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Dr Ben Goldacre

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solerina

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Don't know if any of the Irish lads watched the panel the other week when he was on but I follow his column in the Guardian and he's both extremely knowledgeable and entertaining with a very dry wit . I was really shocked to see him on the panel because I've read his column for ages in the UK press and I didn't think it was their thing . He's a junior doctor working for the NHS in London with wisdom beyond his years .
The column title is Bad Science and he regularly takes on the like of Gillian McKieth amongst others and he has the proof to back it up . He registered his dead cat at the same university which McKieth studied with and apparently it got a 1st class honours via correspondence course :) Dubious credentials for a woman who wears a white coat and claims to be a qualified nutritionalist . He has also highlighted another dubious talent Patrick Holford in this Saturdays paper . Apparently feted by Trevor McDonald's Tonight programme in another issue Holford claims that vitimin C is more powerful than AZT in combating aids . The man responsible for this research is Matthius Rath and the link in the chain between he and Patrick Holford is a man called Raxit Jariwalla
Matthius Rath is a multi millionaire vitamin saleman who aggressively sells his message to african aids victims and persuades them that vitimin c is better than aids drugs . The consequence of this is huge . In Ben's words , "Nice friends , Patrick "
Great column , totally honest and he doesn't take prisoners
 
Originally posted by solerina@Feb 19 2007, 11:00 PM
He registered his dead cat at the same university which McKieth studied with and apparently it got a 1st class honours via correspondence course :) Dubious credentials for a woman who wears a white coat and claims to be a qualified nutritionalist .
Click to expand...
:laughing: I can't stand that woman. If that's what her way of eating makes you look like I'm glad I'm such good friends with the likes of Mr Kipling and Cadburys :laughing:
 
He sounds an interesting bloke, Solerina.

Griffin - I'm with you - if she's meant to be a recommendation for eating healthily, then sod those black jeans and hello Lindt milk choccy!
 
McKeith is such a sour-looking, skinny puss - also rather humourless, too. I'm with the Creme Egg Brigade here!
 
Yes, I remember hearing recently that Dr. Gillian McKeith (You Are What You Eat and alarmingly appears to love smelling peoples body waste :what: )has been asked to remove her title of Dr. as she evidently isn't one.
 
Here's Ben's piece on Gillian McKeith. It's an abbreviated version and comes over as less hard on her than the printed version, would you believe. As Solerina mentions he described in the full article how he registered with the college where "Dr" McKeith gained her PhD. He didn't register for himself but the name that he registered paid the fee and became a PhD. The name that Ben Goldcare registered was his cat. Who was dead.

Brought to book: the poo lady's PhD

Ben Goldacre
Saturday February 3, 2007
The Guardian


As the awful poo lady goes into her fourth series on Channel 4, I can't stop thinking about that PhD. I'm talking about Dr Gillian McKeith PhD, of course. It's from a non-accredited correspondence college in the US, so no trustworthy government body attests to their standards. But I'm open minded, and it was always perfectly possible that she'd done a meaningful piece of work, on top of paying those correspondence course fees.

For many years now I have wanted to read her thesis for myself, just to satisfy my curiosity. This should have been a pretty straightforward affair: PhDs are, by convention, always lodged in a library, in an archive, where they can be seen. Sadly, Clayton College of Natural Health - who also sell their own range of vitamin supplements - refused to show me McKeith's thesis. Or anybody's. I drew a blank.

But then came a breakthrough: I was contacted by a rogue nutritionist. She had been told that McKeith's PhD had been published as "Miracle Superfood: Wild Blue-Green Algae, the nutrient powerhouse that stimulates the immune system, boosts brain power, and guards against disease". I emailed McKeith Research (under a James Bond assumed name, of course) and they confirmed that this book was, indeed, McKeith's PhD.

I say book. It's more like a stapled pamphlet, available at only £1.99, because it's only 48 pages. Which is quite short for a PhD. And that's including recipes, title plates, and contents pages.

Maybe this pamphlet is just a shortened and simplified version of the PhD text, but if it is at all based on her thesis it is not a good advert for that as a scholarly work. Inside is what I could only describe as Cargo Cult science: she's going through the motions, but the content, only closer inspection, is like an eerie parody of an academic text.

There are lots of grand statements about research, with nice superscript numbers relating to references in the back. But when you chase to the back of the book to see what these academic documents are, they include such august periodicals as Delicious, Creative Living, Healthy Eating, and my favourite: Spiritual Nutrition and the Rainbow Diet.

Some of it is plainly absurd. As we get older, she explains, "the levels of RNA/DNA decrease." Okay. "If you do not have enough RNA/DNA," she goes on, you "may ultimately age prematurely". Stress can deplete your DNA, but algae will increase it. And that's not all. "Chlorophyll within the algae is a powerful oxygen generator for human beings." Back to GCSE Biology: it'll only make oxygen if there's light inside me, Gillian ...

She expands grandly and uncritically - with anecdote, but no data - about her many dramatic treatment successes, like a physician from the dark ages. She talks about her own "clinical research", with huge claims for its findings, but wherever this clinical research is, all you can find here are her anecdotes.

Sometimes you think you've hit some data, but then, like a chimera, it disappears. Only 20% of calcium in supplements is absorbed, she explains, whereas all the calcium in algae is absorbable: there's a superscript number, go to the references, in the back, number 31 ... "Studies with author's own patients". That's all it says.

And that's just the start of the reference fun. "In laboratory experiments with anaemic animals, red blood cell counts have returned to normal within four or five days when chlorophyll was given," she says. Her reference for this experimental data is a magazine called Health Store News. "In the heart," she explains, "chlorophyll aids in the transmission of nerve impulses that control contraction." A statement which is referenced to the second issue of a magazine called Earthletter.

Scientific terminology is wilfully conflated with fanciful new age waffle and, perhaps worryingly, she talks about blood tests, urine tests, chemicals, stool tests, treatments and diagnoses, with endless scientific terminology, frequently referencing her clinic and her patients, many of them children.

Channel 4 once styled this woman as a clinical nutritionist: she performed in a white coat, surrounded by laboratory equipment. Since people like me started digging, the McKeith industry - worth millions - describes her as a holistic nutritionist. There is no such thing as "holistic nutrition": if you make statements about food and are backed up by academic/scientific research, as McKeith does, repeatedly, in her books, her shows, her semi-academic work, and products ... then that's just nutrition. The word "holistic" is at best a piece of branding; but at worst, it's a cloak for accepting inadequate standards of referencing and evidence.
 
Well Aldaniti PHD advises on taking a daily dose of the following "Super Foods"

Creme eggycillin

Kiplingoline any variety

McVitiesvitamins also any variety

Eat in abundance for long life with no aging or illness


:D
 
Originally posted by Aldaniti@Feb 20 2007, 01:13 PM
Well Aldaniti PHD advises on taking a daily dose of the following "Super Foods"

Creme eggycillin

Kiplingoline any variety

McVitiesvitamins also any variety

Eat in abundance for long life with no aging or illness


:D
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And Dr Griffin recommends all of the above sloshed down with ample amounts of G&T :D
 
ah yes I forgot to mention you must keep up your fluid intake, but you can keep the G&T I'll stick with strawberry PJ's
 
Thank you, Dr Al d'Aniti (Ph D, Rome Academy of Fashion & Fitness, Texas)!

Since starting your diet, with added Jaffacycline, I'm a new woman! I used to feel ridiculous urges to get up, exercise, walk for miles with heavy shopping bags, do the housework every day, keep on the go for hours. Now, thanks to your diet makeover, I'm able to successfully accomplish full horizontal passivity on my sofa, building up my stamina from one to sometimes six or seven hours! I've thrown out all those silly fruit and veg which take up vital relaxation time to prepare, while enjoying the added nutrients obtained from radiating my foodstuffs in my microwave!

Thanks, Dr d'Aniti, and keep up the good work!

Sincerely

B. Igbutt
Brighton
 
Don't forget to keep your fat content up Krizon, the easiest way to do this is to consume a couple of really big cream cakes or if you like the real stuff then go for a nice big Lardy cake :dork:

Now with that advice I should of killed off about a third of the population in a few years so ending the over population of the planet plus the traffic congestion in one swoop :laughing:
 
I really think that someone with Mr Goldacre's experience and common sense should have the tv show et al rather than Gillian . He was brilliant on "The Panel" but is presumable doing far more important things than creating a false persona , milking it and building a money making empire on it . Incidentally , the one thing that Gillian is qualified in is a degree in Business studies . All becoming transparent now is'nt it ?
Thanks Brian for transcribing that . The previous weeks article was about how Gillian thinks that a Chlorophyll rich diet can oxygenate the body . As Ben put it any 14yr old can tell you that Chloroyphill is produced through sunlight . How sunlight can penetrate the darknesss of the human intestine Gillian never explained so scientifically it is impossible for chlorophyll to be produced once ingested . Will someone contact her publisher please and let them know that she's an embarrassment . Shame is too many people watch ch4 now and assume that their output is respectable .t is in the main . That's how they started out and they are keen to endorse their credendials with the admirable MORE franchise . CH4 have many admirable atributes , Dispatches , CH4 News , great one off docs , but Gillian McKieth is not one of their finer moments . When the valididity of her qualifications became apparent she should have been dropped but her husband is a ###### hot lawyer and I get the feeling that they are loath to challenge her inneptitude and fakery
 
Okay you guys I have a confession to make, which I have not hidden on here. I am a Clinical Nutritonist, or a Nutritional Therapist. When people talk about being a holistic therapist it is just aligning themselves into a non chemical medical group. As you say this is not a scientific fact. It means using methods that treat the whole person, and look for the cause of illness, instead of the symptoms.

I did a diploma in Nutrition because I had food allergies and wanted to know how to feed myself. The science was fascinating, and at last I understood how the heck we digest food. The course and clinical days took me 5 years to complete. I now treat people with ailments that respond to a change of diet, and I work a lot with GPs who refer patients to me.

I see a lot of sad cases, poor people who cannot afford to eat well and were never taught to cook, ill people who have been told they will die unless they change diet, etc etc. I do a lot of charity work with cancer, allergy and eating disorder charities. I find it very sad that in this materially rich western world of ours there is malnutrition in our midst because people are out of touch with nature and just do not know how to feed themselves anymore.

Let's face it - how many kids today know where food comes from, let alone how to cook it?

What I hate about Gillian, even more than her fake Dr, is that she is on prime time tv simply because she has turned being overweight into cheap sensationalism. Not one of her programs has addressed a complicated issue, all she has done is show fat people what to eat instead of the junk they are addicted to. And we are bombarded with this shite. There are the 'Diet Doctors' and God knows how many more of these cheap shows.

Anyone who has done a doctorate can call themselves a Dr. Some loony where I work does so and he probably has a doctorate in basket weaving or rolling joints.

Patrick Holford has done considerably more for people, and founded the Institute of Nutrition in London, with the help of the Nobel prize winner Linus Pauling. I know Patrick, and although he is not a doctor he has devoted his life to study and research, which is more than Gillian could manage.

I accept the criticism against Patrick, but there are two sides to each story too. Vitamin C may well be better for aids than the chemical cocktails which the big pharmaceutical companies push.

Like him or not Jamie Oliver has done more good than Gillian, at least he has made the government ashamed about how stingy they are for school dinners, and he has taught children to try different foods again.

By the way I always recommend that my patients eat a little of what they fancy - life is just too short to deny yourself all of the time.
 
forgot to say - all complementary therapists are bound by the foundation that sets the standards for whatever their profession is. If you do not meet those, you cannot get insurance, and practising without it is illegal and unethical.

The Nutrtiion Therapy Council is the governing body now regulating us - and with her current credentials Gillian would be unable to register. So, how she can advise patients is beyond me.

http://www.nutritionaltherapycouncil.org.uk/
 
In a way all this is progress, though.

Former resident of Epsom racecourse Mrs Beeton used to tell the middle classes how to manage and now on umpteen TV programmes the middle classes are passing on instructions to the lower orders on how to live more fulfilling lives.

On the other hand, Mrs Beeton didn't make people cry and confess their failings before telling them how they could be better people but many of her patrician contemporaries certainly went in for that sort of thing. Plus ca change.
 
Isinglass, I went to a Holford evening here a few years ago and found him and his books very interesting, but I was introduced to the works of Adele Davis back in the 1970s by an American friend who was very taken with her work, especially Vit.E, and I found her works ground-breaking. My friend took quite a lot of units of Vit.E per day and her skin was in great shape for an older woman. I rarely find anyone taking it regularly to have poor skin, and I always break a capsule on any skin injuries I get. Linus Pauling has done some great work, too, although I've only read some articles by him in the past.
 
Krizon,

Adele was a real pioneer, well before her time.

I also meant to say, somewhere in all of my rambling, that I love Ben Goldacre too and always read his column. But I do not always agree with him, I respect his opinion though and he often throws up something insightful for me.

Essential fatty acids or omega 3,6 and 9 are the 'new' vitamin E. Although Vitamin E is still known to be a powerful anitioxidant. My Mother-in-law looks fabulous for her age, at least 15 if not 20 years yunger than she is. And she has used all of these natural products most of her life. We call her 'The Green Witch'.

It is all about moderation. My Great Grandmother lived to 94 and the day before she died she was out digging in her vegetable garden. She smoked (very risque in those days), drank wine and sherry and made the best treacle and bread and butter puddings I have ever had. But she did eat local foods, a lot of oily fish, her home grown veg and she also walked miles.
 


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