• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
THE DOCTOR WILLSUE YOU NOW
by 
Ben Goldacre
The shocking and previously unpublishablenew chapter from his book
Bad Science
.
This work is licenced under theCreative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/
This is an extract from
BAD SCIENCE
by 
Ben Goldacre
Published by Harper Perennial 2009. You are free to copy it, paste it, bake it,reprint it, read it aloud, as long as you don’t change it –including this bit –so that people know that they can find more ideas for free at www.badscience.net
ISBN 978-0-00-728487-0
 
The Doctor WillSue You Now
This chapter did not appear in the original edition ofthis book,because for fifteen months leading up to September 2008 thevitamin-pill entrepreneur Matthias Rath was suing me person-ally,and the
Guardian
,for libel.This strategy brought only mixed success.For all that nutritionists may fantasise in publicthat any critic is somehow a pawn ofbig pharma,in private they would do well to remember that,like many my age who work inthe public sector,I don’t own a flat.The
Guardian
generously paid for the lawyers,and in September 2008 Rath dropped hiscase,which had cost in excess of£500,000 to defend.Rath haspaid £220,000 already,and the rest will hopefully follow.Nobody will ever repay me for the endless meetings,the timeoffwork,or the days spent poring over tables filled withendlessly cross-referenced court documents.On this last point there is,however,one small consolation,and I will spell it out as a cautionary tale:I now know moreabout Matthias Rath than almost any other person alive.My notes,references and witness statements,boxed up in the roomwhere I am sitting right now,make a pile as tall as the manhimself,and what I will write here is only a tiny fraction ofthefuller story that is waiting to be told about him.This chapter,I
 
should also mention,is available free online for anyone whowishes to see it.Matthias Rath takes us rudely outside the contained,almostacademic distance ofthis book.For the most part we’ve beeninterested in the intellectual and cultural consequences ofbadscience,the made-up facts in national newspapers,dubiousacademic practices in universities,some foolish pill-peddling,and so on.But what happens ifwe take these sleights ofhand,these pill-marketing techniques,and transplant them out of our decadent Western context into a situation where thingsreally matter?In an ideal world this would be only a thought experiment.AIDS is the opposite ofanecdote.Twenty-five million peoplehave died from it already,three million in the last year alone,and 500,000 ofthose deaths were children.In South Africa itkills 300,000 people every year:that’s eight hundred peopleevery day,or one every two minutes.This one country has 6.3million people who are HIV positive,including 30 per cent of all pregnant women.There are 1.2 million AIDS orphans underthe age ofseventeen.Most chillingly ofall,this disaster hasappeared suddenly,and while we were watching:in 1990,just 1per cent ofadults in South Africa were HIV positive.Ten yearslater,the figure had risen to 25 per cent.It’s hard to mount an emotional response to raw numbers,but on one thing I think we would agree.Ifyou were to walkinto a situation with that much death,misery and disease,youwould be very careful to make sure that you knew what youwere talking about.For the reasons you are about to read,Isuspect that Matthias Rath missed the mark.This man,we should be clear,is our responsibility.Born andraised in Germany,Rath was the head ofCardiovascularResearch at the Linus Pauling Institute in Palo Alto in Califor-nia,and even then he had a tendency towards grand gestures,publishing a paper in the
 Journal ofOrthomolecular Medicine
Bad Science
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...