Garlic cures AIDS - yeah, right.

I've banged on about Ben Goldacre and Badscience.net relentlessly. Fearless exposing the small dishonesties and major frauds of pharmaceutical companies, media outlets, universities for hire, 'alternative therapists' and 'Dr' Gillian McKeith alike, he performs a public service.

Ben's book, Bad Science is a must-read because it gives all the tools required to challenge any of the 'wonder-drug' / X causes or cures cancer / scientific shampoo bollocks shovelled at us.

Now, he's making available the chapter on Mathias Rath which was dropped from the book because the dangerous charlatan was suing Ben and The Guardian. Now the case is over (Rath lost), you can read how a man claimed that cancer sufferers should drop their medication in favour of vitamin pills, because the pharmaceutical companies were deliberately poisoning them for profit.

However, this was just the start. South Africa has 6.3 million AIDS sufferers, and 25% of the population has HIV. Along comes Rath, with adverts reading 'Multivitamin treatment is more effective than any toxic AIDS drug' and 'Multivitamins cut the risk of developing AIDS', with clinics dispensing these 'vitamins'.

Needless to say, these are lies from start to finish. Yes, major pharmaceutical companies are capitalist whores, but there is a serious legal framework which demands drug testing before a product is licensed. Rath's rubbish isn't licensed or tested, and he lied and lied and lied about his 'research'. In tandem with Thabo Mbeki's conspiracy-theorist approach to AIDS, the death toll in South Africa rose by 330,000. Millions of South Africans believed Rath and his denialist friends, leading to mass deaths.

So when you whinge on about not trusting doctors or pharmaceutical companies, remember this: that your sophisticated scepticism round dinner tables might sound terribly clever, but it's killing people on a huge scale. Pharmaceutical companies are deceitful, capitalist liars, but they have to operate within a strong regulatory and legal system which makes them behave… in the West, at least. Your doctor IS on your side. S/he's trained and the drugs are the end-product of years of experimentation. Kneejerk rejection of rationalist science kills people - kooks here and poor, uneducated, oppressed people 'there'. Read the chapter: the extent of the lies, shenanigans and plain stupidity will horrify you.