Gaia Health



Gaia Health (gaia-health.com) is a website founded in 2009 by Heidi Stevenson that promotes alternative medicine and conspiracy theories. Stevenson has appeared on Infowars, where she alleged that Gardasil was dangerous, and has also contributed to GreenMedInfo.

It's explicitly opposed to evidence-based medicine, is anti-vaccine anti-chemical, and relies almost exclusively on cherry-picked anecdotes. They dismiss ScienceBlogs writers who naturally critique Gaia Health as pseudoscience  as "pseudoskeptics".

Fortunately, the site appears to have virtually no traffic.

Intro
In the site's intro, Gaia Health explains to the reader to be open minded to its bullshit:

Quack Miranda Warning
Some time after the death of Stevenson, the site added a Quack Miranda Warning. It claims that their "articles are well researched and sources are provided", which is laughable given the shoddy quality of their articles:

So, even though the site often has information contrary to good medical advice (e.g., homeopathy and antivax), the site still recommends that you consult your doctor for primary information.

Subcategories
The site also gives the impression of being far more comprehensive than it is with a long list of subcategories. However, as of November 16, 2017, thirteen of their categories are empty including most of the disease category, including topics such as drug resistant bacteria and childbirth. The site also included a humor section allegedly filled with "funny" anti-medicine and anti-chemical articles and videos.

Big Pharma
Gaia Health leans heavily on Big Pharma conspiracy theories. It opposes government regulation of alternative medicine, at one point expressing outrage at the banning of Hyland's Homeopathic Teething Tablets (which were found to have unsafe levels of belladonna), claiming the FDA was a servant of Big Pharma and that it was an assault on health freedom. (The idea that large pharmaceutical companies, in actuality, hate FDA regulation never occurred to them.)

Stevenson lacks a basic knowledge of hypothesis testing and epidemiology, yet she felt qualified to criticize the very basis of a vaccine-autism epidemiology study.

Against homeopathy regulation
In an article titled "Should We Regulate Water Like Alcohol Because They’re Both Liquids?" Gaia Health pushes against homeopathy regulation in the UK by comparing alcohol regulation to water:

Placebo effect
As a homeopath, Stevenson has also attempt to refute the existence of the placebo effect. However, it is well-established that placebos do have real and measurable effects, which are psychosomatic in nature.