The chief executive of Britain’s National Health Service has criticized Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle brand Goop and her new Netflix series, warning they carry “considerable risks to health.”
At an event in Oxford on Thursday, NHS chief Simon Stevens slammed Paltrow’s brand for giving prominence to “quacks, charlatans and cranks” in promoting untested treatments like vampire facials and unusually scented candles.
“Gwyneth Paltrow’s brand peddles ‘psychic vampire repellent,’ says ‘chemical sunscreen is a bad idea’ and promotes colonic irrigation and DIY coffee enema machines,” he said, adding that British health authorities have issued advice stating there is no scientific evidence to support such claims.
READ MORE: Experts fact-check health claims in Netflix’s ‘The Goop Lab’
Paltrow’s six-part series, The Goop Lab with Gwyneth Paltrow, was recently made available on Netflix in the U.K.
Stevens warned about the potential of misinformation to undermine public health, citing the recent surge in measles across Britain.
Scientists have attributed the disease’s rise in part to falling vaccination rates, first prompted by skepticism about the vaccine suggested in a discredited 1998 medical study that linked the shot to autism.
A spokeswoman for Goop said the company “takes efficacy and product claims very seriously” and noted it has a legal and compliance team that works with its science and research group to vet product claims.
Canadian health experts have also warned viewers about The Goop Lab‘s claims.
Timothy Caulfield, a professor in the faculty of law and the school of public health at the University of Alberta and author of Is Gwyneth Paltrow Wrong About Everything?, previously told Global News there is “misinformation” shared in the show.
“It’s incredibly frustrating that she’s getting this platform to basically spread misinformation about health,” he said.
— With files from Global News’ Meghan Collie
- Canadian man dies during Texas Ironman event. His widow wants answers as to why
- Several baby products have been recalled by Health Canada. Here’s the list
- ‘Sciatica was gone’: hospital performs robot-assisted spinal surgery in Canadian first
- Do Canadians have an appetite for electric vehicles? Experts are divided
Comments