THE medical profession has a problem. Patients are tuning out the advice from doctors and tuning into the internet.

Just as every authority figure we revered when I was a child — teachers, priests, politicians, policemen — have tumbled off the pedestal, doctors have tumbled too.

In our place and displacing science are the “wellness warriors” and paleo celebrities peddling supplements, cleanses and detoxes. The complementary therapies industry in Australia is worth a staggering $3.5 billion per year, with expectations of $4.6 billion in takings in 2017-18.

What’s even scarier is that Complementary Medicines Australia say they expect “the sales of vitamin and dietary supplements will overtake the sales of over-the-counter medicines by 2015”.

The tragic death of the gorgeous Jess Ainscough was a tough lesson in humility for many of us. There has been such an outpouring of grief and compassion for her dilemma: embrace the advice of her conventional doctors and face disfiguring surgery, or take up a tantalisingly plausible idea (albeit without any scientific validity) and use food, supplements and detoxification rituals to “support the immune system” and cure disease.

media_camera ‘Wellness warrior’ Jess Ainscough died at age 30 from cancer. Jess shunned traditional medicine in lieu of Gerson therapy. Photo: Marc Robertson.

There’s enough pseudoscience in Gerson therapy and many other alternate therapies that for the unsuspecting and vulnerable, they seem like they could work.

Surprisingly, disdain for conventional medicine isn’t the domain of uneducated trailer trash. Exactly the opposite is happening. The anti-vaxxers; the pregnant women who insist, despite warnings from the National Health and Medican Research Council, that a bit of red wine in pregnancy isn’t fine at all; the people lining up for colonic irrigation and fistfuls of vitamins and herbs they simply don’t need, are Australia’s well-heeled and well-educated.

If you want to locate our lowest childhood vaccination rates by postcode, follow the money.

The latest figures state that while over 95 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are fully immunised, with the exception of the NSW far north coast, it’s inner city Adelaide and Sydney that have the lowest vaccination rates.

When you think anti-vaxxers, think of Mosman, Bondi and the Adelaide Hills.

Similarly, drinking alcohol in pregnancy is another issue that divides us. In Australia, high levels of drinking while pregnant is linked to low levels of education and lower income. But low-level alcohol consumption during pregnancy is the domain of women who are more highly educated and come from higher-income households.

media_camera Celebrity chef Pete Evans is into the paleo diet.

I remember when this information was published, I sat on a morning television show panel with a group of women whom I consider to be some of the brightest people I have ever met.

And yet these women dismissed the advice of the National Health and Medical Research Council as “isolating for women” or “too harsh”.

We are not talking about differing opinions on marriage equality. We are talking about the greatest scientific minds in a pretty smart nation examining all the available scientific data and declaring, for the benefit of their fellow citizens, that drinking in pregnancy is not safe. How on Earth can you dismiss that advice in the same way you’d reject a political opinion?

I guess in the same way that otherwise thoughtful and intelligent people embrace the advice of wellness gurus, finding the advice of doctors boring and uninspiring. It’s easy to blame the paleo celebrities and crazy anti-vaxxers for the problem we’re facing, but doctors have to take some of the responsibility too.

It’s time for us to step up and provide better information to the public so Australians can make truly informed choices, before anyone else dies a preventable death using alternative medicines.

Dr Ginni Mansberg is a Sydney-based GP. Follow @Dr_Ginni on Twitter.

A Week in Science - Vaccination Myths When it comes to vaccinations, misinformation can kill. Find out the truth as we look at vaccination myths, including the mercury fear and autism claims.

Originally published as It’s time to tune out the wellness warriors