On Matthias Rath and Deadly HIV Denialism

(Letter)

28 December 2009

Dear Comrades,

The Spartacist League/Britain’s fine statement in defense of Simon Singh (WV No. 949 [1 January]) made reference to the notorious Matthias Rath. As documented by journalist Anso Thom, Rath brought his vitamin quackery to South Africa in 2004 with deadly results. Thom’s account appears in a collection of essays published in South Africa under the title The Virus, Vitamins and Vegetables: The South African HIV/AIDS mystery. This book details the intimate connections between the Tripartite Alliance government of former president Thabo Mbeki and a variety of international and homegrown quacks who denied that HIV causes AIDS. A Harvard School of Public Health study showed that 330,000 South Africans died of AIDS between 2000 and 2005 because a timely antiretroviral (ARV) treatment program was not implemented. Indeed, such was actively blocked by the ANC/SACP/COSATU government while merchants of death pushing herbal and “natural” cures were promoted.

According to Thom, Matthias Rath made millions selling “micronutrient” pills to cancer and heart disease sufferers in countries like the U.S., the UK and Germany. In 2004 his foundation set up shop in Cape Town with the help of local homeopath Anthony Rees. After finding that there wasn’t much of a market for his cancer and heart disease quackery, Rath hooked up with HIV-denialist Anthony Brink. The Rath foundation proceeded to lay siege to one of the first programs in South Africa for distribution of ARVs run by Médecins Sans Frontières in the black township of Khayelitsha. Rath’s foundation not only publicized that ARVs were toxic and handed out his supplements as a cure for AIDS, but also claimed to be conducting clinical trials. Victims of Rath’s quackery told of being offered groceries and money to take Rath’s supplements instead of ARVs.

Rath and Brink simultaneously waged a campaign of defamation against the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC), which had led the campaign against the Mbeki government’s HIV-denialism and for free ARVs. Brink attempted to have TAC founder Zackie Achmat indicted for genocide at the international criminal court in the Hague because he was supposedly promoting the interests of big pharmaceutical companies! It was not until the TAC and others secured a court order preventing Rath from conducting any further unauthorized clinical trials that he fled South Africa. Nonetheless, the South African Traditional Healers Organisation continues to distribute Rath’s propaganda against ARVs.

In the U.S., “alternative medicine” is quite trendy among petty-bourgeois types, some of whom believe they are tapping into “natural” and ancient health care wisdom that the greedy pharmaceutical companies and medical establishment want to suppress. Those who have the privilege of dabbling in such quackery without serious harm to their health (or wallet) might ponder the plight of millions in countries like South Africa who die entirely preventable deaths while resorting to such “natural” remedies. Lacking even basic sanitation or clean water, many have little choice but to turn to traditional healers who believe that bewitching is the cause of illness. Considering the hellholes called public hospitals in South Africa, it is no wonder that even those with some access to scientific medicine find more comfort in the care of a witch doctor. Faced with the early stages of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the Mbeki government decided to make a virtue of this terrible scarcity and backwardness rather than marshalling whatever resources they could to get and provide ARVs, demonstrating yet again how very cheap black life remains for the capitalist rulers of neo-apartheid South Africa.

A more far-sighted capitalist government in the neo-colonial world was that of Brazil, which beginning in 1996 produced generic ARVs and provided these for free. While the Brazilian government now boasts of having saved billions of dollars, we as Marxists are not indifferent to the fact that tens of thousands are still alive thanks to this program, and that many more have avoided infection due to the government’s education campaigns. This is why our South African comrades call for free ARVs for all who need them as part of the struggle for free, quality health care for all.

Despite an official shift in the posture of the Tripartite Alliance government on AIDS, reflected in a World AIDS Day speech by president Jacob Zuma earlier this month, there are still millions who cannot access treatment because the government has not provided enough money to the public health system. The Young Communist League (YCL) recently called for Mbeki to be tried for genocide for his role in blocking AIDS treatment. The YCL is of course silent about the role of bourgeois-populist Jacob Zuma, who as Mbeki’s deputy president publicly derided ARVs and promoted natural cures at a government HIV/AIDS candle-lighting ceremony in 2002. The YCL also conveniently ignores that its parent organization, the SACP, remained a part of the very government it now accuses of genocide. But one shouldn’t expect too many scruples from these pro-capitalist SACP misleaders who have long shackled the working class by tying it to capitalist exploiters through the SACP/COSATU alliance with the bourgeois ANC.

Comradely,
Rosemary