Read Ben Goldacre's Missing Chapter

Journalist, doctor, and debunker Ben Goldacre has released the infamous missing chapter from his best-selling book Bad Science. This did not appear in the original edition because it covered the malfeasance of Matthias Rath, who was suing Goldacre for libel at the time. Rath lost his case and consequentially everyone, including Goldacre, is free to discuss how Rath is killing people in South Africa with his claims of curing HIV/Aids with vitamin pills.

Best of all, Goldacre has released the chapter under a Creative Commons licence:

This is an extract from
BAD SCIENCE by Ben Goldacre
Published by Harper Perennial 2009.

You are free to copy it, paste it, bake it, reprint it, read it aloud,
as long as you don't change it - including this bit -
so that people know that they can find more ideas for free at www.badscience.net

The Doctor Will Sue You Now

This chapter did not appear in the original edition of this book, because for fifteen months leading up to September 2008 the vitamin-pill entrepreneur Matthias Rath was suing me personally, and the Guardian, for libel. This strategy brought only mixed success. For all that nutritionists may fantasise in public that any critic is somehow a pawn of big pharma, in private they would do well to remember that, like many my age who work in the public sector, I don't own a flat. The Guardian generously paid for the lawyers, and in September 2008 Rath dropped his case, which had cost in excess of £500,000 to defend. Rath has paid £220,000 already, and the rest will hopefully follow. Nobody will ever repay me for the endless meetings, the time off work, or the days spent poring over tables filled with endlessly cross-referenced court documents. On this last point there is, however, one small consolation, and I will spell it out as a cautionary tale: I now know more about Matthias Rath than almost any other person alive. My notes, references and witness statements, boxed up in the room where I am sitting right now, make a pile as tall as the man himself, and what I will write here is only a tiny fraction of the fuller story that is waiting to be told about him. Read on...