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Wellness App Author Lied About Cancer Diagnosis
Freshly Exhumed writes: Wellness advocate Belle Gibson, who translated her high profile as a cancer survivor into publishing success, has admitted her cancer diagnosis was not real. Ms Gibson, 23, who claimed to have healed terminal brain cancer by eating wholefoods, made the admission in an interview with the Australian Women's Weekly. The success of Gibson's book, The Whole Pantry, and her smartphone application, which advocates natural therapies, has been largely dependent on her high-profile as a cancer survivor. Sadly, we've seen this sort of behaviour before. It would seem that Belle Gibson has emulated Dr. Andrew Wakefield in knowingly decieving the public in ways that could possibly be dangerous to the health of believers.
Wait. A person who made dubious claims that had no scientific backing to them was actually lying? What next? Water is wet?!!
I think pretty much everyone but the nutjob, true believers in psuedo-science knew all along that this woman was lying.
So you're saying everyone knew she was lying about her charity donations as well? Or was it only the charities that knew that? From the article:
The 26-year-old's popular recipe app, which costs $3.79, has been downloaded 300,000 times and is being developed as one of the first apps for the soon-to-be-released Apple Watch. Her debut cook book The Whole Pantry, published by Penguin in Australia last year, will soon hit shelves in the United States and Britain.
So you're saying the 300,000 downloads are by people that knew they were downloading the app architected by a liar? And they were paying $3.79 to Apple and this liar for a recipe app that contain recipes that someone lied about helping her cure cancer? And you're saying that everyone at Apple that featured her app on the Apple Watch knew they were showing a snake oil app on their brand new shiny device? And that the people at Penguin did all their fact checking on any additional information this cookbook might contain about Belle Gibson's alleged cancer survival? And that everybody involved in these events know society's been parading around a fucking liar and rewarding her with cash money while she basically capitalizes on a horrendous disease that afflicts millions of people worldwide ... that she never had?
... anybody who accepts it as the sole cure for their ailment is putting their health in the hands of such charlatans and quacks.
No, this is not the same as "water is wet" and it needs to be shown that holistic medicine is temporarily propped up on a bed of anecdotal lies
My work here is dung.
Separately, I wish all these self professed wellness "gurus" would jump off the nearest cliff and rid the world of their stupidity.
If a person claims authority on a subject based on falsified experiences isn't that pretty much the essential definition of FRAUD? (Particularly if money is made in the process.)
If your advice is connected to peoples' actions that could have ramifications for their health and safety, then negligent manslaughter might be included as well.
Look at it this way, if we started this, we'd at least have fewer celebrities talking about health issues, which is ultimately a net good.
-Styopa
Maybe not cure cancer, but almost certainly eating right can prevent it.
No, eating right almost certainly cannot prevent cancer. It almost certainly can reduce the chances of getting cancer, but it has no hope of actually preventing it. It is a very small but incredibly significant distinction.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
There's nothing valorous about picking on the homeless. Sure, it's fraud, but just treat any panhandling story like a circus act because there's a damned good reason to make it more appealing than accurate.
Steve Jobs had the most treatable, survivable type of pancreatic cancer. He decided to do yoga and change his diet and do acupuncture instead of real treatments. Then he died. That's just how stupid some people are.
What an unscrupulous being:
source, source 2
That there are people who are willing to lie, even if their lies cause suffering to others, does not surprise me in the list.
What concerns me is the media's role in all this, who for the most part accepted her story without any questions or fact checking. There were so many inconsistencies in her story that even the most basic background check should have exposed her. I'm shocked that no one tried to even talk to her doctors to follow up on her medical claims, for example. Or a quick phone call to the charities she claimed to be supporting would have also exposed her charitable claims.
Her claims should never have been allowed to stand as long they did.
You are SO full of shit, I'm surprised you can hear yourself think over all the noise from the flies swarming about.
Decades of research and trillions of dollars have done A LOT for cancer patients. In the past, cancer survival rates were so discouraging that the 5 year mark was considered terrific. The fact that you posted that comment, suggests that research has come a long in treating cancers. Instead of survival times of 6 months- 2 years, we now have significant numbers of people surviving past the 5 year mark. Hey, maybe we should start talking about things in terms of 10 year survival, but that's a long time for cancer patients to die of heart attacks, accidents, diabetes, etc. Pinning down survival rates would be much more difficult. Cancer research is already complex. We've done such a good job (yes good) of treating cancers (not curing) that jackholes like you ignorantly spill vitriol on the web. Classical Hodgkin's lymphoma was considered a death sentence 50 years ago. Now, the 5 year survival rate for Stage IV Hodgkin's is 65%. It's so treatable that we force teenagers to receive therapy for Hodgkin's lymphoma, because it's idiotic not to. Seminomas, which are cancers of testicles (more or less), have a 70% chance of survival even when it's Stage IV, meaning the cancer is widely metastatic and over the place. Stage II melanoma has survival rates of 90%. Our therapies are also getting better and better, with fewer side effects. Yes, they're expensive as hell, but they literally took decades of research to develop.
No, we haven't cured every type of cancer out there and we're still doing a terrible job with others (pancreatic carcinomas and glioblastomas come to mind). That said, we've come a long way with so many other types of cancers and even if they aren't cured, they're living longer and without disease/symptoms. You don't think that was worth the decades of research and trillions of dollars? Well, fuck you too then!