Microbiome Medidne Summit 2017

Last year I wrote about the Microbiome Medicine Summit, which was not really a summit but rather a collection of interviews with nutrition specialists and microbiome experts, conducted by Raphael Kellman, who has been trained as a microbiome expert. Jonathan Eisen gave the Overselling the Microbiome Award to RK.

Most of the talks at last year’s Microbiome Medicine Summit provided very little science, a lot about nurturing your microbes, some crazy stuff, and lots of promotions to buy overpriced probiotic drinks, minerals, and self-help books. There were very few interviews with real experts.

The Microbiome Medicine Summit with Donna Gates, Ann Louise Gittleman, Joseph Mercola, and Larry Dossey were some of the talks I wrote about.

The Microbiome Medicine Summit returned in its second edition, with lots of new interviews, but basically the same strange mix of a tiny bit of science and lots of quackery, snake oil, alternative facts, and of course links to dubious websites selling products claiming to cure diseases. Most of the interviews were with nutritionists and doctors. Most interviews were conducted by Raphael Kellman, who sometimes talks more than the person he is interviewing, and never, ever, asks a critical question. The schedule can be found here.

I had to sit through several of these talks so that I could tell you what they were about. Some of the talks were not bad, with lots of feed your microbes by eating healthy types of messages, but some were weird or even dangerous. I reported about the talks on social media.

Here are my reports.