Tag: Jen Gunter

  • Unworkable and causing a headache

    Jen Gunter did a Very Serious Only Slightly Sarcastic review of Gwyneth Paltrow’s claim that there is no pseudoscience on Goop. [pause while everyone has a good laugh]

    Abstract

    Objective: To identify evidence that Gwyneth Paltrow is correct in her statement that the website GOOP does not sell pseudoscience.

    Materials and Methods: A search of the products sold on GOOP.com in the wellness section.

    Results: Biologically implausible therapies and ill-researched products were identified. The majority of health products (95%) could not be supported by science.

    Conclusions: There is no evidence to support Gwyneth Paltrow’s claim that goop is free of pseudoscience. In fact the opposite is true, goop is a classic example of pseudoscience profiteering. The bulk of their products are useless, but some could be harmful.

    Keywords: jade, crystals, vagina, coffee, enema, supplements, toxins, medical conspiracy theories, Epstein Barr Virus, mediums, vitamin B12 injections

    I like the twist; not “evidence that Goop is pseudoscience” but “no evidence that goop is free of pseudoscience.”

    Introduction

    In October 2018 Gwyneth Paltrow was interviewed by the BBC  and disagreed that she and goop are engaged in promoting and peddling pseudoscience.

    False online claims about health products and the promotion of pseudoscientific practices by both complementary and alternative medicine providers and celebrities has been well-described. Gwyneth Paltrow has previously endorsed therapies that have no scientific basis, such as vaginal jade eggs, apitherapy, or colonic administration of coffee via the rectum, so this researcher sought to identify any products sold by goop.com that could be considered pseudoscience to counter Gwyneth Paltrow’s belief.

    Spoiler: she found a lot.

  • The harmful effluvia of modern life

    Jen Gunter takes on “wellness” in the Times.

    Let’s take the trend of adding a pinch of activated charcoal to your food or drink. While the black color is strikingly unexpected and alluring, it’s sold as a supposed “detox.”

    Guess what? It has the same efficacy as a spell from the local witch.

    Maybe it’s a matter of aesthetics. Wellness potions in beautiful jars with untested ingredients of unknown purity are practically packaged for Instagram.

    I also want to clear up what toxins actually are: harmful substances produced by some plants, animals and bacteria (and, for them, charcoal is no cure).

    “Toxins,” as defined by the peddlers of these dubious cures, are the harmful effluvia of modern life that supposedly roam our bodies, causing belly bloat and brain fog, like a microscopic Emmanuel Goldstein from George Orwell’s “1984.”

    Ha! A microscopic Emmanuel Goldstein; I love that. EG stood, of course, for Trotsky, that other naughty Jew.

    Medicine and religion have long been deeply intertwined, and it’s only relatively recently that they have separated. The wellness-industrial complex seeks to resurrect that connection. It’s like a medical throwback, as if the halcyon days of health were 5,000 years ago. Ancient cleansing rituals with a modern twist — supplements, useless products and scientifically unsupported tests.

    All sold in pretty jars or pretty paper or pretty boxes. I like pretty jars and paper and boxes myself, but I manage not to think of them as medicinal, or even a source of “wellness.”

    By the way I wrote a Freethinker column about Paltrow and “wellness” last week.

  • But it’s fun, and there’s real merit in that

    Dr Jen Gunter is pissed, and she’s right to be. Why is she? Because now, after all this time, GOOP is going back into the archives and sorting posts into factual and hahaha just for laughs.

    GOOP is retroactively labelling “wellness” posts so women can figure out what was pure bullshit, what was just the hypothesis of a naturopath, and what might actually be factual. I haven’t come up with one that is labelled as factual yet.

    According to Racked, the categories are as follows (GOOP’s words, not mine):

    For Your Enjoyment: There probably aren’t going to be peer-reviewed studies about this concept, but it’s fun, and there’s real merit in that.

    Ancient Modality: This practice is nearly as old as time — many find value in it, even if modern-day research hasn’t caught up yet (it’s possible the practice will never attract its attention).

    Ugh, what is that even supposed to mean? Many find value in it – many find value in robbing banks, too, but so what? It sounds like Trump – “many people say” some bullshit he wants you to believe.

    Speculative but Promising: There’s momentum behind this concept, though it needs more research to elucidate exactly what’s at work.

    Momentum? Again, what does that mean? The “momentum” could be all from deluded idiots.

    Supported by Science: There’s sound science for the value of this concept and the promise of more evidence to come soon that may prove its impact.

    The promise of more evidence to come soon – the check is in the mail.

    Rigorously Tested: The validity of this concept is pretty much undisputed within the world of M.D.’s, D.O.’s, N.D.’s, and Ph.D.’s.

    I gather there aren’t many of those. In any case, the point is, Gunter among others has been pointing out much of GOOP is bullshit, often harmful bullshit, and Gwyneth Paltrow has been denying it and saying harsh things…and now she says some of it was just for fun? Well gee I hope not too many women made themselves sick or spent more than they could afford on flapdoodle.

    Gunter gives several examples of bullshit she called bullshit, that GOOP insisted was not bullshit, and now says oh ha ha it was just for fun.

    How about the jade egg? GOOP said I was “strangely confident” for pointing out A) the jade eggthusiast didn’t know what the fuck she was talking about regarding the pelvic floor muscles and B) a porous rock could introduce oxygen into the vagina which has been proven to be a critical step in development of toxic shock syndrome.

    What is science when you have an “ancient therapy?” I’d also like to point of that GOOP has never actually offered proof that is an ancient therapy, but facts are irrelevant.  Maybe there will be a rating scale for ancient therapies next year?

    Regardless, being “ancient” doesn’t mean it has value. In “ancient” times people believed in evil humors and that tuberculosis was caused by vampires. I like my therapies post-germ theory.

    Screen Shot 2018-06-16 at 12.26.49 PM.png

    Lots of people just don’t know to be suspicious of empty compliments like “said to harness the power of energy work and crystal healing” and “Shiva Rose raves about the results.” Lots of people don’t pause to ask “yes but do jade eggs actually harness anything and if so what and what does it do?” and “yes but did Shiva Rose actually get results and if so what kind?” They just read the soothing meandering nothings and go out and buy that jade egg and then stick it up’em.

    Read the whole post to get all the examples.

    To Gwyneth Paltrow and GOOP I say you should be ashamed of yourselves. You so proudly touted your site JUST LAST YEAR as being so empowering and intuitive that women could clearly take away the right information for their health and yet here you are having to go back and point out for these same women that most of these posts have no science and many were just a joke.

    Do you think women are lemmings? Because it is totally looking more and more like you have been herding them to a ledge for money, like Disney executives. You do know that lemmings didn’t end up jumping over the cliff on purpose, they were pushed.

    You used your massive international platform to push fake therapies and make-believe on women under the guise of “conversations,” not to empower but to sell products and books. When I pointed out that these ideas and therapies were at best useless and fringe but potentially very harmful you leveraged that same international platform to accuse me of medical myopia and not trusting women. You accused me of ridiculing women.

    Screen Shot 2018-06-16 at 12.51.55 PM

    Will Gwyneth Paltrow apologize to Dr Jen Gunter? Let’s not hold our breaths.

  • Do not try this at home

    Jen Gunter is warning against bad “health advice” from Gwyneth Paltrow again. What is it this time? Injecting coffee into your colon. Say what? Yes, that’s the advice.

    t seems January is Gwyneth Paltrow’s go-to month for promoting potentially dangerous things that should not go in or near an orifice. January 2015 brought us vagina steaming, January 2017 was jade eggs, and here we are in the early days of January 2018 and Goop.com is hawking coffee enemas and promoting colonic irrigation.

    I suspect that GP and her pals at Goop.com believe people are especially vulnerable to buying quasi-medical items in the New Year as they have just released their latest detox and wellness guide complete with a multitude of products to help get you nowhere.

    To help get you nowhere or worse.

    Goop.com is not selling a coffee machine, it is selling a coffee enema-making machine. That, my friends, is a messed-up way to make money. I know the people at Goop will either ignore the inquiries from reporters or release a statement saying the article is “a conversation” not a promotion and that they included the advice of a board-certified doctor, Dr Alejandro Junger, but any time you lend someone else your platform their ideas are now your ideas. That is why I never let anyone write guest posts for my blog. And let’s be real, if you are selling the hardware to shoot coffee up your ass then you are promoting it as a therapy – especially as Goop actually called the $135 coffee enema-making machine “Dr Junger’s pick”. I mean come on.

    Why would anyone decide a coffee enema is a good idea? A good enough idea to promote to other people and accept money for? Why stop at coffee? Why not 50-year-old brandy, turpentine, grapefruit juice, piss, water from the bottom of a stagnant pond? If it’s liquid, up the bum it goes? Bound to be beneficial in some way?

    How are they pretending to justify it? By making up something called “mucoid plaque” that is unknown to science, and saying coffee is needed to get rid of it. I wish I were kidding.

    Apparently, the term “mucoid plaque” was coined by Richard Anderson, who is a naturopath, not a gastroenterologist, so not a doctor who actually looks inside the colon. I looked “mucoid plaques” up in PubMed. Guess what? Nothing colon-related. There is not one study or even case-report describing this phenomenon. Apparently only doctors who sell cleanses and colonics can see them. I am fairly confident that if some gastroenterologist (actual colon doctor) found some crazy mucus that looked like drool from the alien queen that she or he would have taken pictures and written about it or discussed it at a conference.

    …

    So here are the facts. No one needs a cleanse. Ever. There are no waste products “left behind” in the colon that need removing “just because” or after a cleanse. If a cleanse did leave gross, adherent hunks of weird mucus then that would be a sign that the cleanse was damaging the colon. You know what creates excess, weird mucous? Irritation and inflammation.

    There are serious risks to colonics such as bowel perforation, damaging the intestinal bacteria, abdominal pain, vomiting, electrolyte abnormalities and renal failure. There are also reports of serious infections, air embolisms, colitis, and rectal perforation. If you go to a spa and the equipment is not sterilised, infections can be transmitted via the tubing.

    You know, Paltrow could perfectly well just market Luxury Bath Salts and similar with a big markup because it has her Name on it, just as Ivanka Trump does. Nothing says she has to go and invent weirdo mucous and quack remedies for the non-existent mucous to make $$$. There’s no need for her to tell people to shoot coffee up their asses, and it’s seriously bad advice, yet she does it. It’s kind of Trump-level awful.

  • Woopy goo

    And speaking of medical woo – Newsweek points out (as Jen Gunter has pointed out) that Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop is featuring an HIV skeptic at a conference next month.

    As Joanna Rothkopf reported for Jezebel, a doctor named Kelly Brogan, who will be featured in January’s Goop summit (a ticketed event run by Goop that includes panels with health professionals and other “trusted experts,” as the site refers to them), published a since-deleted blog post with false claims contradicting proven medical knowledge. In 2014, Brogan, a private-practice psychiatrist based in New York, called the idea that HIV is the cause of AIDS a “meme”—a fleeting cultural concept or catchphrase passed around the internet—rather than the established fact that health authorities worldwide consider it. “Drug toxicity associated with AIDS treatment may very well be what accounts for the majority of deaths,” Brogan wrote.

    Asked about those statements in the blog post, which is still available here, in an interview with Newsweek, Brogan called the link between HIV and AIDS an “assumption.” That assertion directly contradicts medical knowledge; according to the National Institutes of Health, there is abundant evidence that HIV causes AIDS.

    Yes but what is this word “evidence”? It’s all part of the Western conspiracy to poison everyone’s precious bodily fluids, innit. Not to mention their sacred yonis.

    Brogan has also taken aim at antibiotics, which she has called a “sacrament of the patriarchy” rather than a life-saving intervention. When asked about her past statements on antibiotics, Brogan did not directly answer whether she believes they are medically beneficial.

    Which would you prefer, a sacrament of the patriarchy, or your precious sacred right to die young of tuberculosis?

    When it comes to Paltrow’s company, Brogan told Newsweek that she has “no formal relationship to Goop.” On the website for the forthcoming summit, Goop includes Brogan among a panel the site describes as “health-defining doctors, trusted experts, and more of the women (and men) who inspire us every day, together, in conversation—with you.” Goop could not be reached for comment by time of publication.

    This is another one of those platform/no platform situations, isn’t it. That’s why the “no platform” label can be so tricky. Differences of opinion are one thing and pseudo-medical bullshit is another.

    This is far from the first time Goop has come under fire for directly or indirectly encouraging practices that lack evidence. Not all its advice and information is wrong, but, as Vox points out, a “​small army” of people in the media and medicine spend a good deal of time trying to debunk claims made by the company. (Dr. Jen Gunter, a gynecologist who has taken Goop to task on several occasions, was responsible for alerting Jezebel to Brogan’s blog post on HIV/AIDS.)

    It was via Jen Gunter on Twitter that I saw this. (Somehow after reading Luna on Facebook I had a yen for some Dr Jen tweets.)

    Gwyneth Paltrow’s public statements about Goop have made such matters murkier. Paltrow, in an interview with Jimmy Kimmel last summer, appeared to have little idea what her company was selling. Paltrow laughed as Kimmel asked her question after question about everything from “earthing” (the Goop-promoted practice of walking around barefoot) to the infamous jade vagina eggs. Before making it clear that she herself did not practice many of the routines endorsed by Goop, Paltrow said of her own company: “I don’t know what the fuck we talk about.”

    How responsible, how ethical.