AIDS Group in Court Bid to Silence Doctor

South Africa's most influential activist group took prominent AIDS 'dissident' Matthias Rath to court on Friday to prevent his continuing denunciation of AIDS drugs.

Police intervened to keep order outside the Cape Town High Court during noisy protests between TAC supporters and those of South Africa's Traditional Healers' Organisation, which has joined the case to back Rath.

The Rath Foundation, headed by the German doctor who also runs a vitamin company, has claimed in paid advertisements in international newspapers and in pamphlets distributed in South Africa's poor townships that anti-retroviral drugs are poisons, and better treatment comes from a focus on nutrition and vitamins.

Rath accuses the United States, Britain, the United Nations and the World Health Organisation of a conspiracy to promote expensive medicines on behalf of a 'drugs cartel'. The foundation also says that TAC are 'stormtroopers' for the pharmaceutical industry.