If you have already read Ben Goldacre's book, Bad Science, head over to his blog where he has posted up a whole new chapter that wasn't in the first edition. Obviously, if you haven't already read it, get it and do.
The reason for the chapter's exclusion from the first pressing is that its subject is Matthias Rath, a vitamin pill pseudo-scientist whose marketing of a multi-vitamin 'cure for AIDS' in South Africa has had demonstrable and unequivocally tragic effects. At the time of the book's original publication, legal proceedings were going ahead for a libel case that Rath had brought against Ben Goldacre personally, and against the Guardian, for criticising his practices in his column.
Now that the case has been dropped, signalling a great win for common sense, free speech and science, Goldacre has been able to publish his true thoughts on the situation. As he points out, after preparations for legal proceedings, "I now know more about Matthias Rath than almost any other person alive". And this chapters demonstrates that.
This should be read by anyone who asks what's the harm of a little bit of alternative medicine or herbal quackery.
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