Matthias Rath

Matthias Rath (born 1955) is a 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.

Articles coauthored by Rath on these topics include:

The Sunday Times 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.

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".

Rath has offices in California, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and South Africa (Cape Town).

His foundation also advertises its products in Spain, France, and Russia.

According to Eversheds, Rath's solicitor, the Dr. Rath Health Foundation is "a not-for-profit body which conducts research into science-based natural therapies", but the foundation is estimated to have earned "millions" through nutritional supplement sales.

According to Rath, international events of the last century have been driven by pharmaceutical and oil companies.

He claims that these interests started and exploited World War II.

In court filings, Rath and his lawyers write that the pharmaceutical industry then started apartheid in South Africa as part of a global conspiracy to "conquer and control the entire African continent."

They specifically mention former Nazi officials and the German chemical company IG Farben as playing a central role in the alleged conspiracy.

They also compare Rath's adversaries in court to Hitler's stormtroopers.

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.

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.

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

Rath's theories, claims, and research, particularly his efforts to persuade South Africans to use his vitamin supplements to treat HIV/AIDS, have been controversial.

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."

Patients were recruited for the study with offers of money or food and instructed to stop taking conventional HIV/AIDS medications.

Luthando Nogcinisa, a local Communist Party official, said that Rath agents recruited known HIV-positive individuals, "often with a pack of groceries, and they encourage the person not to take the antiretrovirals, but to rather take the vitamins".

Mike Waters, Democratic Alliance health spokesperson, states that Rath gave patients "food parcels to convince them to give up their antiretrovirals and take his Vitamin C supplements instead."

Rath Foundation employees reportedly infiltrated HIV/AIDS clinics in Khayelitsha and paid clinic staff to provide them with names of patients.

The Guardian described a case in which a pregnant woman newly diagnosed with HIV was visited at home by Rath Health Foundation employees and convinced to stop taking her antiretroviral medication in favour of Rath's vitamins; she died three months later.

The Rath Foundation disputed that patients were asked to stop taking effective antiviral medication.

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.

Born in Stuttgart, Germany, Rath studied at the Hamburg University Medical School in Germany.

After graduating, he began researching arteriosclerosis at the University Clinic of Hamburg.

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.