Matthias Rath is the kind of person you want to punch in the face.
Over the past two decades, Rath has made it his business to play down the importance of anti-viral medication used in the treatment of HIV and AIDS and to promote the sale of his own vitamin pills instead.
He has been very successful pushing this view. The government of South Africa listened to him and his ilk, and as a result, hundreds of thousands of people died because they did not get access to the right drugs. Hundreds of thousands of entirely preventable deaths. It’s sickening.
Not only that, but this guy went after everyone who might think of criticising him: AIDS researchers, grassroots healthcare organisations in South Africa and, most recently, Ben Goldacre, the journalist behind the “Bad Science” column in the Guardian newspaper in the UK.
Goldacre’s eponymous book “Bad Science” could not be published in full until the legal proceedings against him were out of the way. Now that the case has been settled with Rath withdrawing all charges, Goldacre has published the missing chapter, in full, for free, on the Internet. Have a read. It will make you sick to your stomach at what these people were up to.
We are currently living through a period of time when many big industries are under threat. The industries in question are publishing, music recording, telephony and movie-making, and the threat is the Internet. For the first time in history, the expression of human thought in pictures, words and sound can be sent around the world in the blink of an eye, and for free. It is the ultimate vision of Gutenberg, and the vested interests who wish to make scarce this infinitely available commodity are fighting a losing battle, mainly resorting to courts and politicians. But like Gutenberg, such wars cannot last forever and the world will some day settle into a new economic relationship with the Internet. What will it look like? How will we enjoy music and art and films 10 or 20 years from now? Will the battles continue to rage in the courts or will relatively new players such as Google eventually render the incumbents powerless? What will the business models look like? What scarcities will these businesses exploit? Who will be the winners? 
We are being told that we are on the brink of a revolution in medical care. Diseased and damaged organs can be replaced, not via anonymous donors, but grown instead from cells found in the patient’s own body. These miracle cells are known as stem-cells: generalist cells that can be conditioned to transform into specialised cells: heart muscle, kidneys, skin – anything you like. From there they can be grown in laboratories into complete organs – thus allowing people to gain to have transplants with no concerns about rejection. I have already seen footage showing replacement teeth and bladders being developed. It is possible that this breakthrough will transform medicine in the next ten years. It will be interesting to see to what extent it will have developed.
Passive Impressions 
