The Whole Pantry founder Belle Gibson is an anti-vaccination advocate.
Social media entrepreneur and wellness blogger Belle Gibson, who built her empire off claims she’d miraculously survived cancer using alternative therapies, admitted to The Australian this week that she may never have had cancer.
The claims follow revelations by Fairfax Media that her company never passed on $300,000 of donations to charity as she’d promised.
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Now, as reports circulate that Ms Gibson has fled to the US to avoid confrontation over those shocking revelations, it’s emerged the Melbourne-based mother-of-one was an anti-vaxxer.
She also once allegedly pushed a friend not to vaccinate her own children.
Read more: Belle Gibson may have fled the country.
Mother-of-two Jayme Smith told Daily Mail Australia she befriended Ms Gibson after they met on a parenting discussion page on Facebook around 2010.
After she bonded with popular blogger — who at the time claimed to have cancer — Ms Smith said Ms Gibson ‘pushed’ her not to vaccinate her children.
‘That was my own choice, based on information provided by Belle,” Ms Smith told Daily Mail Australia.
“I regret that choice (to nearly not vaccinate), but it was my own. I’m not here to place blame.'”
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Ms Gibson also appears to have claimed the cervical cancer vaccine gave her cancer — and to have blamed the Australian government for the cancer she claimed to have.
In 2009, she also tweeted: “Obama won the nobel peace prize. This is more f***ed then (sic) the government giving me cancer,” the Herald Sun reports.
Ms Gibson also told Sunday Style magazine in November last year that she blamed the vaccine, Gardasil, for her cancer.
Ms Gibson has also described her own idiosyncratic, and unscientific, understanding of “immunisation” in an interview. Speaking to website BetterRaw.com, she described her version of immunisation as: “boosting your immune system naturally. (Through food, practitioners, homeopathic immunization kits (little tablets), regular exercise and respecting your body”.
A former friend of Gibson’s has also told Guardian Australia: “She was really into everything anti-medicine, including the anti-vaccination movement.”
Related content: Belle Gibson may have fled to the US… on a business class ticket.
Ms Smith — whose own mother lost her life to cancer in 2003 — told Daily Mail Australia she was concerned that followers of The Whole Pantry‘s teachings may be wrongly induced to turn away from conventional medicine.
“I just want her to confirm or deny (her diagnoses),” Ms Smith said.
“(P)eople who put their faith in her, invested in her… They need to know, if they’ve rejected conventional medicine on what she’s saying.”
Related content: Another day, another ‘natural cancer cure’ is proven to be a tragic lie.
Top Comments
No Belle, a vaccine did not give you cancer. Apparently you don't actually have cancer at all!
Unfortunately we are going to hear from more and more "Belles" with the advent of social media. People are so desperate for a quick fix for medical or dietary issues that they will latch on to just about anything that comes along. Pharmaceutical companies and doctors are seen as some sort of evil conspiracy to harm society despite the fact that they have heavy science and testing regimes to back them up. The saddest aspect of all of this is that we are being taken in by quacks of the highest order - no qualifications, just the ability to produce nice web pages and beautiful looking books and apps! How evil do you have to be to fake cancer to make money off people?
People also just want to get attention and become wealthy and/or a celebrity. That's really what it's all about.