This is an accepted version of this page Patrick Holford is a British author and entrepreneur who endorses a range of vitamin tablets.
Holford's claims about HIV and autism are not in line with modern medical thought and have been criticised for putting people in danger and damaging public health.
His research brought him in contact with Carl Pfeiffer and Abram Hoffer, both of whom claimed success in treating mental illness with nutritional therapy.
He was the chief executive officer and cofounder (with Professor André Tylee of the Institute of Psychiatry) of the special interest group that developed into Food for the Brain Foundation, a registered charity that has the stated aim of promoting mental health through nutrition.
[9][10] Between 2007 and 2008 Holford was a visiting professor at Teesside University and in 2007 was appointed as Head of Science and Education at Biocare, a nutritional supplement company.
[11] Holford has been the subject of criticism for his promotion of medically dubious techniques and products including hair analysis, his support of the now struck-off doctor Andrew Wakefield and advocating the use of "non-drug alternatives for mental health", for which he has been given an award by the Church of Scientology-backed Citizens Commission on Human Rights.
[13] Holford's claim in The New Optimum Nutrition Bible that "AZT, the first prescribable anti-HIV drug, is potentially harmful, and proving less effective than vitamin C"[14] has been criticised by Ben Goldacre.
[15] Goldacre writes that Holford based this conclusion on a non-clinical study where "you tip lots of vitamin C onto HIV-infected cells and measure a few things related to HIV replication".
The real crime here is that no full-scale human trials have been funded on vitamin C to follow up Jariwalla's important finding because it is non-patentable and hence not profitable.
[20] Matthias Rath has been linked to the previous policy of the South African government to deny anti-viral drugs to HIV positive patients.