids in the product (made from red clover) make viruses, including HIV, "non-infectious" - and that with frequent use patients' viral loads will decrease.
UCT's Medical Biotechnology website says Secomet V is being researched by the university as a "potent" anti-viral.
But Secomet V has not been through clinical trials as required by the Medicines Control Council (MCC).
Wally Strickland, a Secomet spokesman, said clinical trials were expensive, but that the company had "raised sufficient funds to conduct the first phase of clinical trials".
Strickland denied that the company was selling the tonic illegally. He said the company had a receipt from the "Registry MCC" and was trading in line with MCC rules.
But Professor Peter Eagles, chairman of the MCC, said: "They can't actually trade, if they are making medicinal claims, until they get a reply from the MCC."
The product was developed by Stephen Leivers, a botanist, who started the company in 2002.
He and Kotwal researched the product together.
University spokesman Skye Grove said UCT's executive would meet Kotwal tomorrow and disciplinary action would begin on Thursday.
"We regard the allegations in [the Nature] report in a very serious light," she said. Kotwal's laboratories had been closed "until further notice".
* The Sunday Times was able to buy the pungent tonic from a Cape Town health shop yesterday for R224.
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