Lynne McTaggart
Born (1951-01-23) January 23, 1951
New York City
Occupation(s)Author, lecturer

Lynne McTaggart (born 23 January 1951, in New York City) is an American alternative medicine author, publisher, journalist, lecturer and activist.[1] She is the author of six books, including The Field, The Intention Experiment and The Power of 8, and is the co-creator of the alternative medicine magazine What Doctors Don't Tell You. According to her author profile, she is a spokesperson "on consciousness, the new physics, and the practices of conventional and alternative medicine."[2]

Career

In her autobiography McTaggart reports that after recovering from an illness using alternative medical approaches her husband suggested she start a newsletter on the risks of some medical practices and devised the title: "What Doctors Don't Tell You". In 1996 McTaggart published the book with the same name.

She and her husband set up a public company in 2001, What Doctors Don't Tell You plc,[3] later Conatus plc, which published newsletters, magazines and audio-tapes based on conferences and seminars including, What Doctors Don't Tell You, PROOF!, and Living the Field.[4] This company was wound up in 2009.[5]

A new company, Wddty Publishing Ltd, run by McTaggart and her husband, took over the What Doctors Don't Tell You website, and New Age Publishing Ltd for McTaggart's other publishing and public-speaking activities. Publication of their monthly magazine What Doctors Don't Tell You restarted in August 2012, in a glossy format aimed at newsagent and high-street distribution, instead of using the previous subscription model, and carrying paid advertising, something McTaggart had originally said WDDTY would not do.[6]

In her book The Field, McTaggart asserts that the universe is unified by an interactive field. The book has been translated into fourteen languages.[4]

In a later book, The Intention Experiment, she discusses research in the field of human consciousness which she says supports the theory that "the universe is connected by a vast quantum energy field" and can be influenced by thought. Michael Shermer states that this belief is contradicted by conflicting evidence (e.g. studies on intercessory prayer).[7]

McTaggart has a personal-development program called "Living The Field" which is based on an idiosyncratic interpretation of the zero point field as applied to quantum mechanics. She appears in the extended version of the movie What the Bleep Do We Know!?,[8] (2004).

From 1996 until 2002 McTaggart and her husband Bryan Hubbard published the monthly newsletter Mother Knows Best, later renamed Natural Parent magazine, focusing on home schooling, environmental and health concerns, including nutrition and homeopathy. They also published related books: My Learning Child, My Spiritual Child and My Healthy Child.

Significant portions of her book about Kathleen Cavendish, Marchioness of Hartington appeared without attribution[9] or permission in The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys: An American Saga (1987), by historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. Goodwin eventually resolved the matter with a public apology to McTaggart and a "substantial" monetary settlement.[10][11][12]

Criticism

Ben Goldacre has criticized McTaggart for speaking out against the drug, Tamiflu, claiming that her concerns about the drug were completely unfounded.[13] While Goldacre is correct that research has shown that Tamiflu can have positive affects on reducing mortality in patients with influenza H1N1,[14] he is not correct in saying that McTaggarts statements are completely unfounded. Medical research does also support McTaggarts statements that there can be harmful effects.[15][16]

The Field has been characterized by Mark Henderson of The Times as pseudoscience, focusing on her personal understanding of quantum physics as a misconception.[6]

McTaggart was reported to have threatened Simon Singh with legal action after he contacted Comag, the distributors of WDDTY, complaining that the magazine was "largely unscientific" and "promoting advice that could potentially harm readers." "Also, many of the adverts appear to make pseudoscientific and unsubstantiated claims," he said. "I even offered to meet with Comag and introduce them to medical experts, but they have not accepted this invitation. When I suggested that I would blog about our email exchange, their reaction was to tell me in no uncertain terms: 'I should inform you that we have sought legal advice in respect of this matter. We would take any attempts to damage our reputation on social media or elsewhere very seriously.'"[17]

In the months between first publication of What Doctors Don't Tell You in magazine form, and February 2013, 54 breaches of the Code of Advertising Practice in 11 adverts were adjudicated and upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority along with a further 11 informally resolved cases, concerning adverts in the first two issues,[18] with more breaches in subsequent issues too.[19]

In an interview on BBC Radio 4, GP and author Margaret McCartney stated: "I'm astounded that Lynne thinks this is an evidence-based publication. It's anything but," she said. "The problem with evidence is that it can tell you things that you'd rather not know. A lot of the time medicine does do harm but that's why doctors and scientists are duty-bound to put their research findings out there and to stop doing things that cause harm. What we shouldn't do is abandon medicine and the scientific method and go straight for alternative medicine with no good evidence that that works either."[17] She criticised stories in the magazine as "absolute rubbish" and "ridiculously alarmist".

In an article in The Times in October 2013 Tom Whipple, science correspondent, said that "Experts are calling on high street shops to stop selling a magazine that claims that vitamin C cures HIV, suggests homeopathy could treat cancer and implies that the cervical cancer vaccine has killed hundreds of girls."[20]

Personal life

McTaggart is married to publisher Bryan Hubbard and lives in London with her two daughters.[2][21]

Works

  • Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times (1983) ISBN 0-385-27415-7
  • What Doctors Don't Tell You: The Truth About The Dangers Of Modern Medicine (1999) ISBN 0-380-80761-0
  • The Cancer Handbook: What's Really Working (2000) ISBN 1-890612-18-9
  • The Field: The Quest for the Secret Force of the Universe (2003) ISBN 0-06-093117-5
  • The Intention Experiment: Using Your Thoughts to Change Your Life and the World (2007) ISBN 0-00-719458-7
  • The Bond: Connecting through the Space Between Us (2011) ISBN 978-1-4391-5794-7
  • The Power of Eight: Harnessing the Miraculous Energies of a Small Group to Heal Others, Your Life, and the World (2017) ISBN 978-1501115547

References

  1. ↑ "The Selective Skepticism of Lynne McTaggart". discovermagazine.com. Retrieved April 26, 2020.
  2. 1 2 "Author biography at Harper Collins". Archived from the original on 26 October 2010. Retrieved 23 October 2010.
  3. ↑ "Whistleblower sees fast turnaround". Growth Company Investor. 14 March 2001. Archived from the original on 6 September 2013. Retrieved 17 August 2012.
  4. 1 2 "Lynne McTaggart – Biography". Simon & Schuster. Archived from the original on 9 September 2011.
  5. ↑ "Petitions to Wind Up - CONATUS Limited". The London Gazette. 18 February 2009. Issue Number: 58983 Page: 2909. Retrieved 17 August 2012.
  6. 1 2 Mark Henderson (30 October 2004). "Junk medicine: Anti-vaccine activists". The Times. London. Retrieved 17 December 2009.
  7. ↑ Shermer, Michael (5 April 2006). "Prayer & Healing: The Verdict is in and the Results are Null". ESkeptic. ISSN 1556-5696.
  8. ↑ Jason Buchanan (2014). "Down the Rabbit Hole (2006)". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 28 May 2014. Retrieved 26 May 2014.
  9. ↑ Compare: Goodwin, Doris Kearns (27 January 2002). "How I Caused That Story". Time. Archived from the original on 9 February 2002. Retrieved 18 October 2014. Fourteen years ago, not long after the publication of my book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys, I received a communication from author Lynne McTaggart pointing out that material from her book on Kathleen Kennedy had not been properly attributed. [...] Though my footnotes repeatedly cited Ms. McTaggart's work, I failed to provide quotation marks for phrases that I had taken verbatim[...].
  10. ↑ Bo Crader, "A Historian and Her Sources," The Weekly Standard, January 28, 2002
  11. ↑ Jill Lawless, "Author Says Doris Kearns Goodwin Took 'Heart and Guts' From Her Book," Associated Press, March 23, 2002.
  12. ↑ Goodwin, Doris Kearns (27 January 2002). "How I Caused That Story". Time. Archived from the original on 9 February 2002. Retrieved 18 October 2014. Though my footnotes repeatedly cited Ms. McTaggart's work, I failed to provide quotation marks for phrases that I had taken verbatim.... The larger question for those of us who write history is to understand how citation mistakes can happen.
  13. ↑ Goldacre, Ben (18 February 2006). "The Great Tamiflu Vaccine Scare". Retrieved 18 May 2013.
  14. ↑ Muthuri SG, Venkatesan S, Myles PR, et al. Effectiveness of neuraminidase inhibitors in reducing mortality in patients admitted to hospital with influenza A H1N1pdm09 virus infection: a meta-analysis of individual participant data. Lancet Respir Med. 2014;2(5):395-404. doi:10.1016/S2213-2600(14)70041-4
  15. ↑ Hama, Rokuro; Jones, Mark; Okushima, Hiroki; Kitao, Masahiro; Noda, Narumi; Hayashi, Keiji; Sakaguchi, Keiko (2011). "Oseltamivir and early deterioration leading to death: a proportional mortality study for 2009A/H1N1 influenza". The International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine. 23 (4): 201–215. doi:10.3233/JRS-2011-0545. ISSN 1878-6847. PMID 22156085.
  16. ↑ Hama, R., & Bennett, C. L. (2017). The mechanisms of sudden-onset type adverse reactions to oseltamivir. Acta Neurologica Scandinavica, 135(2), 148-160. https://doi.org/10.1111/ane.12629
  17. 1 2 Jha, Alok (3 October 2012). "Simon Singh threatened with legal action for criticising health magazine". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 May 2013.
  18. ↑ WDDTY #9 - Taking Stock, Nightingale Collaboration, 27 Feb 2013
  19. ↑ Stemming the tide: 'The list of misleading adverts in the magazine What Doctors Don't Tell You sometimes seems endless...' nightingale-collaboration.org, accessed 2 July 2018
  20. ↑ Tom Whipple (1 October 2013). "Call to ban magazine for scaremongering". The Times. London. Retrieved 7 October 2013.
  21. ↑ "Biography: Lynne McTaggart". Intent Inc. Archived from the original on 27 September 2011.
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