An alternative health magazine on sale in High Street stores carries potentially dangerous claims, campaigners have warned.
What Doctor’s Don’t Tell You is on sale in major supermarkets including Tesco as well as W H Smith.
Articles which have appeared in WDDTY include claims that vitamin C can treat AIDS and that homeopathy can treat cancer.
Speaking to The Times, Tom Hayes, editor of Beyond Positive which is for people who have contracted HIV, said: “There is a stigma to medication. So if people find a way to put off taking medicine, if they see an article in a glossy magazine sold in WH Smith, that is tempting. Left unchecked though, HIV will result in death.”
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Glasgow GP Margaret McCartney told The Times: “The only ethical way I can see of selling it is if it is kept behind the counter in a plastic bag, with a label saying the contents are dangerous.”
The Advertising Standards Agency has upheld numerous complaints over claims made by advertisers in the title.
Channel 4's medical expert Dr Christian Jessen also backed the campaign against the magazine.
Hello @Tesco would u please stop selling the bogwash that is 'What Doctors Don't Tell You'
— Dr Christian Jessen (@DoctorChristian) September 30, 2013
The magazine promises readers: “Discover treatments that are safer and more effective.”
Science campaigner Simon Singh said: “What worries me is mainstream retail outlets selling this and giving it undue credibility.”
Well done Times on calls to take What Doctors Don’t Tell You off the shelves. #wddty (£) https://t.co/Ftr5CI1474
— Simon Singh (@SLSingh) October 1, 2013
The magazine is published by WDDTY Publishing.
Editor Lynne MacTaggart told Press Gazette: "By the very nature of our title we are giving people the other side of the story." She insisted that her title merely reports on research and questioned why Simon Singh, himself a press freedom campaigner in the past, is seeking to get her magazine withdrawn from sale.
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