The ‘wellness’ brand GOOP owned by Gwyneth Paltrow has been awarded the first ever ‘Rusty Razor’ award by UK’s Skeptic Magazine for being the ‘best’ promoter of the worst pseudoscientific nonsense. The award came as part of the magazine’s annual ‘Ockham Awards’. Goop was invited to collect its award, which was being handed out at the recent QED Conference in Manchester, but sadly no one from the company responded. Skeptic Magazine Editor Deborah Hyde said: ‘We were surprised at quite how many public vote nominations GOOP received for the “Rusty Razor” award for pseudoscience – it’s certainly a popular win. When there are so many issues affecting public health today – the rise of measles and whooping cough due to reduced rates of vaccination, for instance – it’s a shame that many people prefer to contemplate their yonis than engage with evidence-based reality’.
‘The elimination of measles has been achieved in the UK for the first time, the World Health Organization says. The global health body classes a country as having eliminated the disease when it has stopped it freely circulating for at least three years. While there are still small clusters, many of these are brought in from abroad and they are not spreading. But health experts said there should be no complacency, warning there were several large outbreaks across Europe. The news comes just a week after it was announced England had achieved the target of getting 95% of children to have had the first dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine by their fifth birthday. Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland were already achieving it.’
‘A cancer patient nearly died from cyanide poisoning because of his burning passion for apricot kernel extract. The unidentified man, 67, consumed two teaspoons of the ‘complementary medicine’ each day, in the belief it would keep him in remission. He was also taking three tablets of Novodalin – a commercially made herbal fruit kernel supplement daily for the same reason. But his habit eventually caught up with him, a case study reveals. He was beginning to become starved of oxygen – which is how cyanide kills. Doctors found him to have 25 times above the safe limit of the toxin in his body – an amount that can have serious side effects.’
At a time when the availability of homeopathy in the UK’s National Health Service is diminishing we now have an assault on its use (and the use of other alternative medical procedures) with animals. No Way to Treat a Friend: Lifting the Lid on Complementary and Alternative Veterinary Medicine by Niall Taylor and Alex Gough “is an informative and readable exposé of CAVM. Written in an accessible style and illustrated with stories and cases from veterinary practice about real animals, this book is a counterweight to the mass of ‘pro’ literature in existence which uncritically promotes CAVM without consideration of whether or not it works or could even be harmful to our animal companions”. The book is due out in October and may now be ordered online.
This July the National Health Service in England published a report with the title ‘Items which should not routinely be prescribed in primary care: A Consultation on guidance for CCGs’. The report lists a range of treatments currently prescribed within the NHS without sufficient justification. To the delight of skeptics these include homeopathy and herbal remedies, which the report considered to be of no proven efficacy. Until October 21st people will have the opportunity to give their views on these proposals using an online form.
