TAC and SAMA v Matthias Rath and eleven others: TIG press statement on the TAC's withdrawal of its case against Anthony Brink and the TIG
On Friday 7 March, three days after receiving our Heads of Argument, the Treatment Action Campaign dropped its case against us. Not surprisingly, because as our Heads clearly show, the TAC never had any case against us in the first place. Since we'd drawn our own papers without outside legal help, and so hadn't incurred any costs, the TAC's proposal to abandon its case against us on the eve of trial wasn't one we could justifiably turn down.
The essential issues for decision in the case are whether in giving multivitamins to the sick African poor, and having a doctor keep an eye on how they're doing, the first to fifth respondents are distributing unregistered medicines and conducting unlawful clinical trials in South Africa; and if so, whether the Minister of Health and the Director General have been remiss in not stopping them. The TAC's allegations in this regard can best be described as pitiful (read Moerane SC's brilliant Heads of Argument for the Minister of Health and Director General to see why).
Instead of sticking to the point and confining itself to making its case on its peculiar version of the relevant facts, the TAC thought it would abuse the platform afforded by the litigation to toot its horn as a philanthropic human rights organization representing the country's AIDS sufferers, plug the pharmaceutical industry's patented ARVs on its behalf, and propound the industry's basic business model for the sale of these drugs, namely the germ/poison theory of AIDS - which is that if you light up an HIV antibody test it means gee you're got an invisible lethal virus swimming around in your blood and also lurking in your groin because hey you once actually had sex with someone, from which you're definitely going to die an awful, lingering, painful and lonely death in a few years time, unless you buy and swallow (extraordinarily toxic) ARVs every day until you die on them, to extend your now guaranteed short life. Which drugs the pharmaceutical industry is fortunately selling. (George Bush believes this, and Zackie Achmat pretends to.)
To make its case, the TAC wheeled in big-time white AIDS experts Francois Venter and Rob Dorrington to make a scene about the terrible epidemic of sex-disease among Africans in South Africa (not whites), but how thanks to the pharmaceutical industry's wonderful ARV drugs, their lives have all been saved, so wow they're not soon going to die of HIV-AIDS any more.
What the TAC intended was that in determining the lawfulness or otherwise of the first respondent's donation of micronutrients to impoverished, malnourished sick people, the judge should at the same time jubilantly cheer over the TAC's further claims about what an heroic organization it is, saving lives and everything.
Unfortunately for the TAC, things didn't go according to plan. By first setting up a much wider case than necessary for the decision of the core issues, and then pointlessly dragging us (Brink and the TIG) into the dispute, we got to examine, deconstruct and refute the TAC's case line by line in our answering affidavit, and in doing so exposed it as a pack of lies. (After reading our analysis and disassembly of the TAC's experts' evidence, you might fairly wonder whether they aren't mentally retarded.) The downside for us of dropping out of the case before trial is that we no longer get to address the court during argument on the many important matters dealt with in our affidavit. We don't get to point out to the judge that the TAC's misjoinder of us in the application was a classic instance of what American lawyers call a SLAPP case (‘strategic litigation to prevent public participation'), illegal in many states and contrived to bog a party down in a meritless and expensive litigation to hinder its work opposing corporate interests - such as the pharmaceutical interests the TAC promotes for a living under the clever guise of selflessly serving the public good.
Nonetheless, it's likely that our answering affidavit will be discussed in the case, because it's cross-referenced by the first respondent in his affidavit on the deadly toxicity of ARVs, and it has many strong, eminently quotable things to say - inter alia, impudently reminding the trial judge about the courts' historical penchant for mass hysterical delusions and racist ideology, both in this country and abroad.
So for serious journalists (corporate stenographers, Pharma bunnies, and TAC pom-pom girls needn't apply) we've printed and bound our answering affidavit as a handy 150-page paperback, and we're offering it bundled with a similar 70-page paperback version of our Draft Bill of Indictment of TAC leader Zackie Achmat in the International Criminal Court at The Hague, served in January 2007, of which we're very proud. Our open letter to Mail&Guardian CEO Trevor Ncube about his newspaper's dismal role in the affair is included in the appendices. Set in the style of a ‘serious joke', the document is now available in Spanish, French, Russian, Italian, German and Dutch too. We'd be grateful if journalists wanting copies of these lively and informative documents would chip in a nominal R60 for them both, so we're not left out of pocket for the cost of printing and binding them. And since the government's terrific Heads of Argument are essential reading for newspaper and other media reporters, we'll throw in a free copy of those too.
Statement issued by Adv. Anthony Brink of the Treatment Information Group March 12 2008
