There were really only a few conventional health booths - a bone marrow registry that had a crowd all day & myLab box, a company that sends out home STD tests.
The rest of the booths ranged from fine yoga/juice companies to some severe pseudoscience, with lots in between. #SXSW
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There was a booth selling homeopathy, with big Rx branding & a medical 'look'. The salesperson said that the diluted-away substance leaves impressions in the water. She seemed to ethically justify selling homeopathy w/ the fact that the placebo effect can be powerful. Ok.
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Dang, I deleted a tweet with an factual error in it, and it deleted the whole thread! Copying and pasting it back.
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One really bad science booth claimed that algae cell walls remove radiation(?) from your body, and chorella algae promotes longevity because it has the highest DNA content of any food(?)
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I felt a lack of desire to seriously test if the substances being sold work/are safe. There were a few pretty crummy "clinical trials" in bottom tier journals as support for efficacy, but if you really want to know if something is safe/effective, you should really test that
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The supporting studies feel like just another marketing bullet point, not an examination of the evidence for the product's claims. Check, add 'Clinically studied', or 'Contains clinically studied ingredients' to the promotional materials. I'm sounding cynical at this point.
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I think this lack of desire to test stems from a false but general idea of "natural" - that natural things aren't really going to hurt you. There's a feeling of exemption from having to test natural things.
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This expo need some serious quality checks. It would help to have a stricter filter for booths, and have many more booths from companies that don't rely on pseudoscientific marketing (like
@23andMe or@uBiome). If product works, you shouldn't need pseudoscience to sell it.#SXSW2 replies 1 retweet 16 likesShow this thread -
It would have been more responsible for the company handing out sugar-free xylitol gum to warn customers that just a few pieces can be fatal to dogs. Or for aromatherapy to warn which oils are toxic to dogs/cats.
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Replying to @clairemcwhite
Do you think it was an issue of conventional medicine not wanting to participate or not being invited in the first place? I’d hope the former, because the latter would be
@goop-level troubling.2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes
Nope. It was a matter of the advisory board for #SXSW2018's Wellness Expo being made up of New Agers and a single physician. That single physician is a "holistic psychiatrist," antivaxer, and HIV/AIDS denialist whose mentor was an infamous cancer quack.https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/sxsw-goop-hivaids-denialism-antivax-kelly-brogan/ …
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Oh, YUCK. As soon as you were describing said physician, I knew it was Kelly Brogan without even reading (thanks to much info from
@DrJenGunter!). I am not a doc but work w/ a bunch of them, and I’m always mad on behalf of physicians when crap like this is peddled.0 replies 0 retweets 0 likesThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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