Tag: Goop

New York State Medical Agency Opens Investigation Into Goop’s COVID-Denying “Trusted Expert” Kelly Brogan

The NYS Office of Professional Medical Conduct (a branch of the NY Department of Health) is investigating Dr. Brogan, a licensed psychiatrist, relating to her claims that the coronavirus potentially does not exist, and for potentially misleading about her board certifications.

Kelly Brogan (source)

Via my Atlanta, GA reporter friend Peter M. Heimlich, who requested the investigation:

You can read more about Brogan’s COVID-denialism via “The Gwyneth Paltrow-Approved Doctor Pushing Wacky Coronavirus Conspiracies,” a story I wrote for The Daily Beast in March.

Goop has since cut ties with Brogan, having scrubbed all of her content from its website. Brogan continues to spew disinformation about the virus on “alt-right [social media platform] Telegram,” according to the Beast.

Goop Quietly Deletes Content From COVID-Denier Kelly Brogan

Gwyneth Paltrow has finally had enough of her disinformation-spreading colleague.

Even among the most virulent coronavirus conspiracy mongers, Kelly Brogan stands tall.

A New York State-licensed psychiatrist and “trusted expert,” according to Gwyneth Paltrow’s “modern lifestyle brand” Goop, Brogan routinely spreads false claims that the coronavirus doesn’t exist to her 121k followers on Instagram. She co-founded a website, QuestioningCovid(dot)com, that falsely claims that “masks do more harm than good.” She has even paid for a billboard ad instructing people to “WAKE UP! TAKE OFF THE MASK.”

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And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Via an article I wrote for The Daily Beast in March, she also “doesn’t believe the widely accepted germ theory of disease, encouraged viewers to seek alternative theories, suggested that the news media is being controlled by an unnamed pro-vaccination group, and speculated that the U.S. government is planning” to, quote, “link our passports with our vaccination records” in order to gain “totalitarian governmental control not unlike the divide-and-conquer dehumanization agendas that preceded the Holocaust.”

Various science and medical experts have debunked Brogan’s claims. although the most damning indictment of Brogan may be this endorsement from the website of infamous British conspiracy theorist David Icke, who claims that the Royal family are shape-shifting lizards:

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Goop — itself a proponent of potentially harmful pseudoscience — has been giving Brogan a platform as far back as January 2018, when Brogan was invited to speak at a Goop conference as a “trusted [medical] expert,” despite having claimed that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS.

Interviews with Brogan and a short biography describing her as a ‘holistic psychiatrist’ were also published on Goop’s website.

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Now it appears that Goop has finally had enough of Brogan. Her two interviews, “How we can learn to tolerate emotional pain” and “The roots of mental health — maybe they’re not in our heads,” both containing dubious medical health claims, have been scrubbed from the site. Her biography has also been removed.

It’s unclear when Goop took down Brogan’s content. But that content was still available on Goop’s website as recently as July, according to information gleaned from the Wayback Machine, which archives web pages.

Here’s what you’ll see if you try to visit Brogan’s biography today:

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Gwyneth Paltrow’s Medical Mentor: “God Bless Every Covid Virus”

Goop contributor Dr. Habib Sadeghi is making bizarre coronavirus-themed content.

During a podcast interview last month, Gwyneth Paltrow’s longtime medical mentor and Goop regular Dr. Habib Sadeghi attributed every pandemic from the last 150 years to the “electrification of earth.” Since then, he’s been making increasingly bizarre coronavirus-themed content in a seeming attempt to get people to join his Patreon.

In one video posted on Instagram last Friday, “COVID-19: The Toxin Is The Remedy,” an analysis of the 2012 Ang Lee film Life of Pi, Sadeghi addresses viewers while sitting barefoot at the top of a staircase.

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“God bless every covid virus,” he says in the video, describing the pandemic as an “opportunity to really use this […] instead of really doing the same thing you’ve been doing most of your life, blaming others, attacking others, making them wrong.”

He continues: “I give you my word that that will be the blessing for you because that psychic immunity, that psychological immunity, that psycho-spiritual robustness that you developed for yourself, no one can take away from you. No one. And this is really what you want to gift to your children […] They’ll get it because these understandings literally will bleed through genetically or epigenetically, physically or energetically, to the next generation. You have an opportunity, you’re not couped up, your school is in session.”

There’s no evidence that parents can genetically transfer thoughts to their children.

In another video posted Sunday, “How To Metabolize A Crisis,” Sadeghi eats from a plate of food while watching the 1981 Louis Malle film, My Dinner with André.

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“It’s a movie that’s very rich, just like the food we eat,” Sadeghi says in the video. “If you sit down, bring your attention, and you watch it, slowly, and you hear what it’s telling you, at the end of it, you have found a new friend within yourself. You have found, and moved into, that what we refer to as evolution of consciousness.”

He ends the video by encouraging viewers to “use this time that we have, during this period of self-quarantining, or self-care-cocooning, as a way of learning to metabolise […] our thoughts, feelings, and emotions,” which are “far more important than what we metabolise in our digestive systems.”

Both videos lead with trippy visuals and shrieking horror movie music, followed by a message about “Entelechy Medicine,” a trademarked “evolutionary movement” that appears to draw on the discredited theories of the late Ryke Geerd Hamer, a disgraced German doctor who was stripped of his medical license after allegedly killing his patients.

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According to Sadeghi’s Patreon page, Entelechy Medicine “holds the key to your deeper healing” and “recognizes that the body is the theater of our consciousness.” For $9.99 per month, patrons can access such dubious-sounding content as “Surgical Scarring and Blocked Meridians: The Hidden Implications of Scar Tissue.”

The page also links to a Sadeghi’s “conscious lifestyle brand and health publishing imprint,” BeingClarity.com, where customers can purchase his 2017 Goop press book, “The Clarity Cleanse.” The book includes a glowing foreword by Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow.

Another Goop Contributor is Spreading Discredited Coronavirus Conspiracies

Dr. Habib Sadeghi, an LA-based integrative medicine practitioner and personal mentor to Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow, has linked the virus to the “electrification of earth.”

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Last month, I wrote for The Daily Beast about Goop contributor/holistic psychiatrist Kelly Brogan’s coronavirus conspiracy theories. Now another high-profile Goop contributor is spreading similar theories linking the virus to 5G wireless technology.

Dr. Habib Sadeghi, who frequently writes for Goop’s site, has featured in Goop’s videos online, and, according to Goop founder Gwyneth Paltrow, is a “mentor in many capacities to me,” shared his theories last Monday on the What Matters Most podcast (he’s also been sharing his theories on Instagram).

Here’s what Sadeghi had to say about wireless technology:

In 2003, that’s when the 3G technology was introduced, and shortly after, in 2003, that’s when we got SARS. And so, when we look at some of the various things that we’ve been exposed to, and the technologies that they were introduced — like you look at 2009, that’s when we had the 4G introduced to the world, and that’s when we had the, same year, 2009, we had the swine flu outbreak. So it’s not a far-fetched idea that here we are in 2020, where 5G was introduced to the world, and we’re sitting scratching our head, and we’re saying, what are we going to do with the coronavirus?

According to various experts, fact-checkers, news outlets, and other trusted sources, there is no evidence that wireless technology is responsible for the coronavirus or any other virus.

He went on to link every major outbreak from the last 150 years to the “electrification of earth.” For example, he claimed that the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic may have been caused by the “introduction of radio waves around the world” (radio waves are a naturally occurring phenomenon), that an unidentified pandemic from around the time of WW2 may have been caused by “the introduction of radar equipment all over the earth,” and that the 1968 Hong Kong flu may have been caused by orbiting “satellites emitting radioactive frequencies.”

Like Brogan, it appears Sadeghi doesn’t believe in the widely accepted germ theory of disease, claiming that its originator, French microbiologist Louis Pasteur, renounced the theory on his deathbed — a claim for which there is “no evidence,” according to a 2007 blog post by American oncologist David Gorski.

Also like Brogan, Sadeghi appears to be a follower of the late Ryke Geerd Hamer, a disgraced German doctor who had his medical license permanently revoked in Germany after several patients in his care died. On his site, Be Hive of Healing, Sadeghi says he treats “chronic illnesses such as cancer and auto-immune disease” using a “multi-disciplinary approach” including German New Medicine, Hamer’s discredited pseudoscientific theory positing that all illness and disease are caused by psychological trauma.

I’ve asked Goop for comment.

The Daily Beast: Goop-Approved Doctor Pushing Coronavirus Conspiracies

Goop contributor/psychiatrist Kelly Brogan has been spreading junk scientific claims and conspiracy theories about the coronavirus. Here’s my latest for The Daily Beast.

Via “The Gwyneth Paltrow-Approved Doctor Pushing Wacky Coronavirus Conspiracies” by Dean Sterling Jones, The Daily Beast, March 24, 2020:

Last week, Gwyneth Paltrow’s “modern lifestyle brand” Goop announced it was closing stores in the U.S. and U.K. to help curb the spread of the novel coronavirus currently sweeping the globe. Meanwhile, Paltrow’s psychiatrist-associate Kelly Brogan, a high-profile Goop contributor, has racked up tens of thousands of views on social media spreading discredited pseudoscientific claims that the coronavirus might not even exist, and that symptoms attributed to the virus are likely being caused by widespread fear…

Click here to read the full story.

The story was subsequently picked up by the New York Post, The Independent, The Evening Standard Insider, Yahoo Style, Los Angeles Magazine, and The A.V. Club, among others.

Via “Goop-approved shrink says there’s ‘no such thing’ as coronavirus” by Melissa Malamut, New York Post, March 24, 2020:

Just when you thought telling women to stick stone eggs up their vaginas was the worst medical advice she could give, a once-Manhattan-based psychiatrist, anti-vaxxer and Goop-approved pusher is going viral again. But this time, it’s for her dangerous social-media posts that call COVID-19 a hoax.

Kelly Brogan (who has an MD from Cornell University and a master’s from MIT, according to her website) said in a video posted on Facebook last week that there is “potentially no such thing as the coronavirus” and that the reported deaths from the virus are “likely being accelerated by fear itself.” Further, she “personally [doesn’t] believe in germ-based contagion…”

[Brogan] has doubled down on her words, calling her message “personal empowerment,” and suggesting that people subscribe to her newsletter if they’d like to hear more of her views. She also then posted a screenshot of the Daily Beast article and a link to the video that is now available on Vimeo.

Via “Goop Expert Says Coronavirus Doesn’t Exist: ‘There is Potentially no Such Thing'” by Chelsea Ritschel, The Independent, March 24, 2020:

…According to The Daily Beast, Facebook and Instagram removed Brogan’s videos after determining that they “violate our policies”.

In a recent post to Instagram, Brogan acknowledged the removal and encouraged her followers to subscribe to her newsletter “rather than just following me here, because, well, you know…”

“Because censorship is real and underway,” she continued in the caption. “Two posts removed and one blocked in the past week. What a purification process this is!”

Via “Goop contributor Kelly Brogan peddles ‘nonsense’ conspiracy theories about coronavirus, cites 5G and vaccine companies as real causes” by Megan C. Hills, Evening Standard Insider, March 25, 2020:

…There is no scientific basis for any of Brogan’s claims. Speaking to the Daily Beast, British pharmacologist David Colquhoun said, “She’s a very, very dangerous fantasist. I wonder whether she takes antibiotics if she gets a bacterial infection?”

The deputy editor of Skeptical Inquirer, a publication that critically examines fringe science claims similar to those that Brogan made, also weighed in. Benjamin Radford told the Daily Beast, “There’s always been this sort of populist appeal by people who reject science, and that’s exactly what’s going on here.”

“Unfortunately, outbreaks like this are exactly the wrong time to bring these things up because…they divert people from legitimate evidence-based treatments,” he continued.

Via “‘Very, very dangerous’ Goop ‘expert’ slammed for bizarre coronavirus video” by Elizabeth Di Filippo, Yahoo Canada Style, March 25, 2020:

…To Brogan, this was a form of censorship, which she said could potentially be part of a future government agenda to enact control. She cites the alternative narratives regarding current affairs as the remedy to her fear.

“This level of totalitarian government control that is not unlike the divide and conquer, dehumanization agendas that preceded the Holocaust,” she said. “This is where my mind can go. That is extremely fear inducing for me and probably as fear inducing as those that are washing their hands dry.”

Goop representatives have declined to comment on the video, however they did release a statement.

“We would suggest reaching out to Dr. Brogan directly as she didn’t make those comments on Goop’s platform,” they said.

Via “Please, for the love of god, don’t get your coronavirus advice from the Goop people” by Reid McCarter, The A.V. Club, March 24, 2020:

…The video keeps going and going, becoming more deranged as it rumbles on, but these points are probably enough to sum up why Brogan—an “expert” featured on Goop’s website and at its events—shouldn’t be listened to at all. If you want the total run-down of why Brogan and, by extension Goop, are dangerous horseshit, read the rest of the Daily Beast article.

This Goop Author is Spreading Discredited Pseudoscientific Theories About the Coronavirus

Kelly Brogan, M.D., a New York Times bestselling author/psychiatrist who writes for Gwyneth Paltrow’s alt-med Goop newsletter, has accrued over 30,000 views on Instagram by claiming the coronavirus likely doesn’t exist. [UPDATE: Click here for my follow-up to this story in The Daily Beast.]

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Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop is a self-proclaimed “lifestyle brand” and online newsletter aimed at “start[ing] hard conversations, crack[ing] open taboos, and look[ing] for connection and resonance everywhere we can find it.”

It’s also a major proponent of pseudoscientific claims and such questionable products as the Jade Egg, an egg-shaped gemstone that purportedly “harness[es] the power of energy work, crystal healing, and a Kegel-like physical practice” when inserted in the vagina. (In 2018, Goop was fined $145,000 in civil penalties for falsely claiming that the $66 egg was able to “balance hormones, regulate menstrual cycles, prevent uterine prolapse, and increase bladder control.”)

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Now one of Goop’s high-profile contributors is spreading false claims that the novel coronavirus currently sweeping the globe, and which has caused over 20,000 deaths worldwide, potentially does not exist.

Kelly Brogan, M.D. — a Manhattan-based holistic psychiatrist and co-author of New York Times bestselling book, A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives — made the claim in a March 16 video she originally shared with subscribers of her online “health reclamation” programme, Vital Life Project, then subsequently reposted on her personal site and social media accounts.

In the video, “A Message to Help Dispel Fear,” Brogan claimed that “there is potentially no such thing as the coronavirus” because “it’s not possible to prove that any given pathogen has induced death,” and that the rising death toll is “likely being accelerated by the fear [of the virus] itself.”

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As of publication, the video has accrued approximately 30,000 views on Brogan’s Instagram account, and has been shared hundreds of times on Facebook. (Brogan has also twice uploaded a version of the video — “by popular request!” — with Spanish subtitles).

Brogan attributed her claims to the late Ryke Geerd Hamer, a German doctor and virulent anti-Semite whose discredited theory of disease, German New Medicine, has resulted in dozens of patient deaths in Europe, the youngest being 12-year-old Susanne Rehklau, who “suffered a painful death” in 2010 after Hamer gave her the all-clear.

According to Hamer, illness and disease are caused by unresolved psychological trauma, with specific traumatic experiences said to correlate with specific physical symptoms. For example, a child who is forced to live under the conservative – or “inflexible” – rule of an overbearing parent might develop rigid joints. A recently-divorced woman might, in the absence of intimate physical touch, develop a skin condition. And so on.

To self-heal, Hamer claimed, patients must disavow conventional western medicine (which he believed was an elaborate Jewish conspiracy involving “death chips”), and learn to overcome their unresolved trauma using non-pharmacological — or “natural” — treatment methods, including talking therapy.

Ryke Geerd Hamer (source)

Medical authorities have widely denounced Hamer’s theories as lacking “any scientific or empirical justification,” and in 1986 he had his medical license permanently revoked in Germany after a number of patients in his care died. He was later convicted and imprisoned multiple times for illegally continuing to put his theories into practice.

In her video, Brogan took a more positive view of Hamer’s contributions to science and medicine.

“German New Medicine has really given me a lot of material to work with around identifying potential emotional conflicts that […] have a method of explaining cancer and contagion that have nothing to do with pathogens,” she said. “Could it be that so-called viruses and bacteria are bystanders […] blamed for being at the scene of the crime, which has another origin that is more complex?”

She also hinted at a global conspiracy orchestrated by an unnamed pro-vaccination group, suggested that viewers should not believe mainstream news coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, encouraged them to seek alternative theories in order to “feel that you can live in a story that eases your fear and stablises your nervous system,” and offered her own unfounded fears for the future, as follows:

Because I believe any story other than the one we’re being fed, I can also find myself in a place where I begin to look at future government plans to link our passports with our vaccination records and restriction of travel, and that this being a new normal of this level of totalitarian governmental control that is not unlike the divide-and-conquer dehumanization agendas that preceded the Holocaust. This is where my mind can go, and that is extremely fear-inducing for me. Right? And probably as fear-inducing as those who are washing their hands dry.

Comments on posts of the video show that many viewers accepted Brogan’s interpretation of Hamer’s theories.

“MIND BLOWN I needed this message more than I could ever say in words,” read one comment.

“Wondering what you recommend to help start transitioning thought patterns,” read another. “I’d love to look back and say, ‘Oh, that old Steph – bless her, but she believed in infections.'”

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Brogan isn’t the only high-profile Goop contributor who advocates GNM. Habib Sadeghi — a California-based alternative medicine practitioner and author of “Clarity Cleanse: 12 Steps to Finding Renewed Energy, Spiritual Fulfillment, and Emotional Healing” (foreword by Paltrow), and whose fans include Hollywood actors Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Tim Robbins — on his site says that he uses GNM to treat patients with chronic illness, including cancer sufferers.

Support for Hamer’s discredited theories has been steadily building in the U.S. and Canada for the past decade. Organisations and people who practice Hamer’s theories include: The International Meta-Medicine Association (IMMA), an LA-based alt-med organisation blamed for causing patient deaths in Norway; The Lifestyle Prescriptions Foundation, run by the founder of IMMA; Melissa Sell, based in California; Biologie Totale, based in Quebec; New Medicine CA/GNM Online Seminars, based in Toronto; and GNM Education, based in Vancouver.