Libel Reform
Story time, kids.
May I apologise for introducing you to Matthias Rath, the villain of this piece.
Like some cross between Dr Strangelove and Hitler, this man is hopefully going to burn into your conscious and serve as an angry splinter until he is thoroughly destroyed. Matthias Rath is a quack. He is owns a vitamin pill company, which produces the products he pushes on the desperate and the ignorant with appalling consequences.
Matthias Rath built up is power-base and wealth in Europe where he claimed that "90 per cent of patients receiving chemotherapy for cancer die within months of starting treatment" and suggested that three million lives could be saved if convention medicine was abandoned. Why did this happen? Rath claimed that pharmaceutical companies were purposefully killing cancer patients for financial gain. The answer? Rath's own vitamin pills, of course. He claimed they cured cancer.
The response to this was underwhelming. A man literally claiming his vitamin pills could cure cancer in order to profiteer off the horrible suffering of cancer victims and their families and all that happened was that the The Advertising Standards Authority criticised him in the UK, and in Berlin he was ordered to stop claiming his pills cured cancer, or be fined 250,000 euros. This, we will see, was not enough.
When Rath decided to expand into South Africa he did so with the wealth and status he had generated in Europe and America. With these resources he started taking out full-page ads.
"The answer to the AIDS epidemic is here". Said Rath. "Stop AIDS Genocide by the Drugs Cartel" read one headline. Yes, Matthias Rath went to South Africa, a country where AIDs kills 300,000 people every year, or one person every two minutes. 6.3 million people in South Africa are HIV positive. 30% of all pregnant women. There are 1.2 AIDS orphans. This was the country that Rath methodically chose to target, to claim that anti-retroviral drugs were poisonous, and a great conspiracy to kill people for profit.
"Why should South Africans continue to be poisoned with AZT? There is a natural answer to AIDS." You may have already guessed what Rath believes this answer is. "Multivitamin treatment is more effective than any toxic AIDS drug." He used his wealth to launch a large advertising campaign, set up clinics and run unethical trials where people were taken off retrovirals and were subsequently declared illegal by the Cape High Court of South Africa.
Rath didn't have to fear the authorities long. At the time Thabo Mbeki, a known "AIDS dissident", was in power in South Africa. Rath's colleague and employee, a barrister called Anthony Brink, takes the credit for introducing Thabo Mbeki to Rath's ideas. The result was that Mbeki's Government refused to roll out proper treatment programmes, refused to accept international donations of drugs or money to buy these drugs. Mbeki sent a letter to world leaders comparing the "AIDS dissidents" movement to the fight against apartheid. The White House was so shocked by the letter they had to check it was genuine. Mbeki's health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang advocated the treatment of AIDS with a potato. One study suggests that without this policy 171,000 new infections and 343,000 deaths could have been prevented. Rath introduced unecessary slaughter on a grand scale.
This lasted until 2003, when grassroot organisations overturned the policy. But even in mid-2005 at least 85 per cent of HIV- posiive people that need anti-retroviral drugs were refused them.
Not only all this but Rath actively attacked genuine AIDS treatment groups. One such targeted group was the Treatment Action Campaign. This organisation campaigns for access to anti-retroviral medication against their Government, the pharmaceutical industry and its unnecessarily high prices. It also does work in the townships, educating and fighting against misinformation like Rath's.
Rath has launched a massive campaign against them. "Treatment Action Campaign is killing you". The founder of TAC is a man called Zackie Achmat. He was imprisoned under apartheid, is HIV positive and refused anti-retroviral medicine on principle until it was widely available to all who needed it, even after Nelson Mandela pleaded with him to do so. Anthony Brink filed a complaint against him, bizarrely with the International Criminal Court at The Hague, acussing Achmat of genocide. Here is a part of that complaint:
APPROPRIATE CRIMINAL SANCTION
In view of the scale and gravity of Achmat's crime and his direct personal criminal culpability for 'the deaths of thousands of people', to quote his own words, it is respectfully submitted that the International Criminal Court ought to impose on him the highest sentence provided by Article 77.1(b) of the Rome Statute, namely to permanent confinement in a small white steel and concrete cage, bright fluorescent light on all the time to keep an eye on him, his warders putting him out only to work every day in the prison garden to cultivate nutrient-rich vegetables, including when it's raining. In order for him to repay his debt to society, with the ARVs he claims to take administered daily under close medical watch at the full prescribed dose, morning noon and night, without interruption, to prevent him faking that he's being treatment complient, pushed if necessary down his forced-open gullet with a finger, or, if he bites, kicks and screams too much, dripped into his arm after he's been restrained on a gurney with acable ties around his ankles, wrists and neck, until he gives up the ghost on them, so as to eradicate this foulest, most loathsome, unscrupulous and malevolent blight on the human race, who has plagued and poisoned the people of South Africa , mostly black, mostly poor, for nearly a decade now, since the day he and his TAC first hit the scene."
The Rath Foundation described it as "entirely valid and long overdue".
So where do we, and libel, come into this? Basically, libel law in the UK is absurd and oppressive, and Rath used this to sue British doctor, blogger and columnist Dr Ben Goldacre, whose book Bad Science is the source for my post. I can't impress upon you enough how much I feel you should read it. Dr Goldacre wrote several articles in The Guardian about Rath and in response he sued him and the paper for libel. In September 2008 Rath dropped the case, which had cost in excess of £500,000 to defend. Ben Goldacre and The Guardian cannot expect to receive all this money back.
In excess of £500,000 to defend your right to freedom of speech from a mass murderer ining England. That is a scandal.
In England libel cases are 140 times more expensive than anywhere else in Europe. So the very threat of suing for libel may be enough to stop somebody speaking out. It may be somebody like Rath. It may be a whistle-blowing doctor. It may be Simon Singh, another journalist who wrote about chiropractors' claims they could cure childhood diseases through manipulation of the spine, and was subsequently sued by the British Chiropractic Association. This is ongoing and they are suing Singh personally (not The Guardian). They are trying to force his silence by ruining him.
London is now the centre of libel tourism. That is a disgrace. That is not the sort of country I want to be a part of.
You can, and I hope you will, read more at the Campaign for Libel Reform's website. There are lots of little things you can do to support the campaign, and I hope you will give them some thought.
http://libelreform.org/
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Originally Posted by Mythos
