Demand The Truth From Candice-Marie Fox

Because apparently life is not worth living without a photogenic wellness blogger, a woman named Candice-Marie Fox has emerged to take the place of Jessica Ainscough and Belle Gibson.  I guess we just cannot live cancer-free lives without one of these around.  Candice-Marie Fox claims that she had thyroid cancer which she has cured using pineapple juice.  Now apparently she also had surgery and radiation for her cancer, but of course that does not count and it was her nutritional approach to cancer which is responsible for her current good health.  She also claims that her cancer has returned to her liver and that her doctors only have given her five more years to live, but that she now has no more tumors inside her due to her nutritional approach.  The Daily Star quoted "oncologist" Mark Simon as saying:

"Her tumour markers which reflect the number of cancerous cells has been well within the normal range for over two years, so we can confidently say that her stage four thyroid cancer is under effective management. I can tell you that most thyroid cancer patients with similar circumstances to Candice who follow the conventional path do not survive or experience a very poor quality of life. Cancer is an infection of aberrant cells and treating cancer is like dealing with a Bacterial infection. We attempt to maintain an environment not conducive towards tumour growth and proliferation. Diet plays a major role along with regular exercise, positive attitude and even spirituality."

The only problem is that Mark Simon is not an oncologist at all and he has no business diagnosing or otherwise giving a prognosis to a cancer patient.  He is a "CN" which I assume stands for certified nutritionist.  I can find no source for him having any sort of medical education whatsoever. Now, did he or Candice-Marie put him out there as being an oncologist, or did The Daily Star just get it wrong?  If it is the latter, then I expect both these people to publicly and immediately clear this up.  It is not just unethical, but illegal to hold yourself out to be a doctor if you are not one.

I still could not help but wonder why Fox would have a non-oncologist confirm that her disease has been kept in check using pineapple juice.  It is incredibly fishy to me and that is why I am here to demand the truth from Candice-Marie Fox.  Her new business called Healthy Candy is set to launch in a month.  I assume that it will heavily promote fantasy-based medicine as a substitute for real treatment.  She will be using her own story of how she cured herself of cancer to promote this business and make money from it.  Thus, I put forth the following to Candice-Marie Fox:

You will publicly post all medical records pertaining to your cancer and your treatment, including a recent medical check-up from a real oncologist.  At least three independent oncologists will be able to look over the entirety of your medical records which pertain to your cancer and render a professional commentary as to the original diagnosis, treatment and current prognosis.  If your story is true then you have nothing to fear and no reason not to do this.  In fact, all it would do is help your business because you will have publicly and without any doubt confirmed that your story of healing is true.  

This is her facebook page which has not yet been deleted.  https://www.facebook.com/pages/Healthycandyme/298350183626122?fref=ts
Please stop by and demand that she post irrefutable proof of her claims.  Also, she needs to publicly rectify the lie that Mark Simon is an oncologist.

AN OPEN LETTER TO BELLE GIBSON

*Guest post by reader Ella.  

Dear Belle,

Just twenty days ago, on this blog, Violet posed the question “does Belle Gibson actually have cancer?” On March 9, The Age broke the news that funds promised to charity by your company, The Whole Pantry, had not been turned over. Meanwhile, as your supporters rushed to your defense, The Australian uncovered the answer to Violet’s question. You do not have cancer.

Those five words are usually good news. This time it was a little bit more complicated. You tearfully admitted to Richard Guilliatt that you were “misdiagnosed by a medical team using ‘magnetic’ therapy from Germany,” and that you were “not certain whether he was a medical doctor.” This contrasts with your claim that you were initially diagnosed by a “conventional” team, whose treatment you rejected after passing out in a car park opposite the hospital where you supposedly underwent chemo. By March 14, after admitting the above, you were still claiming to be “scheduled to undergo surgery in a few weeks.” I think we all know none of that is true.

You reacted to the crisis impulsively, lashing out at your critics and promising The Daily Mail that you would “have a statement live this week.” That “live” statement appears to have died. You hastily attempted to wipe all trace of your cancer claims from the internet, in the same way my little brother would petulantly flip the Monopoly board as soon as he realized he had no chance of winning. To date, Penguin has “not received sufficient explanation” from you “in response to recent allegations,” and your book has been shredded. After some delay, Apple has also bowed to public pressure and pulled The Whole Pantry app.

You quickly discovered that an empire built on lies doesn’t stand up to much. It all collapsed remarkably quickly. The Amazon preview of your book, featuring glossy images of a radiant Belle Gibson beaming at bunches of beets, has vanished. A Google search for Belle Gibson turns up more data than it ever did, but not in a good way. And the central image of The Whole Life website – a rustic wooden table strewn with picturesque organic produce – is forever tainted.

You don’t have cancer, and I suggest that you knew that all along. You’ve had years to anticipate what would happen when the cat was finally out of the bag. You claim to be worried about being “bullied to your death.” You are not in imminent danger of death, and it’s time to abandon that myth and stop using it to win the public’s favour.

My question to you is this: as your book turns into so much mulch and your reputation lies in tatters, what should you do? Belle, you need to step up, and demonstrate some of the courage and fortitude that you’ve been boasting about for so long. You want to withdraw from the public eye, and you must do that. But do it honourably. Own up to your mistakes, and take the penalty on the chin.

You recently protested, “I know the work my company and it's [sic] contents did changed hundreds of thousands for the better." The good you may have done does not cancel out the bad. Financial issues aside, your company was founded on the image of a dying woman leading a fulfilling life for years longer than predicted, simply by ditching conventional treatments in favour of fantasy-based medicine.

This is a dangerous lie. The death of Jess Ainscough was a tragic reminder of the high cost of quackery. In the avalanche of misinformation perpetuated online, parents are failing to vaccinate their children, cancer patients are turning their backs on proven treatments, and healthy people are putting themselves at risk with extreme diets and dodgy therapies. This isn’t entirely your fault, obviously. But ironically, you are now uniquely placed to help put an end to this dangerous pseudo-scientific nonsense. You actually have a chance to do some good.

You once said, “My community expects me to be authentic.” You were right. For years, you addressed your adoring “community” publicly, intimately and emotionally, inviting them into very private aspects of your life. You must now use the platform you created to address that community, issue a public and open apology for deceiving the public about your cancer, and as graciously as possible withdraw from the public eye.

You have some urgent legal and financial obligations, and you will no doubt be forced to meet them. But you also have a serious moral responsibility, and how you handle that will determine how the rest of your life plays out. You’re very young, you appear to be in excellent health, and you have decades of life ahead of you. It’s not too late to put things right. Don’t let this disaster be a monster from which you’re always running. Turn, face it squarely in the eye, and come clean.

Your “wellness,” and that of your family, doesn’t rest with the idle threats of a handful of sub-literate trolls on Facebook, but on your integrity as a woman. It is within your power to make amends, to heal, and to proceed with newfound authenticity and hope. I encourage you to do just that.

Ella.

Internet Friends Are Strangers

One thing that has really struck me as odd about this whole farce is how many of Belle's followers talk about feeling "betrayed" by her.  Now, I am going to go ahead and assume that nearly all these people never even met Belle in real life.  Their entire relationship with Belle took place online, and that relationship was very one-sided, with Belle doing all the talking and them doing all the listening and praising.  Belle Gibson was a complete stranger to them and yet they still felt a huge sense of betrayal by this fraud.  The word "betrayal" got me to thinking.  Can a total stranger betray you?  Surely only a person who owes you any sort of duty to begin with can betray you.  Outside contractual obligations, those people are friends and family.  When you have a real friendship with a person, you also enter into an unwritten social contract where you promise not to harm your friends.  Sure, Belle Gibson owes us all a duty of care in daily life, and as a citizen of Australia she is required to follows its laws.   But even a breach of those two things is not a personal betrayal to anyone.  I hope this case serves as a lesson to everyone that people we only know online are not friends, they are strangers.  Belle's actual real life friends do not seem to feel all that betrayed by her, and I think that is because they knew her in real life, and so they have known for quite some time that something was wrong with her story.  In real life we get to see the people we know as they respond to a variety of situations.  How do they treat their spouse?  Are they flaky in their social obligations?  If you loan them money, do they pay you back?  Of course there are many more examples I could give, but you get the point.  The gist of it is that you have many opportunities to really judge the character of a someone you know in real life, and you don't have those opportunities with people you only know through the internet.  Somehow, social media has managed to trick people into not noticing that this very crucial step gets skipped when forming online "friendships".

A Gentleperson's Agreement

I have received a complaint from a family member of Joshua Schwartz (of Joshua's Journey), asking that we do not discuss him here.  I have deleted all comments pertaining to him, and I ask that from this point on that no one discusses him or his family.  Additionally, I would ask that we extend that courtesy to all children.  I appreciate that so far all of you have been receptive to me when I have made requests like this.

I think that the majority of comments here are insightful and I like that we are discussing many of the key issues surrounding this case, like media responsibility and the effect of social media.  This blog was started because I am a passionate believer that cancer sufferers are entitled to the truth about what I perceive as lies regarding "alternative medicine".  I know that the discussion here sometimes moves on from that, and because this case involves so many facets of contemporary life that so desperately need to be discussed, I am happy to have people stop by and share their thoughts.  I realize that there is some controversy on being able to post anonymously, but I believe it was that one thing that was instrumental in getting Belle's story out there, so I will continue to let people post anonymously here.  The only thing I ask is that people behave as though they are posting under their real names here, even when posting anonymously.  I have seen some other discussions of Belle Gibson on the internet, and I must say that ours is by far the most gentle, so I only ask that we continue in that vein.

Thanks,

Violet

P.S.  One final request: please do not use this particular blog post to continue with comments about Belle Gibson.

Please Stop Running Photos of Belle's Son

Can the media please stop using photos of Belle's son in their coverage of this story?  The latest Daily Mail article uses three pictures of her son.  The Australian also used one.  There are plenty of photos of just Belle Gibson out there, and I can think of no reason why it is necessary to use photographs of her four-year-old son.  He is just a child and he has nothing to do with any of this.

A Cancer Patient Who Followed Belle Speaks Out

I got this email from a woman with cancer who followed Belle.  She gave me permission to share it.

Hi Violet,

Thank you so much for your blog. As a cancer survivor, it has meant the world to me to have this perspective brought to light. I started following @healing_belle in 2013, just as her star was rising.

I always kinda knew Jess Ainscough was a quack (though she did make me feel extremely guilty & self conscious that my healing journey wasn't as 'beautiful' as hers seemed to be) however I fell for Belle Gibson's story hard.

She didn't seem to be too 'out there', didn't talk about coffee enemas or too hippy shit beyond crystals (I don't believe they have powers, but hey, they're pretty so I don't mind the pictures in my feed).

Her recipes were clever & delicious, she straight up made me eat more vegetables than I was and juice way more often and her story gave me a great push forward to healing in my own way (going through conventional treatment) supported by a kick ass diet.

However, I most resonated with her because of her posts on cancer. I was going through something I didn't know how to talk about, what language to use, I didn't even tell anyone I worked with I had cancer - I just took a leave.

And here was this girl, so much braver than I, telling the world her story & inspiring people like me across the world. I even remember scrolling through her feed in my hospital bed the day after my surgery, looking for inspiration & hope from someone who'd been there and knew how much it sucked.

I wished I could be as strong as her, to heal myself with food and a natural approach but I was scared, everything moved so quickly and I had a fundamental faith in science & medicine that propelled me to jump into treatment within 24 hrs of diagnosis. Nonetheless, it was a tremendously tumultuous year where I doubted myself and my choices, especially compared to the sexy, modern & all natural cancer-fighting style of Jess Ainscough and Belle Gibson. It was rare to see cancer icons that were my own age and were full of life despite their diagnoses (it seemed).

So you can imagine how sad I was when the news started to unravel. I had had my own doubts for a while but was still holding out for an updated statement from her camp, but then I followed this 'rabbit trail' and just can't believe her anymore about anything.

So regardless of the stuff to come, I've 100% given up on this turning out as some kind of misunderstanding.

That's something big for me: I downloaded her app at first chance, I told my mom/friends/shopkeeper to get it too, I purchased all her Holiday Pack upgrades, posted solidarity instagrams dedicated to her when her health took a turn, made her recipes & actively participated in #thewholepantry community. I even paid double to have her book shipped overseas from Australia because I couldn't wait for the wider release.

Apple Dishonors Steve Jobs by Backing Belle Gibson

When this all broke out a couple days ago, many (myself included) were left wondering how a company as big and successful as Apple could possible not vet their business partners.  Surely if anyone had the resources to really look into Belle's story, it would be Apple.  But then we heard an unexpected announcement from Apple.  It turns out that they did not care about what Belle did; so long as the app worked, that was all that mattered to them.  I guess that explains why they do not vet people.  To Apple, the ethics and morals of the people they work with is irrelevant.  The actual content of the app is not all that special.  So long as it works the way an app is supposed to work, they see no reason to change anything.  Got it.

Since Apple is obviously self-centered in their thinking, I thought it only fair to point something out to them: Belle was taking the piss out of Steve Jobs and his death from cancer.  Just yesterday, I read that the current Apple CEO, Tim Cook, once offered to give Steve Jobs a part of his liver.  Wow, that Tim Cook does not sound like just a work colleague, he sounds like he was a really good friend to Steve Jobs.  I assume that Tim Cook was a first-hand witness to all the misery and suffering that Steve Jobs went through in his final days.  I assume he saw a vibrant, energetic genius in a weakened and despondent state.  I assume he also heard Steve Jobs say he regretted using fantasy-based medicine.  But most of all I assume that Tim Cook will always mourn the loss of a very dear friend to him.  Tim Cook should be that good friend once more and honor Steve Jobs' memory.  He should do the right thing and sever business ties with a woman who thought everything Steve Jobs went through in his final years was a just a big joke.

What Will Become of Belle's Apple Watch Deal?

Last night, while I was catching up on some of my TV shows, I caught an advertisement for the new Apple Watch.  Contrary to my normal habit of quickly fast-forwarding through commercials, I slowed this one way down and paused it at a spot where the face of the watch displays the apps which have been pre-selected to come on every new watch.  In the bottom left of the watch I could make out a little green square with two little white leaves on it.  It was The Whole Pantry app.  Now I do not know if it is because this was a particularly emotional episode of Better Call Saul (even Mike Ehrmantraut lost his cool), but at that moment I felt a small pang of pity for Belle Gibson.  Her star was rising and this was supposed to be the beginning of a great career.  Of the thousands of health and wellness apps, hers was going to be the flagship Apple Watch app.  Whether people wanted it or not, everyone who bought an Apple Watch would have her app (until they deleted it).

I can see how Apple was so taken with Belle Gibson and her app.  Here she was, a young, pretty woman overcoming cancer, and glowing with radiance the whole time.  How could they resist?  They could have a "face" associated with their new product that was not one of the middle-aged guys who run the company.  It would be a way to honor the late Steve Jobs, who was also into natural health and wellness.  If you know the story of how Steven Jobs died, then this might be a bit macabre, but Apple went with it nonetheless.  Belle Gibson was going to prove to the world the thing that Steve Jobs couldn't: good diet and natural wellness could cure cancer.  If they only knew.

Before the charity scandal broke, Apple said they had a "big announcement" about Belle and The Whole Pantry coming on Monday, an announcement that never came.  What sort of "big plans" did they have in store for Belle?  I am guessing that whatever it was, it was set to make her much richer than she ever dreamed of.  No doubt Apple believed they would be able to handle the charity money scandal.  After all, a large investment of time and money had gone into this.  Surely it was cheaper to salvage The Whole Pantry's reputation than to start all over, and, though the Luddite in me has little idea as to how these things actually work, I assumed that the watches were "ready to go" and that removal of the app would be impossible to accomplish so shortly before they went out on the market.  The scandal broke over the weekend, so it would just be a matter of coming back to work on Monday, rolling up their sleeves, and dealing with it.  But then came the whole "Belle does not actually have cancer" scandal, and this is something that Apple cannot possibly dig themselves out of.  They will have to distance themselves from Belle, and quickly.  The only thing I can think of is that they will develop or license another wellness app and offer it as a free download.  Will they keep Belle's app as simply another option?  Will they refuse to sell it on their store?  Did Belle Gibson breach her contract with Apple in some way?  At the end of the day, my guess is that they will swiftly and quietly sever their relationship with Belle and The Whole Pantry.  They will go their separate ways and never speak of it again.  Well, at least Apple will never speak of it again.  When it comes to Belle, I am dying to hear what she has to say.  

The Whole Fraud

Wow.  What a strange couple of days it has been.  When I wrote the post on Belle Gibson's dubious cancer claims on Friday, I had no idea that The Whole Pantry would be exposed for allegedly claiming to raise money for various charities but keeping the money in the cash flow of their own business instead.  It was this story which led a lot of people to question Belle's cancer claims, including several journalists.  For once, a journalist at The Australian actually decided to approach Belle's story with a bit incredulity, and it paid off.  Here is what we have been able to learn about Belle Gibson so far:

• She is lying about her age, and is three years younger than she claims to be.  
• In May of 2009, she claimed she nearly died on an operating table after undergoing heart surgery.
• She has conceded that she was "misdiagnosed" with regards to her July 2014 cancer claim.
• She cannot name her own doctor.
• She claimed she had a forty minute long seizure at her son's party, a very serious medical event for someone with a brain tumor.
• She went a trip two days later. 
• She still claims that she did once have a malignant brain tumor and that she extended her life using alternative therapies.
• She claims that she is now seeking treatment from a conventional team.
• It is claimed on The Whole Pantry facebook page that she is currently "not coping" (actually that I believe, but not for the reasons they imply).

The following are unverified and come from comments on this blog and other places:

• She has been claiming to have brain cancer since she was teenager.
• She dropped out of school.
• She was estranged from her mother and brother starting when she was an adolescent, and lived primarily with her grandfather (seemingly in conflict with her claim that she lived with a friend starting when she was twelve, and that she "let go" of the relationship with her mother when she was "twenty" and newly diagnosed with brain cancer).
• Her grandfather had brain cancer, and she had a falling out with him.
• Her partner once dropped her off for a check up appointment at the hospital, circled back around and saw her sitting in the parking lot.
• An old schoolmate says she is a compulsive liar.
• At her old work, she claimed to have cancer and would be late because she was "undergoing tests" but that she never appeared to be undergoing any sort of cancer treatment.  

This all brings me to her current situation at The Whole Pantry.  So many of Belle's supporters seem baffled as to how a "sweet, positive, helpful" person could possibly do such a thing.  They are confident that The Whole Pantry staff is telling the truth that is was just a mix-up that did not get sorted out in a timely manner.  But here is the thing that those people need to understand about Belle: the liar holds the world in contempt.  People who base their lives around lying, feel nothing but contempt for the rest of us.  How could they not?  We believe their lies!  We're stupid!  We're suckers!  Compulsive and pathological liars have no respect for other people; they could not lie with abandon if they did.  Thus, it should never come as a surprise when they do something so low as to "withhold" money from a charity.  This would be part and parcel of the liar's world.

Let me know if there is anything I missed and I will update accordingly.

*One more thing: Belle Gibson has never claimed that she cured herself of cancer.  She has merely implied that she is alive today after "getting only four months to live" due to her whole foods lifestyle.  It is obviously still an extraordinary claim that demands a truthful explanation.

Jessica Ainscough's Stolen Choice

In the nearly two weeks since Jessica Ainscough died, I have seen numerous comments and posts from her supporters who claim that Jessica Ainscough made the choice to live out her remaining years with both arms intact instead of amputating her arm.  There is a myth floating around out there that Jessica Ainscough believed she was faced with two equally horrifying options: she could either amputate her arm and have a chance at a normal or greatly extended lifespan, or she could refuse the surgery and live out her remaining years with both arms intact.  Supporters of Ainscough claim that the amputation option was not really all that great of a choice anyway, because it offered no guarantee and the cancer could still come back and get her in the end.  They will argue that Jessica made the better choice by keeping her arm, in that she was able to live as a "whole" person before she died of cancer.  But the truth is that Jessica Ainscough never had the opportunity to make this choice because her choice was stolen from her by the purveyors of fantasy-based medicine.

The flingers of woo do this all the time; they steal a cancer sufferer's choice from them, and that is exactly what happened to Jessica.  There was a moment a few years ago or so when Jessica heard a bit of terrible news from her oncologist: her cancer had returned and her only real treatment option was to get an amputation.  The amputation would not be able to guarantee a successful outcome; it could only offer a reasonable chance of extending her life.  Her only other option was to die from untreated epithelioid sarcoma. But then, something truly horrible happened to Jessica.  She did her own "research".  This is generally when the thievery starts in earnest.  You see, Jessica Ainscough was made to believe that she had a third option.  This "option" was by far the best option she had.  With this "option" Jessica could keep her arm, she would not have to undergo chemo or radiation, she could heal her cancer naturally and painlessly, and best of all, she would survive cancer and go on to live a full life.  Who would not choose this over death or amputation?

But it was all a lie.

This third option was a complete and total fantasy with no basis in reality.  Thus, it was of course no option at all.  However, the Gerson Therapy promoters lied to Jessica and convinced her that it was.  At that moment, Jessica Ainscough had lost her right to make a choice regarding her cancer.  To anyone out there who says that Jessica chose to die with both arms intact, you are completely wrong.  Jessica Ainscough "chose" to live a cancer-free, full life with both arms intact.  Naturally and inevitably that choice resulted in Jessica dying with both arms intact and within the expected amount of time.  But make no mistake, Jessica never made that choice.  That choice was made for her by the people who sold her fantasy-based medicine.  They usurped what should have been her choice and in the process guaranteed her death from cancer before she was thirty.  So for those of you who insist that it was "Jessica's choice" to do what she did, understand that a person enslaved by another's lie no longer has the liberty to make their own decisions.

Reality-based medicine left Jessica free to make a choice; fantasy-based medicine stole what should have been her choice and left her to die.

Does Belle Gibson Actually Have Cancer?

Does Belle Gibson actually have cancer?  Woah.  Okay.  Boy did I feel like a jerk as I typed that out.  It is certainly not my style to be skeptical of a person who claims she has cancer.  Indeed, when I first read Belle's story, I did not doubt it at all.  I completely believed that this was a woman who had terminal brain cancer that was treated well enough with conventional medicine that she was able to live many years beyond her initial diagnosis.   One thing I did not believe was that Belle had managed to keep her cancer in check with her diet, which is something she heavily implies. Now, I always think that we should look for the truth in claims of healing cancer naturally through diet or fantasy-based medicine, which is why I decided to take a much closer look at Belle's story.

As far as cancer "naturally healing" stories go, hers is surprisingly anemic.  The best I can glean from various articles written about her is that Belle was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, given four months to live, used conventional medicine for two months, and then, after passing out on the hospital's lawn had an epiphany where she decided to reject conventional medicine and instead heal herself naturally with diet and fantasy-based medicine.  She is still alive six years later, though she claims that her brain tumor is still there, which causes her to have seizures.  I was curious about what actually happened here.  First of all, all Belle says is that she has "brain cancer" which seems a little odd to me.  Which kind of brain cancer is it?  Most people with a cancer story are very clear on this point.  Secondly, did Belle actually go through an entire cycle of treatment, or did she quit part way through?  Does she still use conventional medicine?  I ask because it is critical that we ask these questions of someone who heavily and publicly implies that she has used fantasy-based medicine and food to beat the odds and survive another six years past her initial life-expectancy.  But is any of this even true?

Last July, Belle posted on her facebook page that she has cancer of her spleen, blood, liver and uterus.  Now this is where I and many other people became skeptical, and that is because it is highly unusual for brain cancer to spread to other areas of the body.  The only thing I could think was that Belle's initial diagnosis was wrong, and that her original brain cancer was actually secondary cancer that stemmed from some other part of her body.  I still believed, however, that Belle had cancer all over her body and now sadly had very little time left.  But I am now seriously questioning whether I was correct in giving Belle the benefit of the doubt.  Eight months have gone by since that announcement. Her facebook page is full of photos from her trips around the world, the latest of which was a cruise in the South Pacific a little less than a month ago.  Now, I certainly know people (my own grandmother among them) who have taken trips with their family when still very sick with cancer.  It is a way to form one final "good" memory before things get really bad.  If this is what Belle is doing, then more power to her.  However, everything Belle posts does not suggest a person who is sick with cancer.  Is she getting treatment?  Is she just using food and fantasy-based medicine?  She claims that it was the misery of conventional treatment that inspired her to go natural, and her entire business has been based on this.  There are too many contradictions and gaps in Belle's story and that is why I feel is it is fair to demand the truth from her.  Too many people with cancer have relied on Belle's story of healing in making their own medical decisions.

Edited to add:  Hey folks, when you post a comment will you please use some sort of name or identifier.  You can still be anonymous of course; I simply want it to be easier to determine who posted what so that the dialog here does not get too confusing.  Thanks!