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Rath suing again - for R1.6m
21/11/2005 17:34 - (SA)
Cape Town - Vitamin entrepreneur Dr Matthias Rath has added Health-e news service to the long list of individuals and organisations he is suing for defamation with a R1.6m claim.
Health-e recently carried a series of investigative articles on Rath's activities in Cape Town's black townships.
He apparently has encouraged people with HIV/Aids to swop what he claims are "toxic" antiretrovirals for his products.
Health-e said some of the people who swopped had died, while others who were paraded in public by the Rath Foundation had secretly been continuing their ARV treatment.
The summons, served on Health-e last week, is against the news service itself, two reporters and a freelancer.
In it, Rath says Health-e implied in the articles that he exploited the poverty and illiteracy of HIV/Aids sufferers in order to promote and test his vitamins, and that he was "engaged in an ethically and morally reprehensible experiment on human beings".
Rigorous fact-checking
They also implied that he persuaded people with HIV/Aids to "abandon proper treatment in favour of a treatment that does not work", he said.
Health-e manager Kerry Cullinan said on Monday that Health-e had instructed the Johannesburg-based Aids Law Project to defend it.
She said the Health-e stories at issue had been subjected to "rigorous fact-checking" before being published and broadcast.
"We are convinced they are accurate, contained fair comment and that their publication and broadcasting were in the public interest," she said.
She said that, though the stories were published in various newspapers including the Sunday Times, Cape Times and The Star as well as being broadcast on SABC's SAfm, Rath was suing only Health-e and its employees.
TAC awaiting judgment
She said Qunta Incorporated, the law firm of SABC board deputy chairperson Christine Qunta, was acting for Rath.
Rath has already issued summonses against Sapa, former education minister Kader Asmal, Medicins sans Frontieres official Dr Eric Goemaere, editors and reporters from the Independent group, HIV/Aids expert Professor Jerry Coovadia, the Democratic Alliance and its health spokesperson, Dianne Kohler-Barnard.
The Treatment Action Campaign is waiting for judgment in an application heard in the Cape High Court in June for an urgent interdict against what it said was defamation against it by Rath.
- SAPA
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