Coles and Woolworths to pull magazine urging readers to ‘protect yourself from Wi-Fi and 5G’
Woolworths and Coles have agreed to remove an alternative medicine magazine from shelves which promotes a feature on protecting yourself from Wi-Fi and 5G, healing your spine without surgery and healing diabetes.
The tagline of the bi-monthly title, ‘What Doctors Don’t Tell You’, is “helping you make better health choices”, but 2GB host Ben Fordham slammed it as “dangerous misinformation” which is “produced by lunatics who link vaccines to autism and downplay the dangers of coronavirus”, urging Australia’s two biggest supermarkets to stop selling the magazine.
https://twitter.com/BenFordham/status/1254997954546380804
“We’ve been speaking about the dangerous nutter [My Kitchen Rules judge] Pete Evans and his cuckoo theories about machines with recipes for coronavirus [Evans was fined $25,000 last week over the claims]. Well now I’ve got some serious questions for the major supermarkets to answer,” Fordham said on his drive-time program yesterday afternoon.
“Because if you go into Coles or Woolworths today, you’ll find a magazine for sale at the checkout. It’s called ‘What Doctors Don’t Tell You’ and it’s filled with dangerous misinformation and dodgy health advice.
“What is Coles and Woolies doing allowing these nut-cases to spread this dangerous stuff at their checkouts?”
At the time Fordham spoke on air, he said neither supermarket had agreed to pull the title, but soon thereafter, both Coles and Woolworths committed to removing ‘What Doctors Don’t Tell You’ from shelves, and encouraged their customers to follow expert medical advice.
Coles said the magazine was “ranged as part of a two-week trial of new magazine titles under an arrangement with our supplier”.
“Coles does not endorse the content of the magazine and it is now being removed from sale and will not be part of our range going forward,” a spokesperson said.
“Coles encourages all Australians to follow the advice of government health authorities on all health matters including COVID-19.”
Mumbrella understands Woolworths was stocking ‘What Doctors Don’t Tell You’ in the aisle of around 100 supermarkets. A spokesperson said it appreciates customers’ concern and has “informed the supplier we’ll be removing the magazine from sale”.
“As always, we would encourage our customers to seek and follow expert medical advice,” the spokesperson added.
The ‘What Doctors Don’t Tell You’ website states that “Since 1989, WDDTY has provided thousands of resources on how to beat asthma, arthritis, depression and many other chronic conditions.” It began as a newsletter, and now claims to be “the largest magazine of its kind in the UK, sold in 14 countries worldwide”.
Fordham
UNSW associate professor of medical science, Dr Darren Saunders, told Fordham that the story on Wi-Fi and 5G – part of a conspiracy theory falsely claiming that 5G caused the COVID-19 pandemic – was of particular concern.
“These kind of magazines, there’s a trick to them … There’s very science-y sounding words and they kind of use that as a hook to drag you in to all of the conspiracy stuff and the dangerous advice around vaccines,” Dr Saunders said.
“The stuff that’s on the cover here around Wi-Fi and 5G. We’ve seen some really dangerous stuff being circulated in the last two weeks around coronavirus. And, in fact, when you dig into the magazine, the guy that wrote that article has been spreading that conspiracy around coronavirus and 5G.
“That sort of stuff, in the current climate, is just nuts.”
Mumbrella has contacted What Doctors Don’t Tell You for comment.
Brittney Rigby was Mumbrella's deputy managing editor - news and analysis. She left Mumbrella in April 2021.
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topics
alternative medicine
Ben Fordham
Coles
coronavirus
COVID-19
Pete Evans
What Doctors Don't Tell You
Woolworths
With all the science and technology we have at our disposal today we still seem to have an ignorant population that continues to get sucked into buying/accepting snake oil from these dangerous Charlatans. Sometimes I wonder if it’s really 2020 and not 1820.
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To be fair it’s literally advertising’s job to get people sucked in like that, so I don’t know if this is _quite_ the right place to point it out…
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