[Conscious Pirate]

(04-24-2015 12:00 AM)kbell Wrote:  

Bosch what is rule #1-4?

Yeah, let's have it AB. I'm all ears.

[AnonymousBosch]

^ Writing it up properly. You guys have been good to me, so I need to nut up, focus and pop my ROK cherry. Give me a couple of days.

[Thoroughbred]

Someone talking some sense.

http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/...7317296471

[General Stalin]

(04-22-2015 06:00 PM)Suits Wrote:  

A fun game: how many slut tells can you see?

Going off of her pictures from Google image search:

--Multiple tattoos (poor quality, spacing, and placement = bonus points)
--Dresses trashy in public
--Poorly dyed blonde hair (unkept with roots showing = bonus points)
--Slut face
--Psycho/chronic liar with self-proclaimed childhood issues.
--Party chick/boozer
--Single mom (at 20)
--Nose Piercing
--Masculine jawline

[kaotic]

I'm becoming a transcancer patient, please donate money to my gofundme, so I can battle this for a year eating fast food to cure it.

[Conscious Pirate]

Seems like this bitch just won't lie down. It's rumoured she has been paid $45,000 for this upcoming interview. The outrage has been, well, heartwarming.

Belle Gibson On 60 Minutes: Don't Expect An Apology

Quote:

Belle Gibson does nothing without weighing up the margins.

So if she is dirt broke, as she claims to be, money talks. And 60 Minutes has done nothing to hose down speculation it paid her a five-figure sum to take a grilling from Tara Brown on Sunday night.



But don't be fooled into thinking this means Gibson is about to tell-all. If recent history is anything to go by she's more likely to continue spinning her web, evading questions and blaming others. A heartfelt apology is out of the question.

In Channel Nine's promo for the interview, the cancer faker says she is "not trying to get away with anything" and that she has been "really transparent". Those who know her have little doubt both statements are insincere.

The Whole Pantry founder's declaration that "I have lost everything" is also a far cry from the truth to the cancer sufferers and fans she callously deceived for her own personal gain. Gibson's reputation may be in tatters, but she has not lost anything she was entitled to in the first place.

She is 23 years old, she is healthy, and astonishingly, she has not been held to account.

Victoria Police is not investigating despite her admission that she kept money solicited from her loyal following of 200,000 fans in the name of charity. And Consumer Affairs Victoria's slow-moving investigation into her fundraising appeals and deceptive conduct is ongoing.

It is unknown whether Penguin Publishing and tech giant Apple - both who saw dollar signs in Gibson's against-all-odds survival story but didn't bother to check whether it was actually true - will take legal action against her.

For the mastermind of a global con that gave false hope to the terminally ill and misappropriated thousands of fundraising dollars, that's not such a bad result.

Gibson launched her business off her fake story of cancer survival after dumping conventional medicine and healing herself with a healthy diet. The disgraced app developer and author said she gave nutrition advice to countless others to help them treat serious illness without conventional medicine.

Cancer Council Victoria chief executive Todd Harper condemned people who peddle false information about cancer treatment, saying it should be illegal to make claims about life-prolonging cancer treatment without evidence.

Cancer survivors who followed Gibson's healthy eating regime - some who credit her for being the catalyst for stopping or never starting conventional treatment - say betrayal doesn't come close to describing how they feel.

Revelations in March that Gibson failed to pass on money promised to five charities instigated her downfall. But in the weeks before the story about the fundraising scam was printed, Fairfax Media was told by people in her inner circle that they did not believe she was ever sick.

Not one of those people were prepared to speak out publicly because they feared Gibson's reach. They said they were afraid of lies being spread about them and their businesses. "She will destroy me," one said at the time. "You don't know what she's capable of."

Others who spoke to media outlets as it all began to unravel claim they received threatening text messages from the Gibson camp.

In the weeks that followed dozens of people who knew her came forward: friends, business associates, former boyfriends, schoolmates and colleagues. They all described a person who despite her young age is skilled in the art of manipulation.

Gibson's drama teacher during her high school years in Brisbane's eastern suburbs recalled a talented actress who was "quite good, actually." Melbourne friends questioned the mental health of a person who faked a violent seizure in front of her son at his fourth birthday party.

As her empire crumbled and as Gibson scrubbed her social media lies from the internet, she was offered what would have seemed like a life raft in the middle of a storm. Bespoke Approach, a well-connected political lobbyist and PR firm, swooped in to provide pro bono services, arranging an interview in its offices with the Australian's Women's Weekly.

Bespoke Approach is an influential firm. It was founded by conservative political lobbyist Ian Smith. Rupert Murdoch's former spokesman, Andrew Butcher, is a partner and former foreign minister Alexander Downer also has a stake in the business.



The firm had hoped for a puff piece about Gibson's life, but the story in which she admitted lying about having terminal cancer turned out to be the final nail in her coffin. Bespoke Approach, whose client list includes some preeminent cancer facilities in Australia, confirmed on Thursday it no longer acted for Gibson.

Questions to Gibson about the reported payment for the 60 Minutes interview were not answered. A spokeswoman for the Nine Network said: "We do not comment in regards to payment of interviewees on any of our programs."

Viewers on Sunday night should expect a calculating Gibson: a woman likely to spout a series of meandering excuses, possibly about her childhood, no doubt about the natural health practitioners she claims led her astray.

Hopefully she is reminded of the since-deleted social media posts and the section of her book that refers to her "conventional" cancer diagnosis, and the radiotherapy and chemotherapy treatment she claimed to have received in hospital.

Given 60 Minutes has been circling since the story broke in March there may also be some new information about the depths of her betrayal.

If Gibson truly is seeking redemption, any money paid for this interview would be donated to cancer research and the charities she stole from.

To watch or not to watch...

[Conscious Pirate]

Conwoman Belle Gibson faces $1m fines over cancer scam fundraising fraud

Quote:

Cancer conwoman Belle Gibson faces more than $1 million in penalties for profiting off false cancer claims and defrauding charities.

The 24-year-old orchestrated a global health scam that gave false hope to seriously ill people and fooled multinational companies including Apple and Penguin.

In the most significant action taken against the disgraced "wellness" blogger, Victoria's consumer watchdog on Friday launched legal proceedings in the Federal Court that pave the way for a prosecution against Ms Gibson's company.

Ha Ha, got you!

Quote:

The action is in response to Ms Gibson's false claims of beating terminal brain cancer by eschewing conventional medicine, and the unlawful fundraising appeals run by The Whole Pantry founder in 2013 and 2014.
Advertisement

In separate action, Penguin Publishing will have to pay $30,000 for failing to fact-check Ms Gibson's book, The Whole Pantry, in which she claims to have cured herself with a healthy lifestyle.

The publisher will also be forced to include "prominent warning notice" on all future books that contain claims about natural therapies.

Penguin has been fined for publishing Belle Gibson's lies.

Consumer Affairs Victoria said the legal action followed an in-depth investigation into alleged breaches of Australian Consumer Law. CAV director Simon Cohen has applied for leave to commence proceedings against Inkerman Road Nominees Pty Ltd in the Federal Court of Australia.
Leave is required because the company, formerly known as Belle Gibson Pty Ltd, is in liquidation. Documents filed by the liquidator of her company reveal Gibson ows almost $140,000, including an $83,500 tax bill to the federal government.

If leave is granted, Ms Gibson will be hauled before the court and faces the prospect of serious penalties.

A range of non-pecuniary penalties, including declarations and injunctions, are available to the court in civil proceedings, as well as pecuniary penalties of up to $1.1 million for companies and $220,000 for individuals.

Consumer Affairs has penalised Penguin Publishing over its failure to fact-check Ms Gibson's book, The Whole Pantry, in which she claims to have cured herself of terminal brain cancer by rejecting conventional medicine and choosing a healthy lifestyle.

The publisher will have to fork out $30,000 to the Victorian Consumer Law Fund as part of an enforceable undertaking in which it admitted contraventions under consumer laws.

Mr Cohen said Penguin had agreed to an enforceable undertaking acknowledging it had not required Ms Gibson to substantiate her misleading and deceptive claims prior to the book's publication.

Penguin admitted most of Ms Gibson's story set out in the book's extensive introduction had "no basis in fact".

The truth is always so hard to bear.

Quote:

CAV said it was concerned that the book's readership was marketed to people with cancer, those who had a family history of cancer and those with friends and relatives suffering from cancer.

"The director considers that these people were unusually susceptible, in that their illnesses, fears, family history or close relationship to cancer sufferers, pre-disposed them to being influenced by the statements [about the cancer diagnosis and treatment]," the undertaking said.

The publisher will also be forced to strengthen compliance, education and training programs to ensure all claims about medical conditions are substantiated.

"This is an important step in ensuring that consumers receive only verified information and are not deceived, particularly where serious matters of health and medical treatment are concerned," Mr Cohen said on Friday morning.

Consumer Affairs launched its investigation into Ms Gibson's questionable fundraising activities after Fairfax Media exclusively revealed she had stolen thousands of dollars raised for charity through multiple fundraising appeals.

In a series of news articles last year, Ms Gibson was exposed for failing to hand over the donations and lying about giving $300,000 away to charity.

The revelations cast serious doubt over her claims of beating terminal brain cancer - the story she used to build an empire that included a highly acclaimed recipe book and top-rating smartphone app. It also earned her a fan base of more than 200,000 people.

Within weeks, the disgraced author's books were being pulped and its release in the UK and US was cancelled. Apple, which was heavily invested in The Whole Pantry brand and had flown Ms Gibson overseas to work in secret on its new smartwatch, dumped its star app developer.

Eventually, Ms Gibson admitted lying about her cancer diagnosis all along. "No … None of it's true," she told the Australian Women's Weekly in April last year.

Belle pondering what is real in this life?

Quote:

Ms Gibson had publicly claimed to have given away 25 per cent of her company's profits and in her book wrote that "a large part of everything" earned is donated to various causes.

But after questions from Fairfax Media last year she admitted these contributions were never made. She blamed "cash flow" problems and lower-than-forecast sales of her award-winning app, which was downloaded 300,000 times.

She was unable to provide a list of organisations that received money.
Penguin admitted it never fact-checked Ms Gibson's claims of cancer survival and philanthropy before printing her story in 2014.

The company previously said it published the book in "good faith" and that Ms Gibson's story "was not something we felt we needed to verify given that the book's content focuses on the recipes".

This is despite the fact the book was heavily marketed off Ms Gibson's bogus story of survival and included a 3000-word preface detailing her cancer diagnosis, medical treatment and fundraising activities.

Ms Gibson, now 24, has been slammed by health professionals, cancer sufferers and furious former fans for profiting from false hope and discouraging terminally ill people from using conventional medical treatment.

But she remains unrepentant and has never apologised for her actions despite claiming to have helped "countless people", including cancer patients, dump conventional medicine to treat their illnesses.

In an interview with 60 Minutes last year, for which she is believed to have been paid $45,000, Ms Gibson insisted she wasn't "trying to get away with anything".

[Paracelsus]

(05-05-2016 10:03 PM)Conscious Pirate Wrote:  

Consumer Affairs has penalised Penguin Publishing over its failure to fact-check Ms Gibson's book, The Whole Pantry, in which she claims to have cured herself of terminal brain cancer by rejecting conventional medicine and choosing a healthy lifestyle.

The publisher will have to fork out $30,000 to the Victorian Consumer Law Fund as part of an enforceable undertaking in which it admitted contraventions under consumer laws.

Good. Really good. My only complaint is that the fine is far too low: I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that Penguin made a shitload more than thirty grand out of sales on this book.

300,000 people downloaded the app that accompanied the book, at $3.79 each: that's over a million bucks just from that alone, assuming Penguin had any share in that. The book itself was selling for $32.11 a copy before being pulled from sale. Penguin would have jealously guarded its sales numbers for the book, which is why even Wikipedia can't get a better estimate than "over a million dollars estimated for sales of apps and books combined" -- but mathematically Penguin made enough to pay that fine if the book sold more than 934 copies. Or only 1,900-ish if they had a profit margin of 50% or so, which I'm betting they certainly did.

As I've said before: Big Publishing is talking shit whenever they suggest that there's a merit-based selection process to the books they publish. Fiction is no different to nonfiction, even where the nonfiction contributions contain the possibilities of killing someone. There is no such fucking thing as fact checking. Big Publishers can't even afford enough editors to read their submissions in half a year, why would these dickheads employ fact checkers?

Australian publishers have been caught out publishing any old shit that some retard writes repeatedly; Helen Demidenko and Norma Khouri are just two of the most recent ones (all in the nonfiction aisle, and all women. While -- as with James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces" in the US -- men sometimes market fiction as nonfiction, women seem to do it more often.)

[Thoroughbred]

Good to read that something is happening.

[pharao]

If she's not sentenced to at least 10 years and forced to return all the money,
there will be millions of fraudsters and scammers following her recipe for
efortless millions of dollars:

http://www.smh.com.au/national/analysis-...ong89.html

Money for the family of a terminally ill boy. Birthing kits for women in the Third World. School building in Sierra Leone. Funding for asylum seekers.

These are the pull-on-the-heartstrings causes Belle Gibson exploited. She researched them. She ran online campaigns in their names. She hosted an exclusive fundraiser in Melbourne. And then she kept every cent.

She hijacked the names of local and overseas charities and exploited people's generosity. She convinced the sick to reject conventional medicine to treat cancer, infertility, depression and other illnesses.

Belle Gibson's actions were predatory, her behaviour deplorable.

[Conscious Pirate]

Verdict: The Cunt is Guilty!

Quote:

Justice Debbie Mortimer handed down her judgment on Wednesday morning in Melbourne, saying Ms Gibson was guilty of “most, but not all” charges against the 25-year-old who faked brain cancer.

“I have upheld most, but not all of the allegations,” Justice Mortimer told the court room.

Quote:

Justice Mortimer said Ms Gibson consulted GP Dr Phillip Soffer in November 2014, and claimed it was then that she learnt she didn’t have cancer, but she failed to inform Apple, Google or Penguin of that fact.

“Ms Gibson explained this by saying that first, she would not update Apple on health or personal matters, and second, that she was in shock and denial at the time that she received the news that she was cleared of cancer diagnoses.”

Quote:

Justice Mortimer will sentence the blogger, who was not in court, to hear her conviction at a later date.

“I am satisfied Ms Gibson and her company made a representation as to existing fact that was misleading or deceptive in any event,” Justice Mortimer said.

But the judge said there wasn’t enough evidence to prove that Ms Gibson never believed she had cancer, and that at the time she may have been under “some kind of delusion” when blogging about her fake cancer.

“It seems to me that, at least in some respects, it might be open to find that Ms Gibson suffered from a series of delusions about her health condition,” Justice Mortimer said.

Couldn't be arsed to show up for the verdict even. Mind you, there has been a pattern of no shows over the course of the trial.



She's still lying...

Quote:

In the days leading up to the final judgment, Ms Gibson credited a new fad diet on Facebook with healing mouth cavities and shrinking her tonsils by 30 per cent.

On the closed Facebook page for Master Fast Diet, Ms Gibson gushed of how the diet and health program had changed her life.

“What a blessed week!” Ms Gibson, who went by the pseudonym Harry Gibson, wrote on the page.

“I don’t know if it was the short month of February or if I lost count and confused myself but i thought today was my two week mark of full MFS.

“Turns out it is actually day 10, still great, but damn happy 2 week celebration dance in bed this morning for no reason ”

Among several questionable claims, including dropping weight and changing her eye colour, Gibson told members of the group that since starting the natural eating plan she had also passed a “huge rope worm” and she would “never get a filling again”.

Harry, eh? It must be the male privilege.

More here.

[debeguiled]

“Ms Gibson explained this by saying that first, she would not update Apple on health or personal matters, and second, that she was in shock and denial at the time that she received the news that she was cleared of cancer diagnoses.”

You are supposed to be in shock and denial when you are diagnosed with cancer, not when you are cleared of it. She may not have cancer, but she clearly can be diagnosed with being born without a brain.

[Jetset]

(04-22-2015 03:48 PM)Grange Wrote:  

Is she saying her mother made her do the grocery shopping after the first day of elementary school?

...and that this is why she lied about having brain cancer.

Good to know who the real victim is, here.

[Conscious Pirate]

She lies about her childhood. Her mother calls out her bullshit.

Quote:

Gibson told The Weekly she had a “troubled” childhood, which may have led her to lie about her condition.

The young mother — she has a son called Olivier — said that as a five-year-old girl she had been forced to care for her mother, who has multiple sclerosis, and run the household, while also looking after her autistic brother.

But Gibson’s mother Natalie Dal-Bello said none of that is true.

“What a lot of rubbish,” Mrs Dal-Bello told The Weekly, saying the only truth to the story was her MS.

“Her brother is not autistic and she’s barely done a minute’s housework in her life,” she said.

“I’ve practically worked myself into an early grave to give that girl everything she wanted in life.”

Mrs Dal-Bello said she had not been in touch with her estranged daughter for years and was unaware of her success as a wellness blogger.

“I can’t tell you how embarrassed we are about what she has done,” she said.

“She just plucked bits and pieces of other people’s medical problems and assumed them as her own. She had a heart problem growing up, but that was it.

“She doesn’t seem to be sorry. There doesn’t appear to be any remorse. I’ve never seen her cry in her life.”

Certified sociopath.

[Aurini]

(04-22-2015 10:43 PM)Paracelsus Wrote:  

The hamster wheels are still spinning hard:

*snip* Quotes from a feminist trying to rationalize lying to herself and others.

That's what the confessional is for, you tramp. GET THEE TO A NUNNERY.

(04-23-2015 11:21 AM)Days of Broken Arrows Wrote:  

Why is it always "fruits and vegetables?" Or "whole foods?" How cliched is that?

Man, I gotta stop eating all of these half-foods...

[Conscious Pirate]

Belle Gibson handed huge fine by Federal Court after false claims that she had cancer and cured herself

Quote:

BELLE Gibson must pay $410,000 in fines for profiting from false claims she had cancer — but she will not have to make a public apology.

Quote:

More than two years after she was first exposed as a fake, the founder of The Whole Pantry health and wellness empire has finally been penalised in the Federal Court.

But the huge fine is nowhere near the maximum penalty she could have faced — $1.1 million.

Justice Debbie Mortimer also chose not to order Gibson to place an apology in the form of an A4-size ad in the Herald Sun and The Australian — a move sought by Consumer Affairs Victoria in its legal action against her.

Justice Mortimer said the money should be donated to “some or all” of the organisations and people Gibson had promised donations.

[...]

Gibson was fined for five breaches of Consumer Law: $90,000 each for claims she donated money to charities from app sales; and claims a large percentage of company earnings were also being given to charities.

For her involvement in duping the family of nine-year-old Joshua Schwarz, who lost his battle with a terminal brain tumour earlier this year, she was slapped with a $150,000 fine.

“Ms Gibson expressly compares the terrible circumstances of young Joshua to her own, asserting she had the same kind of tumour as he did; a statement which was completely false,” Justice Mortimer said.

“She did this to encourage members of the public to buy her product (The Whole Pantry app), to generate income for herself and her company.

“She consciously chose to use the terminal illness or a little boy in this way.”

A further $30,000 penalty was given for a Mother’s Day promotion Gibson falsely claimed donations would be made to The 2h Project and the Bumi Sehat Foundation.

And she was hit with a $50,000 fine for further false claims on charitable donations when launching her app.

Gibson has until 4pm on October 5 to apply to the court to go on a payment plan.

Justice Mortimer had banned Gibson from claiming she had been diagnosed with brain cancer before 24 May last year.

The young Melbourne mother is also forbidden from saying she was given just four months to live and healed herself naturally after rejecting conventional cancer treatments.

[...]

The judge said there was no rational reason for Gibson to believe she had cancer.

She also found the alternative health advocate failed to pass on donations she had collected for charities through the sale of her app.

[...]

She has snubbed the civil proceedings — never once showing her face in court — and has not even been represented by a lawyer.

She once again failed to show today, but Justice Mortimer said the court received an email from her at 10.54pm on September 25, after it notified her of today’s hearing.

The email read: “Thank you for the update. Confirming receipt of your email. Much appreciated. Belle.”

Lying has aged her & deepened her frown. She got fat too.

[UnW]

lol serial liar, sociopath and probably BPD, I can imagine her being "mentally ill" sooner rather than later if not already.

[Conscious Pirate]

She is a very committed sociopath.

Quote:

IN THIS extract from a new book about disgraced wellness blogger Belle Gibson, it shows the moment and friends and followers started to question her cancer claims.

***

Oli’s fourth birthday party was late on a Sunday afternoon, and sunlight streamed in through the large windows of Belle Gibson’s Elwood home.
Gibson had organised gold foil balloons for her son in the shape of the letters ‘O’ and ‘B’. Lego and other toys were strewn across the floor, and presents and handwritten cards piled up in the dining room next to party bags.

Outside, on the patio table, were healthy snacks and a cask of filtered Pureau Water.

There were about a dozen kids and some of Gibson’s closest friends at the party. Nathan, Oli’s dad, was there, as was Clive, her partner, who wore dark sunglasses inside.

Also present were her photographer, her food stylist, and a young woman named Kate Bradley, an author, who would go on to become Gibson’s assistant.

Jarrod Briffa and Bec Villanti, who ran a city cafe, and Georgie Castle, the founder of vegan chocolate company Citizen Cacao, had come along, too.

A five-year-old boy with brain cancer, Joshua Schwarz, whom Gibson had met through social media, was there with his father.


The party started out as a nice day, guests said, and Oli was having fun playing and running around with his friends from kinder.

Nathan helped light the candles on his son’s green Lego block cake before everyone sang Happy Birthday. Just before the speeches, in the dining room, Gibson had Oli on her hip, and looked at her son adoringly.

Oli is a lot like his mum; he has the same fair skin and sun-streaked hair. He wore a long-sleeved T-shirt with a dinosaur print; she wore a $1000 dress under a pink turtleneck sweater. Later, Oli knelt on a chair at the head of the table and excitedly unwrapped his pile of presents as his friends looked on.

Just after 3.15pm, as people prepared to leave, Gibson’s eyes rolled back into her head. Her legs buckled and she hit the wall, sliding down it, slowly, to soften the impact.

As she lay on the ground, Gibson started shaking.

At first, no one knew what was happening. Then she started convulsing.

“It was scary,” said one of her friends. “It was so violent, the adults were crying.”

One guest pulled out her mobile phone, primed to call an ambulance. Then the seizure stopped. Someone said Gibson didn’t like getting hospitals involved.

“It was, ‘No, no, no, this has happened before, everything’s going to be all right, she’ll get through it’,’ said another friend.

“There’s no need for an ambulance. That was the consensus.”

Gibson came to, and explained to her guests, wearily, that this happened all the time. They shouldn’t worry. But then the fitting started again. It went on for 30 or 40 minutes: Gibson seizing on the floor, and then coming out of it.

When she stopped jerking, she seemed almost unconscious.

“People were stroking her forehead, reassuring her, ‘It’s OK now, it’s over’. And then it would start again.”

Oli and some of the other children had seen the beginnings of the seizure, and the adults crouching around Gibson, cradling her head.

Then someone took the little ones away. “Oli was ... I saw his face,” said a friend. “He was petrified. The kids had to almost walk over the top of her to go upstairs. Oli had to look at his mum looking like she was almost dead on the floor.”

One of the guests, someone who was very close to Gibson at the time, said what they had witnessed left them absolutely devastated: “It looked real. I believed it was real. And I was mortified. I cried driving all the way home ... I actually don’t know how I got home.”

Later, at home, Gibson updated her status on her personal Facebook account, telling everyone of the dramatic end to Oli’s party.

And, as always, she used the opportunity to encourage others to share.

“I collapsed in pain and had multiple seizures over the following 40 minutes,” she said.

“This is the worst I’ve ever been with them and am taking this overwhelming situation as encouragement to breathe and sort some things out. For anyone who’s been in a situation like this before, I would love to hear your management strategies, while I send you love and strength in return. I have seizures often as a result of my brain cancer, but nothing ever this long or intense. Extremely grateful for my friends and family who were there to support me through this and my team who are looking for new answers.

***

On July 29, 2014, a little over two weeks later, Belle Gibson uploaded her most prolific post to Instagram. It featured a photo of a bouquet of bright pink balloons, in the shape of a love heart, captioned with the heartbreaking announcement that her cancer had spread to multiple organs:

“With frustration and ache in my heart // my beautiful, gamechanging community, it hurts me to find space tonight to let you all know with love and strength that I’ve been diagnosed with a third and forth [sic] cancer.

“One is secondary and the other is primary. I have cancer in my blood, spleen, brain, uterus, and liver. I am hurting. As some of you remember, there was a scare I briefly spoke about here 4 months ago where we found gynaecological cancer that I stood up against with strength I wouldn’t of had if it weren’t for each of you.

“With these, it was only a matter of time before it all fell apart as my body goes through the waves of this process. I wanted to respectfully let you each know, and hand some of the energy over to the greater community, my team and TWP — through this I am still here reading, listening and learning with and to each of you, but need to respectfully and with great honour hand it over to TWP to carry on our legacies and collective message. I sit and work from a space for each of you, still creating and growing our philosophy of living #thewholelife — work towards releasing our first book and ensure that the legacies of our charity and community work which you ALL helped achieve through downloading The Whole Pantry App is all it needs to be, with whatever ends up being my defining story with you. I’m doing okay, but am feeling very unwell and picked up on this before my return from NYC with confirmation just over
a week later.

“I have the most phenomenal team of integrative and holistic specialist and practitioners and know either way, they’ll give me good conversations to leave with. I’m so grateful for them, my strength over the last five years and for being what seems to feel like the most unfortunate, tested life ever. Please turn to this account, the app and book in this time of space for our message of The Whole Life, app and book updates and community support and inspiration to continue on.

“Please don’t carry my pain. I’ve got this. x Belle”

There was an enormous outpouring of grief. Tens of thousands of people read the post. Thousands upon thousands more commented. It was around this time that doubts about Gibson’s cancer story started circulating.

Questions were being asked on the internet. People started posting comments about Gibson’s story: how it seemed to lack important detail; how her lifestyle didn’t seem to reflect the deteriorating health she reported online; how she managed to outlive her doctor’s prognosis for a type of cancer that is so, so aggressive; how she didn’t follow any cancer organisations, and never called for more funding to support brain cancer research.

One blogger began a post about Gibson like this: “Does Belle Gibson actually have cancer? Woah. Okay. Boy did I feel like a jerk as I typed that out.”

But it was a question that some people who were close to Gibson had already begun asking themselves.

This is an edited extract from The woman who fooled the world, Belle Bibson’s cancer con by Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano