I’ve posted on this here – stopholfordtalkingrubbish.blogspot.com/2007/03/patrick-holford-editing-his-wikipedia.html

Didn’t you know? Walkers crisps include lots of micro-nutrients, and supports the immune system!

Splendid. In that case, I must attribute my excellent state of health today to the two free packets of “all new singing and dancing” Walkers crisps they were handing out at Harrow tube staton yesterday.

She has been censured twice by the Advertising Standards Authority, most recently to prevent her from using the title Dr. on her products.[9][10][11]

Following this censure, Gillian McKeith has been further investigated by the Scottish Heritage Association requiring her to drop “Mc” from her name; Gillian Keith has been investigated by the European Fish Naming Standards Council, declaring that she has no gills; Ian Keith has been twice stung by advertising watchdogs forcing her to drop both the names Ian and Keith as they were misleading consumers into thinking she is a man. In a shocking twist, expert linguists declared that ” ” as she has come to be called, is non-existent, stating that as far as they are concerned if she doesn’t have a name, she doesn’t exist.

Didn’t you know? Walkers crisps include lots of micro-nutrients, and supports the immune system!

Bob

Sure, there are administrators who could lock the article, but Holford says he wrote “to the moderator to straighten out some facts”. This makes it sounds like there’s a person who is responsible for the article and controls what goes into it and what gets left out, and Holford told them some key points that the moderator should bear in mind while carrying out this role. Holford wrote to that person and didn’t even get a reply, the moderator is obviously failing in their duty and/or is biased! So then Holford invites his supporters to start editing the page.

It sounds like he thinks he’s writing to an audience ignorant of the basic facts. (Probably his favourite kind of audience.) “The moderator” as such doesn’t exist, he *might* mean an administrator who has taken action in the article before, or he could mean anything else at all. Actually, as with every other wikipedia article, there is a discussion page (/”Talk”), that’s where arguments about content are supposed to take place, and I can’t see entries on there from anybody claiming to be Holford. Perhaps there *are* entries on there by Holford, pretending to be somebody else.

So, what did he *actually* do, if anything? We don’t know.

Since I saved a copy, here are some quotes to remember it by:

“When you tread a path that’s not yet mainstream, people will often criticise you for it. This year has kicked off with a flurry of attacks on ‘media nutritionists’, vitamin C and HIV, food intolerance testing, supplements for children, and also the Food for the Brain schools campaign. We must be ruffling some conservative feathers to attract so much attention! For those of us who are committed to pursuing better health naturally and harmlessly, sometimes it’s necessary to answer our critics and correct the misinformation they quote.

“As a result, I’d like to share my responses to several recent assaults in the press. I appreciate there’s a lot of information to wade through here, but as these different cases have a similar theme, I thought I’d deal with them all together. So let’s start with my response to material written by a journalist called Dr Ben Goldacre.”

[blah blah blah]

“The reason that some spokespeople ignore and want suppression of anything other than RCTs (at least on nutritional issues) may be simply because RCTs cost so much money, and favour pill trials (very hard to do placebo trials on diet or exercise), that almost all are funded by the drug industry, thus perpetuating the unhealthy monopoly within medicine today.

“But, of course, even when the RCTs do exist – as for multivitamins and children – somehow the evidence is ignored. The real hypocrisy is that newspapers are full of stories about drugs that can cure diseases ‘coming next year’, not based on RCTs.”

“Somebody once told me that ‘expecting people to treat you well just because you are a good person is like expecting the bull not to charge just because you are a vegetarian’. I guess Jerome Burne’s and my book Food is Better Medicine Than Drugs – not one single fact in which has yet been disputed – is a red rag to the pro-drug bull. Ridicule and attack are to be expected in the dying throes of the old pharmaceutical model of treating disease, as it inevitably makes way for a more holistic approach with optimum nutrition at its core.”

breathspakids.blogspot.com/2007/02/why-igg-testing-for-food-intolerance-is.html

Don’t French and Wiseman occasionally make it onto TV programmes as the token balance in yet another discussion of the paranormal? Isn’t it about time that TV producers started inviting along dissenting opinions when media nutritionists are given promotional spots for their books or particularly egregious claims?

Anyone can edit wikipedia, just remember the dragnet rule – “just the facts, ma’am”. Unsupported comments from either camp get removed pretty quickly. From the edits recently to various pages, Id guess alot of the editors do read this already.

That’s a serious ‘why not?’ too – interested. ”

Seconded – even if you don’t want to use your Guardian column to write about Holford, it’ll take no time at all to post the info on your blog The info’s then going to be available to and reprodicible by all. It might help stop some folk being fooled by Holford, and make others think twice about a similar career path.

Holford’s currently selling – and using his ION, and those trained there, to sell – quack treatments to a lot of people. Most of this is probably just handing out placebos for self-limiting conditions, but some of his advice (e.g. on treatment of serious mental health problems) could lead to serious damage to ‘patients’.
Holford also recommends ineffective, dangerous ‘naturopathic’ treatments like chelation. Also, by advocating vit C over AZT, Holford’s helping to give cover to those who are denying effective treatment to millions of relatively poor people with HIV/AIDs. I really can’t see any reason to hold back on the bloke, assuming the info you’ve got isn’t libellous…

Sorry for the rant – tbh, ethical issues aside, something about Holford just really pisses me off

Why not, Ben? Might stop others going down the same route – or at least to think about it more. And stop the ‘well, he might have made a mistake about AIDS, but he’s not so bad and gives useful advice’ thoughts.

That’s a serious ‘why not?’ too – interested.