A remarkable young man called Rhys Morgan (@rhysmorgan) is the 8th speaker to be announced for TEDxOrenda.

Having only just turned 16 Rhys has had to cope with the everyday prejudices he faces as a confident and articulate young person who interacts with people much older than himself via the Internet.

This came to head recently when, after having been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease Rhys joined forums that were set up to support people with his condition.  He was appalled to discover that a product being marketed as a ‘miracle sure’ for Crohn’s disease was in fact industrial strength bleach.  What then followed is referred to a #bleachgate and gained Rhys a reputation as a modern-day debunker of snake-oil salesmen.  The FSA praised him for alerting them to the issue but not before he came in for widespread criticism on the very forums of which he was a member – people didn’t like this young man pointing out to them that he knew better than them.  Rhys came to particular prominence when his work was feted by Ben Goldacre and he recently shared the platform with Stephen Fry & Richard Dawkins at a ‘critical thinking’ conference.

Although a very modets young man, Rhys is not afraid to speak his mind and can now be found most oftenTweeting about any instances where he feels people are having the wool pulled over their eyes.

Unfortunately Rhys has an important GCSE examination the day after TEDxOrenda so he will not be with us in person, however he is making a short video or Skype-ing in so that we can hear from him the importance of the student voice.