"Just 10 days of a strict vegetarian
diet, wheatgrass juice and placing garlic poultices
on my wound (Owwww!) and I was healed," enthused Heather
Mills McCartney in the London Evening Standard
in 2005. After the motorcycle accident that cost her
her leg, the former model suffered a serious infection.
The now-estranged wife of Sir Paul McCartney jetted
over to an alternative medicine centre in Florida where
healers took her off all her meds.
Depending on your point of view,
you might think this is just the usual wacky shenanigans
of celebs with more money than sense. But some think
public figures like Lady Heather are actually endangering
people's lives by spouting bad medical advice hither
and yon.
A UK-based charity called Sense
About Science has decided to fight fire with fire. The
organization has printed a pamphlet and opened a hotline
to help celebrities avoid propagating false claims about
health and medicine.
"If it sounds too good to be true,
it usually is," reads the pamphlet. The message is,
just because pop star Kylie Minogue tried chromotherapy
for her cancer, that doesn't mean it works. Likewise
cupping for pain relief (Gwyneth Paltrow), strawberry
leaves for swollen ankles (British first lady Cherie
Blair) or crystal therapy to sort out the body's natural
frequency (Richard Gere).
The scientists involved with the
project — over 1,400 of them — would rather
spend a little of their time explaining something over
the phone than have to undo untold damage caused by
celebrity rumour and innuendo, the organization's director
told the BBC.
CANADIAN
CELEBS
Canada has seen a similar amount of celebrity vacuity
when it comes to health matters. In 1988, a 31-year-old
patient of Ontario GP Dr Stanley Bernstein died of cardiac
arrhythmia eight days after beginning the Dr Bernstein
Diet, which recommends a low-carb regimen of just 850-950
calories a day, zero exercise and several vitamin B
shots per week. A lawsuit against Dr Bernstein was settled
for $700,000. Canadian late-night talk show host Mike
Bullard had endorsed the diet and even appeared in advertisements
for it. A CBC investigation later found the diet actually
recommended eating food that amounted to fewer than
half of the calories Dr Bernstein claimed it did.
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Tom Cruise, actor and Scientologist
"These drugs are dangerous," said Mr Cruise,
referring to fellow celeb Brooke Shields' use
of antidepressants for postnatal depression. "There
is no such thing as a chemical imbalance." He
has also called psychiatry a "pseudoscience."
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Prince Charles, future king of England
The Prince of Wales has urged doctors to consi-der
the Gerson Therapy to treat cancer. The late Dr
Gerson recommended replacing chemotherapy with
13 glasses daily of fruit juice, vitamin injections,
and coffee and chamomile enemas.
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Robert F Kennedy Jr, lawyer and environmentalist
When Kennedys speak, people listen. That was
certainly the case when Bobby Kennedy's son Robert
claimed in Rolling Stone/Salon.com that not only
does the mercury-based vaccine preservative thimerasol
cause autism, but that the US government had tried
to cover it up.
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Heather Mills McCartney, former model
The zealous animal rights campaigner is probably
best known as the soon-to-be ex wife of Beatle
Sir Paul McCartney. Her big health worry is milk.
"The fact that those kids who drink the most milk
gain the most weight should cause alarm bells
to be ringing everywhere," said Lady Heather,
disagreeing with scientific evidence. "It isn't
and milk is still being pushed as essential for
children." Lady Heather has also written to the
UK Department of Health to demand milk be removed
from schools because it causes cancer.
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