Here’s a bit of a data dump of some of the critical news coverage that Patrick Holford’s “Food Is Better Than Medicine” tour of South Africa has picked up. They’re not very impressed in Africa by his claim that vitamin C is better than AZT, and Holford seems a bit conflicted over it himself. Here’s a typical news quote…

He has also denied news reports which he said implied he had been saying vitamin C was more effective in treating Aids than the ARV medication, AZT. “This is not true,” he said at the weekend. “I have never made this claim. “What I have said in the latest edition of my book, the New Optimum Nutrition Bible… is that ‘AZT, the first prescribable anti-HIV drug, is potentially harmful and proving less effective than vitamin C’.”

And reassuringly, meanwhile, Rath researcher Raxit Jariwalla seems to have backed down somewhat. Here is his original statement in support of Holford 16/1/07 published online by Holford:

Patrick Holford’s conclusion that ‘AZT, the first prescribable anti-HIV drug, is proving less effective than vitamin C’, as interpreted from the results of our experiments, is correct. In two published studies [1, 2], in which we compared vitamin C to AZT in chronically and latently infected cells, our experiments consistently showed that AZT was less effective than vitamin C. I made this clear in my letter to the Guardian published on 20 January 2005 and am surprised that the Guardian journalist continues to wrongly accuse Mr Holford as being ‘guilty of at least incompetence’ for making a conclusion which is scientifically valid.

Mr Holford has been familiar with our work all along but mistakenly cited the wrong paper in his book when concluding that AZT is less effective than vitamin C. After realizing that this citation was an honest mistake, Mr Holford has changed the reference in his soon to be published latest edition. This does not change the fact that the original interpretation made by Mr Holford is true since our work demonstrated it to be so and the citation of the wrong paper on his part was in reality an innocent error and not an act of ‘incompetence’ or a case of ‘bad science’.

And here is his new statement, in a letter 21/2/07 published by Holford online [edit – Holford has now taken this second letter off his website]:

I wish to clarify that my concurrence with Patrick Holford¹s statement that AZT is proving less effective than vitamin C is supportive of a conclusion that pertains specifically to interpretation of results of our lab experiments with HIV-infected cells (as reported in the above two studies) and not to any claims about HIV in people.

So, what a turn-up, all very unexpected. I must say I find Holford’s claims quite extraordinary in a country with 5 million HIV positive, who have only recently managed to wrestle antiretroviral medication from an HIV denialist government obsessed with using nutritional cures instead, and such a tragic recent history with vitamin pill manufacturers exploiting the situation, and about a disease that has killed 25 million people worldwide, with 40 million HIV positive. I absolutely weep. Anyway, here’s a selection of media coverage for those who are interested.

www.andnetwork.com/index?service=direct/0/Home/older.fullStory&sp=l208400
Aids nutritionist linked to Rath
February 24, 2007, 3 days, 11 hours and 50 minutes ago. By (AND) – www.andnetwork.com
The scientist backing nutritionist Patrick Holford’s claims on vitamin C and Aids was one of the key speakers at a conference organised by the controversial Dr Matthias Rath in Johannesburg just more than a year ago. Holford, who claims vitamin C is more effective in treating Aids than an antiretroviral drug, is giving a series of workshops in South Africa.

www.health-e.org.za/news/article.php?uid=20031604

allafrica.com/stories/200702210872.html
South Africa: Holford Makes ‘Mindboggling’ Aids Claim
Health-e (Cape Town)
February 21, 2007

Kerry Cullinan
Popular British nutritionist Patrick Holford, currently on tour in South Africa, has caused a storm by claiming that Vitamin C is more effective in treating AIDS than the antiretroviral drug AZT.
Holford uses research by the controversial Rath Foundation’s Raxit Jariwalla, to back his claim, which he made most recently in a letter to the Guardian newspaper last week.
However, in response Guardian columnist and medical doctor Ben Goldacre called Holford’s claim “mindboggling”.
“What is Holford’s evidence for this bizarre, repeated AIDS claim?” writes Goldacre. “Firstly, he cites two small studies done on cells in a dish on a laboratory bench, using vitamin C and AZT. This is farcically weak evidence.”
The second piece of “evidence”, says Goldacre, is “more worrying” as it is simply a letter from Jariwalla stating that Holford is right.
Meanwhile, University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Professor Nigel Rollins, a member of the World Health Organisation’s advisory group on nutrition, says there is “no substantiated evidence that a single vitamin either reduces the viral load of improves the CD4 count of people living with HIV”.
“There is a well established process in science to test whether an intervention is helpful,” adds Rollins. “Without this proof, it is misleading to make such claims and encourage people to put their hopes and money into something unfounded.”
But Holford stands by his claim in his letter and says that “the real crime here is that no full-scale human trials have been funded on vitamin C to follow up Jariwalla’s important findings because it is non-patentable and hence not profitable”.
The Rath Foundation has been controversial in South Africa as its founder, Dr Matthias Rath, has encouraged people with HIV to abandon their medication in favour of his vitamins.
Holford had close links with one of Dr Rath’s mentors, the late Dr Linus Pauling, who was patron of Holford’s Institute for Optimum Nutrition (ION). Pauling advocated that vitamin C could prevent colds and treat cancer.
AZT was the world’s first HIV treatment. Initially, it was the only antiretroviral drug available and while it slowed the growth of the virus, used alone and in large doses, it did have some serious side effects.
However, today AZT is used far more successfully in smaller doses as part of the standard three-drug regimen prescribed for people with AIDS.
Holford, who has his own range of vitamins, is running workshops in Cape Town, Johannesburg and Durban.

www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__national/&articleid=300160

Aids nutritionist linked to Rath

Cape Town, South Africa
24 February 2007 07:21

The scientist backing nutritionist Patrick Holford’s claims on vitamin C and Aids was one of the key speakers at a conference organised by the controversial Dr Matthias Rath in Johannesburg just more than a year ago.

Holford, who is currently giving a series of workshops in South Africa, claims that the vitamin is more effective in treating Aids than the antiretroviral drug azidothymidine, commonly known as AZT.

He quotes as substantiation for the claim laboratory findings by Dr Raxit Jariwalla, who was one of the speakers at a December 2005 Dr Rath Health Foundation conference in Johannesburg titled The Natural Control of Aids.

According to the foundation website, Jariwalla is “a senior researcher in nutrition and infectious diseases at the Dr Rath Research Institute in California, USA”.

Sharing the platform with Jariwalla in Johannesburg were prominent Aids dissidents Dr David Rasnick, from the United States, and South Africa’s Professor Sam Mhlongo.

In his presentation, according to the website, Jariwalla put forward “numerous studies by other scientists that confirm the benefits of vitamins against Aids”.

Vitamin claim
Holford first made the vitamin-C claim in his book The New Optimum Nutrition Bible, published in 2004.

The claim was rubbished at the time by the Guardian newspaper’s irreverent medical columnist Dr Ben Goldacre, who said a Jariwalla study Holford cited was not a comparative study of vitamin C and AZT.

“The paper doesn’t even contain the word AZT. Not once,” Goldacre said.

Jariwalla responded that Holford’s claim was, in fact, correct, and was supported by other papers — not the one cited in the Nutrition Bible.

The controversy resurfaced this month after Goldacre reported that Holford’s online Wikipedia biographical entry had been anonymously edited by his own public relations agent. Goldacre noted that among the material deleted from the entry was all reference to the vitamin-C controversy.

In the same column, Goldacre questioned Holford’s lack of academic qualifications in the nutrition arena and referred to him a “self-styled ‘nutritionist'”.

Holford replied in a letter published in the newspaper on February 16, repeating his assertion that the vitamin-C claim was correct.

“The real crime here is that no full-scale human trials have been funded on vitamin C to follow up Jariwalla’s important finding because it is non-patentable and hence not profitable,” he said.

He also denied that he had, as Goldacre claimed, conferred a nutrition diploma on himself through the Institute for Optimum Nutrition, which he founded in 1984. He said the award came from the institution’s board of trustees, on which he did not sit.

‘Health tour’
On his current “health tour” to South Africa, his half-day seminars and workshops, being held in Pretoria, Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town, cost between R295 and R595.

Participants, his publicists say, will learn how to improve their health and wellness, balance their blood sugar levels and burn fat.

Holford recently published a book titled Food Is Better Medicine than Drugs.

Rath and his foundation have been criticised by doctors and Aids activists for advocating that people with Aids take his commercially prepared vitamins rather than “toxic” antiretrovirals.

He has been tacitly backed by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who herself has advocated a lemon, beetroot and garlic diet for people with HIV/Aids.

Rath is suing the Democratic Alliance and its former health spokesperson Diane Kohler-Barnard over a claim that he is a “charlatan”. — Sapa
Related articles
• Special report: Aids, TB and malaria

www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,9294,2-7-1442_2074699,00.html

UK ‘guru’ denies links to Rath
25/02/2007 20:15 – (SA)
Cape Town – British nutrition guru Patrick Holford, who is touring South Africa, says he has no links to the Rath Foundation, and does not advise people to stop taking antiretrovirals.
He has also denied news reports which he said implied he had been saying vitamin C was more effective in treating Aids than the ARV medication, AZT.
“This is not true,” he said at the weekend. “I have never made this claim.
“What I have said in the latest edition of my book, the New Optimum Nutrition Bible… is that ‘AZT, the first prescribable anti-HIV drug, is potentially harmful and proving less effective than vitamin C’.”
‘Impeccably conducted research’
It was reported last week that the laboratory study on which Holford based this sentence was conducted by Dr Raxit Jariwalla, whom the foundation lists as one of its researchers, and who was one of the key speakers at a foundation conference in South Africa just over a year ago.
Holford said Jariwalla’s “robust and impeccably conducted research”, published in leading peer-reviewed journals, warranted following up with trials with human volunteers.
“The real crime here is that no full-scale human trials have been funded on vitamin C to follow up Jariwalla’s important finding, probably because it is non-patentable and hence not profitable,” Holford said.
“Until such a trial is done we will not know to what extent vitamin C can act as an antiretroviral agent…
“It does not mean that people should stop taking AZT and I am not advocating this.”
He said Jariwalla’s original research was undertaken at the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine in 1990, “long before the existence of the Rath Foundation”.
Holford said he had no association “whatsoever” with the foundation and had never met or spoken with its founder, Dr Matthias Rath – who, coincidentally, also trained under Pauling.
He said that in addition to Jariwalla’s research, clinical studies by other researchers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals had documented beneficial effects of vitamin C and other nutrients in HIV-infected people.
In one experiment with a small subgroup of advanced Aids patients, administration of high-dose vitamin C and N-acetyl-cysteine was linked to reduced HIV viral load and improved immune cell (CD4) count.
Suing the Democratic Alliance
Rath and his foundation have been criticised by doctors and Aids activists for advocating that people with Aids take his commercially-prepared vitamins rather than “toxic” ARVs.
He has been tacitly backed by Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.
Rath is suing the Democratic Alliance in connection with a claim that he is a “charlatan”, after himself losing a defamation action brought by the Treatment Action Campaign, which he claimed was a front for pharmaceutical companies.

Here is a statement from Patrick Holford:

www.p atrickho lford.co m/content.a sp?id_Content=1778

Patrick Holford HIV Vitamin C Statement

In the latest edition of Patrick Holford’s New Optimum Nutrition Bible I report on ‘in vitro’ trials on human T-cells infected with HIV, comparing the anti-viral effect of AZT with vitamin C. I say that “AZT, the first prescribable anti-HIV drug, is potentially harmful and proving less effective than vitamin C (Ref 23)”

Ref 23. These ‘in vitro’ studies on human T-cells shows that vitamin C suppresses the HIV virus in both chronically and latently infected cells, while AZT has no significant effect. It is a tragedy that this simple, non-toxic treatment hasn’t been further tested.

Harakeh S, Jariwalla RJ.Ascorbate effect on cytokine stimulation of HIV production.
Nutrition. 1995 Sep-Oct;11(5 Suppl):684-7.

Also see:

Harakeh S, Jariwalla RJ – NF-kappa B-independent suppression of HIV expression by ascorbic acid,
AIDS Res Hum Retroviruses. 1997 Feb 10;13(3):235-9.

Harakeh S, Niedzwiecki A, Jariwalla RJ. Mechanistic aspects of ascorbate inhibition of human immunodeficiency virus.
Chem Biol Interact. 1994 Jun;91(2-3):207-15.

Harakeh S, Jariwalla RJ. Comparative study of the anti-HIV activities of ascorbate and thiol-containing reducing agents in chronically HIV-infected cells.
Am J Clin Nutr. 1991 Dec;54(6 Suppl):1231S-1235S.

Harakeh S, Jariwalla RJ, Pauling L. Suppression of human immunodeficiency virus replication by ascorbate in chronically and acutely infected cells.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1990 Sep;87(18):7245-9.

This robust and impeccably conducted research, published in the most prestigious journal of the National Academy of Sciences, warrants following up with ‘in vivo’ trials. Read here what the author, Dr Raxit Jariwalla, has to say. The real crime here is that no full scale human trials have been funded on vitamin C to follow up Jariwalla’s important finding probably because it is non-patentable and hence not profitable. Until such a trial is done we will not know to what extent vitamin C can act as an anti-retroviral agent. The non-toxicity of vitamin C, compared to AZT, make the need for this research of paramount importance.

The abstracts of the two key papers are shown below.

STUDY SHOWING THAT VITAMIN C IS A POTENT SUPPRESSOR OF HIV ACTIVATION

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1990 Sep;87(18):7245-9.Click here to read

STUDY SHOW THAT VITAMIN C OUTPERFORMS AZT IN SUPPRESSING HIV VIRUS ACTIVATION

Nutrition. 1995 Sep-Oct;11(5 Suppl):684-7.

EDIT

Lengthy statement from Holford just emailed to me, pasted below. They’ve ignored my emails and requests for interview however.

Statement from Patrick Holford

Recent media reports have implied that I have been saying that Vitamin C is more effective in treating AIDS than the anti-retroviral drug AZT. This is not true. I have never made this claim.

What I have said in the latest edition of my book, the New Optimum Nutrition Bible, reporting on ‘in vitro’ trials on human T-cells infected with HIV, comparing the anti-viral effect of AZT with vitamin C is that “AZT, the first prescribable anti-HIV drug, is potentially harmful and proving less effective than vitamin C (Ref 23).’ Ref 23 states ‘These ‘in vitro’ studies on human T-cells shows that vitamin C suppresses the HIV virus in both chronically and latently infected cells, while AZT has no significant effect. It is a tragedy that this simple, non-toxic treatment hasn’t been further tested.’ It then lists the six relevant published studies, the full references and summaries of which are available on www.pa trickhol ford.com/HIV or on medline, via google by entering ‘jariwalla + HIV’.

This robust and impeccably conducted research, published in the most prestigious journal of the National Academy of Sciences and other leading peer-reviewed journals, warrants following up with ‘in vivo’ trials with human volunteers. The real crime here is that no full scale human trials have been funded on vitamin C to follow up Jariwalla’s important finding probably because it is non-patentable and hence not profitable. Until such a trial is done we will not know to what extent vitamin C can act as an anti-retroviral agent. The non-toxicity of vitamin C, compared to AZT, make the need for this research of paramount importance. It does not mean that people should stop taking AZT and I am not advocating this. I have no association with the Rath Foundation whatsoever and have never met or spoken with Dr Rath. Furthermore, Jariwalla’s original research was conducted at the Linus Pauling Institute of Sceince and Medicine, and co-authored by twice Nobel Prize winner Dr Linus Pauling, in 1990, long before the existence of the Rath Foundation.

In addition, to Jariwalla’s research, clinical studies by other researchers published in peer-reviewed scientific journals have documented beneficial effects of vitamin C (and other nutrients) in HIV-infected persons. Thus, in HIV-infected adults, supplementation with vitamins C and E was shown to prevent oxidative damage to DNA promoted by AZT (J Clin Invest 102: 4-9, 1998). In another placebo-controlled trial of vitamin C and E supplementation, the researchers reported significantly lowered oxidative stress (associated with HIV infection or antiretroviral treatment) and a trend toward reduction in HIV virus level in blood (AIDS 12: 1653-59, 1998).
In a small subgroup of advanced AIDS patients, administration of high-dose vitamin C and NAC (N-acetyl-cysteine) was linked to reduced HIV viral load, improved immune cell (CD4) count and lymphocyte proliferation (Eur J Clin Invest 30: 905-14, 2000). Additionally, several studies using multivitamins (that include vitamins C and E in the composition) have reported positive benefits in HIV-infected individuals, as reviewed recently (AIDS 19:847-861, 2005).

Patrick Holford
Founder of Institute for Optimum Nutrition

* Patrick Holford is currently on a media and lecture tour in South Africa promoting his new book, Food is Better Medicine Than Drugs, which provides nutritional approaches to diabetes, heart disease, depression and arthritis. Neither the book nor the lecture tour covers the subject of AIDS.

Ref 23: Harakeh S, Jariwalla RJ. Ascorbate effect on cytokine stimulation of HIV production.
Nutrition. 1995 Sep-Oct;11(5 Suppl):684-7. Also see
Harakeh S, Jariwalla RJ. NF-kappa B-independent suppression of HIV expression by ascorbic acid.
AIDS Res Hum Retroviruses. 1997 Feb 10;13(3):235-9.
Harakeh S, Niedzwiecki A, Jariwalla RJ. Mechanistic aspects of ascorbate inhibition of human immunodeficiency virus. Chem Biol Interact. 1994 Jun;91(2-3):207-15.
Harakeh S, Jariwalla RJ. Comparative study of the anti-HIV activities of ascorbate and thiol-containing reducing agents in chronically HIV-infected cells. Am J Clin Nutr. 1991 Dec;54(6 Suppl):1231S-1235S.
Harakeh S, Jariwalla RJ, Pauling L. Suppression of human immunodeficiency virus replication by ascorbate in chronically and acutely infected cells.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1990 Sep;87(18):7245-9.

Ends

ISSUED ON BEHALF OF PATRICK HOLFORD BY:

CRAIG DOONAN
LEAP COMMUNICATIONS
CAPE TOWN
Cell: 083-463-1827
Tel: (021) 785-3683
Fax: (021) 785-4957
Email: craig@leapcommunications.co.za
Website: www.leapcommunications.co.za