Matthias Rath and his foundation had never claimed their vitamin products were a cure for HIV/Aids, Rath’s advocate told the Cape High Court today.

The court is hearing a bid by the Treatment Action Campaign for an order forcing the government to act against what it says are Rath’s illegal distribution of vitamin products in black townships and his claim that they can reverse the course of Aids.

“We are not claiming it’s a cure,” Rath’s advocate, Dumisa Ntsebeza, told the court. “We would like to make very clear, that has never been the claim.”

Rath’s position, he said, was that in the absence of an effective cure or a vaccine, and in the face of the extreme toxicity of antiretrovirals, multivitamins were an effective and affordable way to “halt the progression and even reverse the symptoms” of Aids.

Ntsebeza said it was much the same thing to say that vitamins and micronutrients delayed Aids, as TAC had conceded, or that they reversed it, and one should not quibble about the difference.

However there was scientific evidence, published in reputable peer-reviewed international journals, that they could in fact reverse the course of the disease.

It was not the court’s job to question this research.

At one point Ntsebeza referred to administering multivitamins to “our patients”.

However elsewhere in his argument he said that Rath’s only involvement in the affair was the donation of vitamins to the SA National Civics Organisation.

Sanco in turn ran a community nutrition programme using those donations.

It would be a sad day were the court to interdict this programme, he told judge Dumisani Zondi.

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