Matthias Rath, a doctor who promoted nutritional supplements to people with HIV in South Africa and argued that antiretroviral drugs were harmful, has dropped a year long libel case against the Guardian newspaper and been ordered to pay costs.

Dr Rath, a German born doctor who once worked in California on the possible therapeutic effects of micronutrients with the Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling and claimed to be his nominated successor, sued the newspaper over three articles written by Ben Goldacre in his column Bad Science.

In articles published in January and February last year, Dr Goldacre described Dr Rath (not the only promoter of unproved nutritional therapies in a South Africa where the government …