{"id":2870,"date":"2018-06-11T09:15:00","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T09:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dietandhealthtoday.com\/?p=2870"},"modified":"2022-02-27T10:20:18","modified_gmt":"2022-02-27T10:20:18","slug":"the-hpcsa-vs-professor-noakes-tim-wins-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dietandhealthtoday.com\/2018\/06\/the-hpcsa-vs-professor-noakes-tim-wins-again\/","title":{"rendered":"The HPCSA vs. Professor Noakes: Tim wins again!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Between the 21st and the 23rd February 2018, an appeal hearing was held in Pretoria, South Africa. The appellant was the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA). The respondent was Professor Tim Noakes, listed as Dr Timothy Noakes for the purposes of the hearing (appearing in his capacity as a practitioner, hence Dr, not scientist). At the end of the appeal hearing, the chair indicated that the judgement would be made available within a month or so. This was assumed by interested parties to mean before the end of March. When nothing was heard by March 31st, or during April, or during May, journalist Marika Sboros joked \u201cwe didn\u2019t ask which year\u201d!<\/p>\n

Out of the blue, on Friday 8th June at 3.19pm, an email popped up from Tim\u2019s lawyer, Adam Pike, with the glorious title \u201cTim WON!!! Tim Noakes HPCSA.\u201d My husband Andy and I promptly burst into tears. Then the phone rang and Marika was in tears. Then twitter started going mad with congratulations and jubilations. It was the most wonderful news to finally, surely, end the craziest case that may ever be held in the field of nutrition. The verdict was reported immediately in local newspapers, here (Ref 1) and here (Ref 2).<\/p>\n

Having had the privilege to be part of this piece of history, I have written several posts on the whole saga. To close the case, this final post looks at the judgement that has just been delivered. What did the appeal committee think were the key points to be addressed? What conclusions did the committee members make? And what did they make of a counter claim lodged by Tim\u2019s legal team?<\/p>\n

The key twitter exchange<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you would like to see a video of the case, the players, the timeline, the key issues etc \u2013 there is a 30 minute video of me presenting the case here (Ref 3).<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s just remind ourselves of the tweet that kicked everything off:<\/p>\n

On 3 Feb 2014, someone called Pippa Leenstra, who tweets as @pippaleenstra, Pippa J Styling (she\u2019s a fashion stylist) tweeted: \u201c@ProfTimNoakes @SalCreed is LCHF eating OK for breastfeeding mums? Worried about all the dairy + cauliflower = wind for babies??\u201d<\/em>\u00a0(Please note: @SalCreed is Sally-Ann Creed, a co-author of The Real Meal Revolution with Tim and Jonno Proudfoot).<\/p>\n

On 5 Feb 2014, Tim tweeted back:\u00a0\u201c@pippaleenstra @SalCreed Baby doesn\u2019t eat the dairy and cauliflower. Just very healthy high fat breast milk. Key is to ween <\/em>[sic] baby onto LCHF.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

Tim\u2019s reply was one of approximately 80 replies. There were a number of replies from the dietician who made the complaint about Tim and some from her allies.
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The charge<\/strong><\/p>\n

The charge that was made against Professor Noakes was (and this is exactly as written):
\u201cTHAT you are guilty of unprofessional conduct, or conduct which, which<\/em>\u00a0when regard is had to your profession is unprofessional, in that during February 2014, you acted in a manner that is not in accordance with the norms and standards of your profession in that you provided unconventional advice on breastfeeding babies on social networks (tweet).\u201d<\/em> The appeal committee noted that this was still the verbatim charge that they were required to consider.<\/p>\n

The timeline<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the timeline of events from the first tweet to the final judgement:<\/p>\n