UK Medical Chief Thinks Paltrow's Show Is Dangerous

Goop's Netflix series should come with a health warning, says National Health Service chief
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 31, 2020 12:35 PM CST
UK Medical Chief Blasts Goop: It Caters to 'Quacks'
Gwyneth Paltrow arrives at the 26th annual ELLE Women in Hollywood Celebration in Los Angeles on Oct. 14, 2019.   (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, file)

Goop says it is transparent about topics "unsupported by science" in its Netflix TV series. Netflix says The Goop Lab is "designed to entertain, not provide medical advice," per the BBC. But that's exactly what it does, according to the UK's medical boss, who thinks the series should come with a health warning. Gwyneth Paltrow's luxury lifestyle brand "peddles psychic vampire repellent, says chemical sunscreen is a bad idea, and promotes colonic irrigation and DIY coffee enema machines, despite them carrying considerable risks to health," National Health Service CEO Simon Stevens said Thursday, per the BBC. NHS notes there's no evidence of health benefits associated with colonic irrigation—the removal of waste through a tube inserted into the bowel—which is linked to adverse effects like punctured bowels and kidney failure.

"People's natural concern for their health, and particularly about that of their loved ones, makes this particularly fertile ground for quacks, charlatans and cranks," Stevens added, suggesting the series was spreading "misinformation." He noted Goop team members "back a body worker, who claims to cure both acute psychological trauma and side-effects by simply moving his hands two inches above a customer's body" in the fifth episode of the six-part series. In episode one, viewers are advised to try psychedelics only in a controlled environment under therapist supervision, yet "there is not a doctor present while the goopers drink mushroom tea in Jamaica," per the Sun. Still, Paltrow says she's learned from earlier mistakes, like Goop's claim that jade and rose quartz eggs inserted into the vagina could balance hormones and regulate a menstrual cycle. (More Goop stories.)

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