The Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) issued a statement on Friday condemning the controversial physician Matthias Rath’s use of an HSPH study to support claims that vitamins are the best way of fighting HIV/AIDS.

Rath, who heads a self-named foundation that funds research and sells vitamin mixes, bought advertisements in the New York Times and various South African newspapers criticizing the use of anti-retroviral (ARV) drugs in combating AIDS.

The New York Times advertisement read, ARV drugs “severely damage all cells in the body...thereby not improving but rather worsening immune deficiencies and expanding the AIDS epidemic.”

The advertisement cites the HSPH study, which found that multivitamin regimens help slow the progression of the HIV disease.

The advertisement then said in bold type that no ARV drugs, or other vitamins, have caused the reversal of symptoms documented in the HSPH paper, which was published in the New England Journal of Medicine last July.

“We believe [the ads] deliberately misinterpret findings from our study to advocate against the scale-up of anti-retroviral therapy,” said HSPH Associate Professor Wafaie Fawazi, who co-authored the study and co-signed the critical statement with Gregory Professor in Cancer Prevention David J. Hunter. “The general premise that vitamin regimens are an alternative to anti-retroviral therapy is wrong.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) supports the position outlined in the HSPH press release, said Randa Saadeh, a scientist in the Department of Nutrition at the WHO.

“We keep our position on the importance of anti-retroviral therapy, which should be the main therapy given to all people living with HIV/AIDS,” she said.

“Whatever claims and statements are made by Rath, WHO is not behind that,” Saadeh said. “We think they are misleading and not scientifically evident and not solid recommendations.”

Disputing the charges of misrepresentation, Don Karn, the CEO of Dr. Rath Education Services USA, said,

“I don’t see that we have a major disagreement.”

Karn said that while the Rath Foundation’s approach focuses on vitamins, it encourages HIV patients on ARV to work with their doctors to include a multivitamin regimen.

He also said that the line in the advertisement that said the six-year study showed vitamins slowed the onset of AIDS by 50% “was a direct quote from the study itself as it was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.”

In the past two weeks, Rath’s advertising campaign in South Africa has drawn additional international flak from the United Nations Children’s Fund and the joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS.

Notably, however, Rath has not received criticism from an important figure in South Africa: the country’s health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang.

At a press conference last Thursday, she said, “There are other things we can be assisted in doing to respond to HIV/AIDS in this country,” the Associated Press (AP) reported.

“Raw garlic and a skin of the lemon not only do they give you a beautiful face and skin but they also protect you from disease,” she said at the press conference, according to the AP.

A communications official in the South African government, Charity Bhengu, had no further comment.

In light of the controversy, Robin Herman, the director of communications for HSPH, said she received a message on Monday from the director of advertising acceptability at the New York Times in which “they apologized for the inaccurate statement that should not have been printed in Dr. Rath’s advertisement.”

­—Staff writer David Zhou can be reached at dzhou@fas.harvard.edu.