Popular "health empowerer" agrees to drop fake title

international | sci-tech | other press Monday February 12, 2007 15:19 by R. Isible

Quack Gillian McKeith forced by ASA to stop calling herself "Dr".

Gillian McKeith is a popular TV quack whose books on health and nutrition are avidly consumed by a gullible public in the UK. Due to a grassroots efforts by bloggers the author of the book most borrowed from UK libraries in 2005/6 "Dr. Gillian McKeith's You Are What You Eat Cookbook", has been forced to stop misleadingly calling herself a doctor.

Ben Goldacre writing in The Guardian (Mon Feb 12th 2007) notes that one of the readers and contributors to his BadScience blog took the "doctor" to the Advertising Standards Authority. The ASA and Gillian McKeith both eventually agreed that her "qualification" (which was obtained via the postal system from a non-accredited US "college") did not entitle her to call herself "Dr. Gillian McKeith" as this falsely conveyed the idea that she was deemed qualified through years of training, examination and practice by accredited experts to be at, or above, a certain minimal accepted standard of expertise in human medical health.

Goldacre's excellent Guardian article (see link below) details the shoddy and exploitative attempts of this particular quack to make a fortune off the ill-health of other humans.