Matthias Rath

A cancer-curing effect has not been documented for any of these substances. Nor is there any proof that the preparations sold by Matthias Rath, some with high dosages, are useful in cancer prevention—leave alone curing cancer. Rath still owes proof regarding the correctness of his claims. Proof of effect cannot be provided by analogy with in vitro, animal or cell experiments. Because there is no proof for effect nor for the harmlessness of the preparations, SKAK advises against their use.

Rath's claims and methods have been widely criticised by medical organisations, AIDS-activist groups, and the United Nations, among others. Former South African President Thabo Mbeki and former Minister of Health Manto Tshabalala-Msimang have also been criticised by the medical and AIDS-activist community for their perceived support for Rath's claims. According to doctors with Médecins Sans Frontières, the Treatment Action Campaign (a South African AIDS-activist group) and a former Rath colleague, unauthorised clinical trials run by Rath and his associates, using vitamins as therapy for HIV, resulted in deaths of some participants. In 2008, the Cape High Court found the trials unlawful, banned Rath and his foundation from conducting unauthorised clinical trials and from advertising their products, and instructed the South African Health Department to fully investigate Rath's vitamin trials. In 2008, Rath expanded his advertising to Russia, a country where the incidence of HIV/AIDS had been increasing.

Rath suggests that the pharmaceutical industry continues to control international politics today, allowing 9/11 to occur and starting the Iraq War to divert attention from what he considers the failures of drug companies. On his website, Rath states that United States President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, at the behest of what Rath calls the "pharmaceutical cartel", were planning a nuclear war in advance of the 4 November 2008 elections in the United States. Rath has made similar claims in the New York Times and other major newspapers around the world in the form of large advertisements reportedly designed to resemble newspaper editorials.

In September 2008 Rath was ordered to pay court costs in an unsuccessful libel action against The Guardian (UK) after the paper reported on his foundation's unauthorised drug trials in South Africa.

In 2005, according to Reuters, Rath's foundation distributed tens of thousands of pamphlets in poor black South African townships, such as Khayelitsha, claiming that HIV medication was "poison" and urging HIV-positive people to instead use vitamins such as those Rath sells to treat HIV/AIDS. People with "advanced AIDS" were then recruited by the Rath Foundation and its surrogates for what the Rath Foundation called "a clinical pilot study in HIVpositive [sic] patients" Personnel of the South Africa National Civic Organisation (Sanco) administered the programme in Khayelitsha as "agents for the Rath foundation."

In May 2005 the study's authors released a statement condemning Rath's "irresponsible and misleading statements, as in our view they deliberately misinterpret findings from our studies to advocate against the scale-up of antiretroviral therapy." The authors felt that Rath had misused their results to argue that multivitamins should be used in place of antiretroviral medication. They affirmed the central role of antiretroviral medication in treating AIDS and indicated that multivitamins should be at most a supplementary treatment.

In 2004 the Swiss Study Group for Complementary and Alternative Methods in Cancer (SKAK), an independent group that evaluates alternative medical treatments, examined Rath's vitamin preparations and marketing claims. SKAK reported that it "found no proof that the vitamin preparations of Dr. Matthias Rath have any effect on human cancer" and "advise[s] against their use in cancer prevention and treatment while recommending a diet rich in fruit and vegetables." SKAK's report specifically criticised Rath for:

In 2001 the health freedom advocacy groups the American Preventive Medical Association and the National Foundation for Alternative Medicine gave Rath the Bulwark of Liberty Award.

The Sunday Times (Johannesburg) has described Rath as an "international campaigner for the use of natural remedies" whose "theories on the treatment of cancer have been rejected by health authorities all over the world." On HIV/AIDS, Rath has disparaged the pharmaceutical industry and denounced antiretroviral medication as toxic and dangerous, while claiming that his vitamin pills could reverse the course of AIDS. As a result, Rath has been accused of "potentially endangering thousands of lives" in South Africa, a country with a massive AIDS epidemic where Rath was active in the mid-2000s. The head of Médecins Sans Frontières said of Rath, "This guy is killing people by luring them with unrecognised treatment without any scientific evidence"; Rath attempted to sue him.

A 1998 British Medical Journal article examined some of Rath's and Health Now's claims in support of Rath's multivitamin supplement blend. The authors found that Rath listed 40 citations to support his product but that only eight of them were of actual clinical trials. After examining these clinical trials, the authors concluded that despite Rath's claims to the contrary, "no general clinical benefit of vitamins C and E and carotene can be proved from the works cited by Health Now."

Rath studied at the Hamburg University Medical School in Germany. After graduating, he began researching arteriosclerosis at the University Clinic of Hamburg. Later, during 1989 and 1990, he was a researcher at the Berlin Heart Centre. He subsequently joined two-time Nobel Prize laureate Linus Pauling at his research institute in California. Ultimately, Rath had a falling-out with the Linus Pauling Institute; after a series of lawsuits and countersuits, Rath was ordered in 1994 to pay the Institute $75,000 and was assigned several patents. Rath subsequently developed his own branded nutrient products, set up the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and Dr. Rath Research Institute, and funds nutrition research with patent development in what he calls "Cellular Medicine".

Other sources, however, describe Rath as a "qualified doctor" and state that he "became a researcher first at the University Clinic in Hamburg and then, during 1989 and 1990, at the Berlin Heart Centre."

Matthias Rath (born 1955 in Stuttgart, Germany) is a controversial doctor, businessman, and vitamin salesman. He earned his medical degree in Germany. Rath claims that a program of nutritional supplements (which he calls "cellular medicine"), including formulations that he sells, can treat or cure diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and HIV/AIDS. These claims are not supported by any reliable medical research. Rath runs the Dr. Rath Health Foundation, has been closely associated with Health Now, Inc., and founded the Dr. Rath Research Institute.