Celebs Shouldn't Get Away With Spreading Misinformation: It's Time for Health Experts to Speak Out

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Hi. I'm Art Caplan. I'm at the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU's Grossman School of Medicine.

For a long time, I have been complaining bitterly about disinformation, lousy information, and business-driven information appearing all over social media. If you haven't already, take the time to go see what many of your patients are being told by people like Gwyneth Paltrow, who has a company that's worth, I believe, half a billion dollars — Goop, which I think is named exactly appropriately. Goop sells everything from sex serums to all kinds of cuckoo elixirs and remedies.

She gets praised all the time for her success and her beauty by the media and social media. Very few people ever step up and say this woman is a public health menace. She's selling people stuff for problems and diseases that is quackery, not legitimate products, and is not following medical guidelines or what expert physicians would represent.

At one end of the spectrum these days, we have a sea of disinformation from many sources, not just Goop; many companies and people are promoting everything from immune boosters to vitamin treatments for COVID-19 — you name it.