Yes, I read an article about him and it does look as though he may be a charlatan, although I'd hesitate about excluding him, not because he's probably wrong in his claims, but because he seemed to be saying something important about the domination of HIV treatment by western pharmaceuticals.
Reading what he had to say, he may have some point about vitamins and diet helping build up the immune system, particularly in peoples with an impoverished diet, although this is a long long way from being able to cure HIV! Currently, life and death for sufferers seems to lie in the hands of drugs companies and the willingness of the countries' leaders to 'play ball' with those 'offering' aid.
Perhaps it would be better that he speak at the ESF and others offer their perspectives too and work together to find ways of finding home-grown/ home-developed medication that isn't reliant on global political manipulation. After all, who are we to discount out of hand, what thousands of HIV sufferers have preferred to adopt to the usual drugs?

I'm completely with you on what you wrote :- "it is vitally important to think critically about the abysmal record of the pharmaceutical companies in Africa, but the reality is that antiretroviral drugs are effective, and we should be seeking to improve safe access to them around the world, not hinder it as Matthias Rath has campaigned tirelessly to do"

It's a bit weird that a man who sells vitamin tablets like some sell viagra (over the net) could have got into the AIDS biz but I suppose AIDS denialism is a broad enough church to offer pills and potions too. I suppose there are some people who approach it all with magnets & hypnosis as well.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:AIDS_denialism But this ESF thing you want tell us he shouldn't be speaking it is more a like winged carpet conference than a cutting edge or lancet of contemporary Swedish social movement thinking on drug patents, generic pharmo-production, R&D on pandemics & blaa blaa so on - so forth.

Look at who is sharing the platform -
→ "The Visions Party" one of Denmark's really quirky groups of those who think wisdom (their wisdom) is not only good for wrinkles and holistic wellbeing but can provide satisfactory solutions to geopolitics through professional public service. The Danish electorate didn't seem to agree with them even if they count on dashingly good looking Danish actor Lars Mikkelsen as a signed up party member. Really honestly all you have to do is try looking at their website for a few seconds before your retina burn out and you reach for the carrots and Vit B supplement because you know you really should have done "sight training" with a Nintendo instead of boycotting the Japanese entertainment industry.
 http://www.visionspartiet.dk/index.php?la=2

→ The Dutch group "stichting mind rights" have a much funkier website which subtely presents their ideology with an underlay of greenie daisies, "power to the peaceful" and "anti-bush" buttons and of course reinforces their credibility by telling us about their attendance at the Kenyan social forum. They're against isolation units in psichiatric treatment. I've been put in one so I can sort of agree with them - now - but honestly the "time out" to calm down did sort me out back then & plod was right to put me there. Or maybe not doing industrial strength doses of Ketamine instead of letting plod catch me was the trick and spending more time in prison in social conditions would have been better. Whichever, unless these people start campaigning to substitute the straight jacket, diazapam & padded cell approach to berserkers with inframuscular hourly injections of quackie Rath multivit + mineral formula - I reckon they're doing no wrong for rights in general or HIV treatment in particular.
 http://home.tiscali.nl/antiisosite/international_message_board.htm

→ When the worlds eating population relies on less than 500 financial entities, 10 of whom are amongst the largest direct employers on the planet & richest corporations (Walmart etc), to provide food - nutrition & sweeties and in that production / consumption chain are so far removed from the less than a billion farm workers who aren't engaged in grubbing for coffee & other non-nutritional stuff like tea - it's not surprising that people buy vitamins from people like quackie Rath. Simply because they don't grow them or know anyone who does. They mightn't even know how you grow zinc, magnesium, fat-soluble prohormones, tocopherols and tocotrienols & suspect they don't really get these things in breakfast cereal or chewing soggy packaging. So this group in Denmark, which will also be making an appearance, helps people to grow veggies in organic conditions and has interestingly recently seen a "power struggle" (if such is not an offensively effette term to people who toil) [ never anger a yokel be my motto ] and are now headed up by Lars Mikkelsen. The actor. and the politician. Obviously the Danish organic scene is a bit of a closed shop if essentially the same people under different slogans are going to be talking.  http://www.urtegartneriet.dk/Forbruger/

Is that odd for a social forum?

I must admit I find them unbearably dour events where young idealists looking for love and a spot of irresponsible sexual liason spiced with responsible global attitude and politics must endure monumental egos with no trace of humour being translated often lamentably by Babel volunteers for nothing but the hope of a snog.

__________________________________________

I suppose he'll sue someone again soon. Well done for being sued by him. I shall look for his real world address and set him up for some shipments of Viagra. Nothing more can I offer to do :-) "be well"

The enemy of our enemy is not our friend.

Rath IS the head of a drug company, with lives and death in his hands. What do you think vitamins ARE?

A man who makes MILLIONS convincing people that his, ineffective, pills are better than someone else's pills *that* *work* is already pretty despicable.

A man who attempts to use the force of the law to silence investigation of his activities is more despicable.

But when his work is used to derail effective treatment of a fatal condition, therefore MAKING PEOPLE DIE MORE QUICKLY, I find it hard to imagine a more odious individual or more disgusting an organisation.

The only circumstances that the ESF should be inviting his foundation to speak would be to answer the questions "how the living fuck do you sleep at night."

File under "so open minded the brain has fallen out" decision by the ESF organisers. Utterly foolish.

Dr No, I appreciate your point, and agree that we should be looking at the broader social, political, & financial context of access to essential medicines.

This is an important & interesting area, covering everything from open-access publishing, education, the 'brain drain', how research is funded, TRIPS, the Doha agreement, and generally a whole range of topics which I would expect to be vigorously debated at the ESF.

However, Dr Rath tends to harass groups who are involved in developing alternative models of delivery & development of medicines which work. The Treatment Action Campaign in South Africa, MSF, and other organisations which Dr Rath has tried to interfere with, are at the forefront of directly challenging such problems on the ground and at a wider strategic level.

The presence of a speaker from the Dr Rath Foundation is therefore unlikely to make a constructive contribution to such vital discussions and plans for action.

Thanks,
Psyduck.

Yes, I get that he's a baddie but once again, I question OUR right to say there is this one legitimate way of treating THOSE people. It's the same ol colonialist attitude towards 'developing' (aaaggghhh!) countries isn't it? And is pretty patronising towards those who have made the choice not to take anti retro viral drugs. I'm not just talking about Dr Rath here, (who is another outsider on the make as Scaramouche points out) but indigenous people selling 'miracle cures' based on roots and bark that some people swear by. My point is that, as outsiders, we should listen more and exclude less - especially as ESF is just a big talking shop!

I really don't see how this is a colonialist issue. If it were any other big business interest invited to speak at such a gathering, there would be an uproar. Imagine the converse, if it were a speaker from GSK or other anti-retroviral manufacturer speaking at the ESF, on *any* topic. It wouldn't happen, even in a discussion on the over-pricing of drugs.

But because this Rath toerag has positioned his firm (a marketing operation as insidious as any "greenwash") as somehow anti "big pharma" or "natural" he gets an undeserved free pass to cause deaths. Because, hey, at least vitamins aren't "chemicals". NO.

It's not about my white imperialist gob telling poor black people that they should take pill X not pill Y. It's telling the vendor of pill Y to stop lying to the poor black people by saying that pill X doesn't work (when it has been proven to) and that pill Y is effective (when it isn't, and shouldn't even be necessary because they should have access to a decent diet).

Vendor of pill Y is in fact more hateful than vendor of pill X because his cure *does* *not* *work* but he persists in discouraging the use of pill X.

We don't argue that we should listen more to advertisers, there is a clear and compelling case for excluding certain speakers: this is one of them.