Rath had misused their results to argue that multivitamins should be used in place of antiretroviral medication. They affirmed the central role of antiretroviral medication in treating AIDS and indicated that multivitamins should be at most a supplementary treatment. Use of published medical literature A 1998 British Medical Journal article examined some of Rath's and Health Now's claims in support of Rath's multivitamin supplement blend. The authors found that Rath listed 40 citations to support his product but that only eight of them were of actual clinical trials. After examining these clinical trials, the authors concluded that despite Rath's claims to the contrary, "no general clinical benefit of vitamins C and E and carotene can be proved from the works cited by Health Now." Claims of WHO and UN support Rath's advertising material has suggested that his nutritional supplements are superior to antiretroviral therapy in the treatment of HIV/AIDS and implied that his claims were endorsed by the World Health Organization, UNICEF, and UNAIDS. These agencies issued a joint statement condemning Rath's advertisements as "wrong and misleading". Criticism Credentials The Democratic Alliance (DA), an official opposition party in South Africa, said Rath was representing himself as a medical doctor in his literature distributed in South Africa, and claimed that this was against the law since he was not registered as a doctor in South Africa. The DA filed complaints with the Health Professions Council of South Africa and the police. The Health Professions Council said it could not discipline Rath since its jurisdiction is restricted to registered doctors. A lawyer representing Rath responded to the complaints by stating that the title 'Dr.' referred in Rath's case to "a PHD doctorate he had obtained and his position as a researcher, not a medical doctor." Other sources, however, describe Rath as a "qualified doctor" and state that he "obtained his basic medical degree in 1985, after studying in Munster and Hamburg" and "became a researcher first at the University Clinic in Hamburg and then, during 1989 and 1990, at the Berlin Heart Centre....In 2003, the regional court in Berlin banned Rath from calling himself in his adverts 'the renowned doctor' and/or 'the renowned scientist', after a court case in which medical and scientific witnesses said he was neither. In the same year, Rath's theories and micronutrients were disavowed by the respected and influential Swiss Study Group for Complementary and Alternative Methods in