pharmaceutical licence, and for claiming on his website that the vitamins could cure cancer. Rath settled the case with a EUR33,000 fine, paid to an organisation helping disabled children, and amended the website. The judge noted that the case had not given an impression of "charlatanry", but rather of excessively aggressive marketing. In 2007, the German Federal Constitutional Court issued a ruling in favour of Rath, finding that the prohibition of the brochure and poster "Stop the pharmacartel" and "Stop the codex-plans of the pharmacartel" by judgements of courts in Berlin in 2000/2001 was unjustified as it violated Rath's fundamental rights, e.g. the right of free speech. In 2008, the Cape Town High Court issued an interdict barring Rath from advertising his products as a treatment for AIDS, and stating that the clinical trials he has been running in black townships are illegal. The ruling also found that "Health Minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang and her department had a duty to investigate Rath's activities." In 2008 Rath sued Ben Goldacre and The Guardian for libel in three articles describing Rath's activities in South Africa. In September 2008, Rath dropped his suit and was ordered to pay costs, an interim amount of about £220,000. Goldacre has expressed interest in writing a "meticulously referenced" work on Rath, and South African AIDS denialism in general, based on material that had been excised from his column during the litigation. A chapter about Rath in Goldacre's Bad Science that was omitted from the first edition due to the litigation was reinstated in the paperback edition in early 2009, made available on his website, and licensed for free distribution. See also List of ineffective cancer treatments References External links Profile at Dr. Rath Research Institute 1955 births University of Hamburg alumni HIV/AIDS denialists Living people German nutritionists Physicians from Stuttgart Patent medicine businesspeople Creative Commons-licensed authors Alternative cancer treatment advocates Orthomolecular medicine advocates Pseudoscientific diet advocates Businesspeople from Stuttgart