South Africa

ASA orders Rath to withdraw claims ARVs are poisonous

Vitamin salesman rapped

March 11, 2005 Edition 1

Quinton Mtyala

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has found in favour of the Treatment Action Campaign, which complained to it about an advertisement that was placed by a controversial German Aids denialist and which said, among other things, that anti-retrovirals were poisonous.

The controversial advertisement was placed in the Aids Day supplement of the Mail & Guardian last year.

But as the ruling was being made, the SA National Civic Organisation (Sanco) and the Traditional Healers Organisations placed another advertisement in a Khayelitsha community newspaper attacking the TAC for promoting ARVs.

In an 11-page verdict yesterday the ASA ruled that the Rath Foundation, headed by vitamin salesman and Aids dissident Matthias Rath, had to withdraw claims that ARVs were poisonous because he could not independently verify it.

The ruling reads: "The process to withdraw the advertising material must be actioned with immediate effect on receipt of the ruling."

And it could not be used again until adequate substantiation could be submitted.

The standards body found that a New York Times report, quoted in the advertisement, on a study by Harvard University into the efficacy of multivitamins in slowing down HIV and cutting "the risk of developing Aids in half" was subjective and summarised.

"The directorate notes that the respondent (Rath) had not provided a copy of the relevant article," ASA said.

The Rath Foundation was asked to withdraw claims that an "optimal dose of vitamin C alone" could block the replication of the HI virus by 99%, as these were unsubstantiated.

The statement that "hundreds of studies have found that AZT is profoundly toxic to all cells of the human body and particularly to the blood cells of our immune system" was found by the ASA to be dishonest because "hundreds of studies" had not been made available to the directorate.

A claim that unborn children exposed to AZT would be afflicted with such conditions as brain damage and neurological disorders was also ordered withdrawn because there was no independent substantiation by the Rath Foundation.

TAC spokesman Nathan Geffen hailed the findings of the ASA directorate, saying it would prevent similar advertisements beig placed in the future.

"There are a lot of charlatans exploiting the climate of denial that is being created around the HIV epidemic," said Geffen.

"The ASA ruling will make it more difficult for... these charlatans."

Geffen said he wanted to see the Medicines Control Council cracking down on those people using false claims to exploit people with HIV.

"We're disappointed that newspapers like the Sowetan and City Vision have run a particularly defamatory version of these ads."