December 21, 2025 • 28 mins
Hi, it’s Samantha Selinger-Morris here, the host of The Morning Edition. We’re bringing you the best episodes of 2025 before your Morning Edition team returns mid-January.
This one is about Belle Gibson.
One of the original wellness influencers, Gibson claimed to have healed herself from terminal cancer through healthy eating. The problem was, she never had cancer.
This episode was recorded shortly before the release of the worldwide hit television series Apple Cider Vinegar, which was based on the work of two of our journalists, Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano, in exposing Gibson’s cancer con.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:00):
Hi, it's Samantha Selinger Morris here, and I'm the host
of the Morning Edition. We are bringing you the best
episodes of 2025 before your Morning Edition team returns mid January.
This one is about Belle Gibson, one of the original
wellness influencers. Gibson claimed to have healed herself from terminal
(00:21):
cancer through healthy eating. The problem was she never had cancer.
This episode was recorded shortly before the release of the
worldwide hit series Apple Cider Vinegar, which was based on
the work of two of our journalists, Beau Donnelly and
Nick Toscano, in exposing Gibson's cancer. Con. So, Nick and Beau,
(00:44):
thank you so much for joining us on the Morning Edition.
I really want you to take us back to 2015.
You were both young reporters at The Age in Melbourne.
So how did you first hear about Belle Gibson? Nick
I'll go to you first.
S2 (00:57):
I think a good place to start is in 2015,
a year of incredible success for Belle Gibson. She had
reached enormous fame already off the back of a miracle
story of curing a malignant brain tumor that had spread
to other organs throughout her body. Using healthy eating instead
of conventional medicine.
S3 (01:17):
And its conflicting for a lot of people like, I
don't think I'm going to die tomorrow, but my body
is dying.
S2 (01:23):
She had turned that story into into a successful business empire,
which included developing one of Apple's most popular health and
wellness apps at the time, called The Whole Pantry, and
a best selling cookbook published by Penguin.
S3 (01:39):
I put everything that I knew along my journey with cancer,
nutrition and wellness and put it on the most accessible
device possible, the iPhone.
S2 (01:47):
But Bo and I had absolutely no idea who Belle
Gibson was. We didn't have Instagram at the time. It
was a very it was sort of the dawn of
of of of Instagram. Back then, we weren't much into dieting,
we didn't follow wellness gurus or we weren't really into
wellness fads. So for Bo and I, when we were
a couple of journos in our early 20s, having just
(02:10):
started our careers at the age Belle Gibson had wholly
passed us by. Um, I guess that was until until
a tip came in from someone suggesting that there was
more to look at here. And Belle Gibson may not
be entirely what she was purporting to be.
S3 (02:24):
You know, when you've got a tumor in the middle
of your brain, you're not a very balanced person. Not
very rational thinking either.
S4 (02:33):
Okay. So, Bo, I want.
S1 (02:34):
To turn to you. Can you tell us about where
this tip came from and what did it say? Did
it raise doubt about her cancer claims? Like what prompted
you to start actually looking into her?
S5 (02:45):
So before The age, Nick and I both worked for
the local papers in Melbourne, and my editor was Eileen Berry,
who became a friend. And one day she came to
me and she said, have you heard of Belle Gibson? Uh,
she's this young, successful app developer, and she's faking cancer.
And I know someone, uh, who's in her inner circle
and who wants to expose her. So I thought, right, okay,
(03:08):
that doesn't sound like an allegation or a story that
I could ever stand up because, I mean, how do
you prove a negative? We as journalists don't have access
to people's medical records. Um, but I took the number
of this friend of Belle Gibson's. Her name is Chanel,
and I gave her a ring. And that first call,
I probably spent about an hour on the phone with her.
(03:29):
And she struck me as someone who was very intelligent
and who was just horrified, really, for the role she
had played in supporting Belle Gibson, who she now believed
was was a cancer faker. She outlined to me why
she thought Belle Gibson was was faking cancer, and there
were a lot of things from, um, a seizure that
(03:50):
Belle Gibson faked at her son's fourth birthday party. Um,
there was an intervention that Chanel and other friends staged
where they went to Mel Gibson's house and basically called
her on on her claims and asked her to produce
evidence that she had cancer. Um, so I started that
call feeling very critical, um, almost dismissive of of Chanel's claims.
(04:14):
But I came away from it absolutely fascinated by what
she was saying. And so the first thing I did
was I went to Instagram and I looked Belle Gibson up.
I looked at what she'd been saying, and I very
quickly noticed that everything, including her health claims, were either
really vague or totally inconsistent or just seemingly implausible.
S1 (04:38):
Okay. And then the first story that you both wrote
on her, that was March 2015, but you didn't focus
on the questions about her cancer diagnosis. Instead, you focused
on the money specifically that she had not handed over
donations that she had promised to various charities. So, Nick,
I'm going to go to you. Why did you focus
on that?
S2 (04:56):
Beau and I, um. After a few weeks of looking
into Belle, having pulled everything we. We could find on
her and going through the chronology of the way she'd
explained her health situation, we were very doubtful, as Beau mentioned,
and we then started talking to even more of her friends,
her inner circle, people who were skeptical. We also spoke
(05:20):
to doctors on an off the record basis at that point,
to examine Belle's various cancer claims and her explanation of
how it had spread. These were collated through articles and
interviews she'd she'd done her various social media posts. They
were very doubtful as well. We were hoping to write
an initial article which would have said something like, there
(05:41):
are doubts about Belle Gibson's diagnosis, but none of her
friends who we were speaking to at that point were
prepared to speak on the record. We put the suggestion
and a draft to our lawyers at the age, and
they quite judiciously came back with the response that, no,
we we we can't write the article yet. So bow
(06:02):
and I then thought, well, if she's lying about this,
then what else is she lying about? And so we, uh,
we went through, um, her extensive social media presence, uh,
and she was also claiming at that point to be
giving large parts of all her profits away to various
charitable organizations, whether that's asylum seeker, uh, charities, charity supporting
(06:24):
birthing kits in Africa, all sorts of various causes. At
some point, she'd say, I'm giving away 10% of all
my proceeds. At some point she'd say, I'm giving away 50%. Um,
and also in some instances, she she was hosting online
fundraisers for specific causes. So we started looking into that angle,
(06:46):
and it really didn't take long for that to start unravelling.
I mean, Bo and I picked up the phone and
we called. We called these various charities that she listed
off by name, and we'd asked, have they ever heard
of Belle Gibson? And most of them said no. Had
they ever received a donation? Most of them said no.
So that was a story that we knew we could write.
S1 (07:07):
Okay, so what was Belle Gibson's response to all of that?
What did she say?
S5 (07:12):
It was a Friday afternoon, and we fired off a
list of questions to Belle Gibson. 21 questions. They were
about the charitable donations that she'd claimed to have made,
but also about many other parts of her life that
had been contradicted in her own posts or by others.
So we asked for her age because that that was
(07:34):
in dispute. At one point we asked where she grew up.
We asked where she went to school, where she studied,
where she worked, when she was diagnosed, what she was
diagnosed with, what the prognosis was. Um, and a whole
raft of other questions. What happened was that she immediately
hit the defines. So she started calling some of the charities.
(07:54):
She sent them money. She took screenshots of bank transfers.
She sent them to the charities. She was trying to
kill the story. Then she sent us a 1500 word
email explaining it all away as a cash flow problem.
She basically said, you know, we're a young business. Um,
we're we're struggling. We're getting our books in order. And
(08:16):
she spoke in a way that sort of, I guess,
I guess she wasn't taking responsibility for it. But she
was also sort of saying it's referring everything to the
whole pantry. The reality is, she was the whole pantry.
It was it was a one person show. So the
story about her failing to pass on the money raised
for charity went online on a Sunday night, and Nick
(08:39):
and I were in constant contact. Um, and watching social
media as the comments came flooding in. And then Belle
Gibson put up a post, basically bagging the story and
saying that we all got it, that we got it
all wrong at first, like there always was with Belle Gibson.
There was a huge outpouring of support for her along
the lines of, she's just a young mum, she's sick,
(09:00):
she's trying to do her best. And where a couple
of male journalists intent on tearing her down, that that
was really the theme. But then things turned and people
started asking why she hadn't donated money raised for charity,
and how charitable donations get mixed up in the business's
cash flow. Belle Gibson tried to put those fires out
(09:22):
by by responding to people one on one, but it
got to a point where they were coming in faster
than she could. She could keep up with, um, and
that's when she started deleting critical posts. And what then
happened within, I guess an hour or so was was
what we had expected, and that was that people would
start openly questioning her cancer diagnosis and her claims of
(09:48):
eating healthily and beating metastasized terminal brain cancer.
S6 (09:52):
How do you take it? What is it, exactly?
S3 (09:55):
Um, I don't know how I'm going to talk about this.
I might have to do some more reading on it,
but it's, um, a machine.
S5 (10:05):
Other publications then jumped on the story, and it really
opened us. Opened the door for us to publish on,
on the doubts that we'd already, you know, heard about
from her friends and from doctors.
S1 (10:16):
And I think it's fair to say that things then
really picked up steam after this. So, Nick, tell us
what happened next.
S2 (10:21):
Well, the next story that Bo and I wrote in
the Age was something along the lines of friends and
doctors cast doubt over healing. Bell's cancer claims Healing Bell
was the the Instagram moniker she used in that article.
We were able to, to quote sources from her inner
circle saying they doubted her cancer claims were were able
to mention the fact that she was being openly questioned
(10:45):
on her various social media pages about her diagnosis and
had been deleting posts, and we got the all clear
from our lawyers and editors at the age to publish, um,
quotes from a leading neurosurgeon, Doctor Andrew Kay, who we
spoke to, who said something along the lines to us
of this would be a highly, highly unlikely way for
(11:07):
cancer to behave, and this would be more than a
1 in 1,000,000, 1 in 1,000,000 case, it would be
a 1 in 100,000,000. From there, things snowballed very, very quickly.
For Bell, every publication in the country and overseas started
jumping on the story.
S7 (11:25):
She deceived hundreds of thousands of followers on social media,
developing a wellness guide, the Whole Pantry app, to help
other cancer sufferers.
S8 (11:34):
Bill Gibson profited off misery and desperation. What she did
is despicable.
S9 (11:39):
It's unconscionable and still be in some hope that I
too could get better. I really hope that she, you know,
gets brought to justice for what she does.
S2 (11:51):
Belle Gibson went to ground Penguin. Her her publisher went
into crisis mode and, um, before long began pulling a
book from shelves and pulping copies of it. Apple refused
to have refused to say anything. They pretended like they
didn't know her. They they they wouldn't comment to us
or to other publications at all. Belle Gibson remained quiet
(12:13):
until re-emerging, um, a couple of weeks later, after she'd
hired a crisis PR manager to have an interview with
the Australian Women's Weekly.
S7 (12:22):
After months of speculation, the 23 year old mother of
one finally admitted in a magazine interview. No, none of
it's true.
S2 (12:30):
Not long after that, she she was paid $75,000 to
agree to an on camera interview with Tara Brown at
60 minutes, which goes down in the history books as
one of the biggest trainwreck interviews of all time.
S8 (12:44):
You had three heart operations. You suffered two cardiac arrests.
You died twice on the operating table. You had a stroke,
and you were diagnosed with inoperable brain tumor and given
four months to live.
S3 (12:56):
Correct.
S1 (13:00):
We'll be right back. And so, what did you discover
since then about when she sort of first started lying?
Because the Netflix show, which comes out on Thursday and
it's based on your book, it paints her, at least
at the start, as this vulnerable, isolated young mother. You know,
she's getting validation and support from the lies that she's telling.
(13:21):
But why do you think she did what she did?
S5 (13:24):
That's a really tough question. It's very difficult to know.
I mean, it's something that I think Sam Strauss, the
the Aussie writer of the Netflix show, tried to get
into in the same way that we tried to answer
this question in our book.
S10 (13:38):
It has 90,000 likes. She does not have spleen cancer.
S5 (13:43):
This series could have just focused on the cancer scam.
It could have just been a surface level kind of
production that didn't deal with the bigger themes of social
media and the allure of miracle cures and unproven cancer
treatments and misinformation, and who Belle Gibson is. But Sam
didn't do that. She just went for it. And she
(14:04):
did what we had tried to do, which is to
go back and look at what drove Belle Gibson.
S11 (14:10):
You have to be an actual sociopath to do that.
And I am not. I mean, I could do like
50 personality quizzes right now, and I am an empath.
S5 (14:19):
So we we delved into her childhood and we learned
that she had a very troubled childhood and that she
told lies about her health from a very young age.
We also spoke to her mother. We visited with her grandmother.
And I mean, the next Netflix series also features Belle's mum.
She's a really interesting character and it's very close to
(14:39):
the truth, and I think that gives a really good
insight into the kind of Chaotic childhood that Belle Gibson had.
The other the other thing is, I think by the
time Belle Gibson started the app, she was a young,
broke mum, a young, broke single mum living in a
new city. She was definitely vulnerable and I would say
(15:00):
that she's probably always been vulnerable. That said, a lot
of people are vulnerable or have had difficult childhoods and
they don't go on to become a cancer scammer.
S1 (15:10):
Now I really want to turn to how this Belle
Gibson story. It was a massive wake up call about
the dangers of the wellness industry. So I want to
get into that. I mean, were there people who really
did have cancer who were sucked in by her and
who were at risk of going off, say, chemotherapy or
radiotherapy because they believed that they too could beat cancer
(15:31):
by eating well.
S5 (15:33):
Nick and I have never had a response to a
story quite like the stories that we wrote about Belle Gibson.
We were absolutely inundated with emails and phone calls from
cancer patients, their families, their friends, people who have lost
(15:53):
loved ones to cancer. We were contacted by oncologists, GPS, nurses,
and then we were just contacted by many, many people
in the community, the general public, people who were just
really pissed off at the idea that someone would do this.
We spoke to one woman. She told us that she
had Belle Gibson's book, and she had the app, and
(16:16):
her father was dying of terminal cancer, and she said
that she and her sister every week would go and
go to the markets in Melbourne and pick up all
the rare ingredients that were listed in the recipes in
Belle Gibson's book. And so while they never thought that
this would cure their dad, they were they were really
(16:38):
sucked into the story and thought it would help him.
And As we spoke to more people like this and
more people who who lost loved ones to other cancer scams,
we realized this is the the bigger issue here. It's not.
Obviously there is the element of of false hope, uh, that,
that you're peddling, which is very dangerous and always costs
(17:01):
money as well. But it's this time that is lost
when family members, uh, are trying to save their loved ones,
whether they go to the markets or they're running around, uh,
trying to find, you know, an alternative medicine, or they're
researching on the internet or following some sort of social
media account. And so that's what's really heartbreaking about this
(17:26):
whole story. In our book, Nick and I dedicated two
chapters to a young woman in Melbourne called Kate, who
we spent a lot of time with. She was diagnosed
with breast cancer, and she she was really hooked on
Belle Gibson's story because he was a woman living with
terminal cancer who was traveling the world. She was successful
in business. She was kicking goals. And this was it
(17:51):
just couldn't be further from the truth. For Kate's reality,
I mean, Kate had gone through, uh, chemotherapy. She'd had
a mastectomy. She felt like crap. Um, she couldn't work.
And so she was really drawn in by this. And
it got to a point where she started saying to
her husband, I want to sort of look at my
(18:12):
options here. And we spoke to the husband, and he
was just completely just horrified at the thought of this.
And he actually called his mother, who was a nurse,
and she flew in to Melbourne and they sat her
down and, and had to talk her out of it.
And it wasn't an easy thing to do.
S1 (18:28):
And to be clear, Bell actually wasn't in any way
a trained professional, right? I mean, she wasn't in medicine,
she wasn't a dietician. She didn't have any expertise to
be giving out advice. Right?
S5 (18:38):
No, I mean, Bell Gibson had no no formal training
in anything, as far as we know. Um, certainly no
medical training. I think it's important to remember, too, that
I mean, we aren't. Personally aware of someone who stopped
their conventional treatment and started, you know, just eating the
(18:59):
recipes in Belle Gibson's book or taking her advice online.
But I think it's important to remember that cancer scamming
is nothing new. This is still going on today. Uh,
you know, not just in clinics in Tijuana, but it's
happening all around Australia, in towns. It's happening online. I
guess the the thing about Belle Gibson is that her
(19:21):
explosion to success was made possible by this rise of
influencers who are able to attract followers unchecked. And she
had the backing of companies like Apple and Penguin, who
not only partnered with her, they endorsed her. They pushed
out her lie. They propelled her Her online fame to
fame in the real world. But every day there are
(19:45):
people who are desperate and hopeful, searching for miracle cures,
and they will pay anything. They will travel anywhere to
get them. And this is something that I'm I'm really
pleased is is shown in the Netflix series.
S1 (20:00):
I mean, it's such a good point. It really is
a perfect storm of people desperate for hope in the
most horrible of situations. And of course, social media, which
can just like rocket, you know, this hope into the stratosphere. Really.
So let's get into that, Nick, because she was one
of the first wellness influencers before influencers were even a thing.
You scroll through social media now and of course you're inundated.
(20:20):
So has the wellness industry actually improved in any way?
I mean, are there more checks and balances?
S2 (20:27):
You're right. Sam. Um, I mean, wellness influencers. You can
barely open Instagram without being completely flooded with that sort
of content. Belle Gibson was one of the first. Yeah,
in 2015, Instagram was still in its infancy, and she
was something of a trailblazer in that sort of in
that space. I think those dangers are as present as
(20:47):
ever on, um, on, on Instagram and elsewhere. I, I
guess what we'd, what I'd like to think would be
a lasting impact of the highly public, um, rise and
fall of of of Belle Gibson is that people might
apply greater scrutiny to these sorts of miracle cure claims
(21:08):
when they're presented on, on Instagram, because, you know, there's
nothing wrong with eating healthy and doing yoga or whatever
it might be. But the real dark side of the
wellness industry is often found on places like Instagram, where
it's espousing do this instead of conventional medicine at the
expense of conventional therapies. That's a real dark underbelly of
(21:29):
the movement. Um, that's still there. But yeah, I guess
we hope that, um, we hope that people will apply
greater scrutiny. And I guess a tangible impact is, um,
Penguin Random House, one of the world's biggest publishers, who
partnered with Bell Gibson and propelled her star. They as
part of the federal court proceedings against Bell. They were
(21:50):
penalized $30,000, but more importantly, they have been required to
include a disclaimer in every cookbook or book that promotes
nutrition and unproven health claims they have to include include
a disclaimer now that says this, this is, uh, this
is not medical advice. I think that will make also
(22:14):
big corporations the likes who partnered with Bell Gibson to
fact check these too good to be true claims of
health miracles, which are often too good to be true
for a reason.
S1 (22:24):
Okay, so let's talk about what consequences Bell Gibson faced,
if any Bo did police or anyone step in? I mean,
what's happened?
S5 (22:33):
No. Victoria Police ruled out a criminal investigation fairly early
on in the piece. Consumer affairs did launch an investigation,
and they ended up taking her to the Federal Court
of Australia. That case wrapped up in 2017, and Belle
Gibson was convicted of engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct
(22:56):
in relation to her health claims, and also in relation
to the fundraising appeals. So she was fined more than
$400,000 in the end.
S12 (23:06):
A fine of $410,000, but still no apology from Belle Gibson.
S5 (23:11):
Instead, Nick and I have over the years checked in
with Consumer Affairs Victoria to get an update on that. Fine.
The last meaningful update that we got from the agency
was towards the end of 2023, when they said that
the fine was still outstanding, and I followed up and
I asked how much of the fine was still outstanding,
(23:31):
and they said the entire fine. So I. She was
convicted in 2017. As of late 2023, she hadn't paid
a cent. I went back to Consumer Affairs Victoria a
couple of months ago and asked them for an update,
and they refused to tell us. They said they were
still pursuing her for the fine. But when asked how
much was outstanding, they wouldn't say. So I personally I
(23:57):
highly doubt anything has changed. Um, but I find it
astonishing that someone can be fined 400 grand in the
Federal Court of Australia and not pay it, and nothing happens.
I said to Nick the other day, most people get
a parking ticket and pay the fine. This is this
is $400,000. I mean, she has been held to account,
(24:20):
I guess, in public. She's gone through one of the
biggest public shamings in Australia that I can recall. So,
I mean, her reputation, uh, is completely shot. But yeah,
I think I think the fact that she's managed to
sort of wriggle out of, of actually paying back some
(24:41):
of the money that she earned from this scam would
infuriate the people who followed her. But Apple, I mean,
Apple has really escaped this, um, scot free. Apple has
never said a word about this. Their approach, when it
came to the sort of publicity storm around Belle Gibson
was just to remain silent. And as the world's most
(25:05):
valuable company, who backed her and handpicked her to have
her app as one of only 12 on the first
Apple Watch alongside Nike and Pinterest and Twitter. I mean,
I think it's I think it's a cop out.
S1 (25:20):
And so, Nick, tell us, where is she now?
S2 (25:23):
She hasn't been heard from since the conclusion of the
federal court case against her. She pops up here and there.
She ingratiated herself with an African community in Melbourne at
one point, and received a lot of questions in the
media about what she was doing now.
S3 (25:42):
So you are here today. We met in Melbourne, Australia.
Our diaspora community, Oromo Community of Australia, met to discuss
the current situation of Ethiopia, specifically Oromia.
S2 (25:57):
The last time she was heard from a TV news
crew ambushed her at a at a petrol station.
S13 (26:02):
Is it time to pay that money back? Belle.
S14 (26:04):
Don't put that camera up at me. I haven't paid
things because I can't afford to.
S2 (26:10):
That was the last time we've seen her. She's keeping
a relatively low profile these days.
S1 (26:17):
And finally. I mean, just to wrap up, I think
many listeners would assume, you know, putting out a book
and having a Netflix show being made based on the
book that you've written, that would be a super exciting thing.
But what is it actually like to revisit this story again?
S5 (26:31):
Revisiting the story is it's interesting because it's a lot,
a lot of the issues that were raised in the
Mel Gibson case are still very prevalent today. You know,
it was almost ten years ago that we wrote the
first critical piece about Mel Gibson, and I don't think
a lot has changed. I think social media is still
(26:52):
awash with false claims and and people spruiking all sorts
of rubbish.
S2 (26:57):
It's not just the the rise and fall of of
a scam artist. It's about the, the dangers of, um, of,
you know, unregulated health advice, the power of social media,
people's willingness to, to to swallow miracle stories a little
too easily, the failure of big companies to scrutinise these claims.
(27:17):
We were really pleased to see the show do a
good job of giving a bigger platform to those sorts
of issues.
S1 (27:23):
Well, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking to both of
you about this. It's such a crucial topic. So thank
you so much, Nick and Bo for your time.
S2 (27:31):
Thanks, Sam. Sam.
S1 (27:44):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Julia Carcasole.
Our executive producer is Tami Mills. Our head of audio
is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is a production of
The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. If you enjoy
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(28:09):
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in your inbox every day. Links are in the show. Notes.
I'm Samantha Salinger, Maurice. This is the morning edition. Thanks
for listening.
Hi, it's Samantha Selinger Morris here, and I'm the host
of the Morning Edition. We are bringing you the best
episodes of 2025 before your Morning Edition team returns mid January.
This one is about Belle Gibson, one of the original
wellness influencers. Gibson claimed to have healed herself from terminal
(00:21):
cancer through healthy eating. The problem was she never had cancer.
This episode was recorded shortly before the release of the
worldwide hit series Apple Cider Vinegar, which was based on
the work of two of our journalists, Beau Donnelly and
Nick Toscano, in exposing Gibson's cancer. Con. So, Nick and Beau,
(00:44):
thank you so much for joining us on the Morning Edition.
I really want you to take us back to 2015.
You were both young reporters at The Age in Melbourne.
So how did you first hear about Belle Gibson? Nick
I'll go to you first.
S2 (00:57):
I think a good place to start is in 2015,
a year of incredible success for Belle Gibson. She had
reached enormous fame already off the back of a miracle
story of curing a malignant brain tumor that had spread
to other organs throughout her body. Using healthy eating instead
of conventional medicine.
S3 (01:17):
And its conflicting for a lot of people like, I
don't think I'm going to die tomorrow, but my body
is dying.
S2 (01:23):
She had turned that story into into a successful business empire,
which included developing one of Apple's most popular health and
wellness apps at the time, called The Whole Pantry, and
a best selling cookbook published by Penguin.
S3 (01:39):
I put everything that I knew along my journey with cancer,
nutrition and wellness and put it on the most accessible
device possible, the iPhone.
S2 (01:47):
But Bo and I had absolutely no idea who Belle
Gibson was. We didn't have Instagram at the time. It
was a very it was sort of the dawn of
of of of Instagram. Back then, we weren't much into dieting,
we didn't follow wellness gurus or we weren't really into
wellness fads. So for Bo and I, when we were
a couple of journos in our early 20s, having just
(02:10):
started our careers at the age Belle Gibson had wholly
passed us by. Um, I guess that was until until
a tip came in from someone suggesting that there was
more to look at here. And Belle Gibson may not
be entirely what she was purporting to be.
S3 (02:24):
You know, when you've got a tumor in the middle
of your brain, you're not a very balanced person. Not
very rational thinking either.
S4 (02:33):
Okay. So, Bo, I want.
S1 (02:34):
To turn to you. Can you tell us about where
this tip came from and what did it say? Did
it raise doubt about her cancer claims? Like what prompted
you to start actually looking into her?
S5 (02:45):
So before The age, Nick and I both worked for
the local papers in Melbourne, and my editor was Eileen Berry,
who became a friend. And one day she came to
me and she said, have you heard of Belle Gibson? Uh,
she's this young, successful app developer, and she's faking cancer.
And I know someone, uh, who's in her inner circle
and who wants to expose her. So I thought, right, okay,
(03:08):
that doesn't sound like an allegation or a story that
I could ever stand up because, I mean, how do
you prove a negative? We as journalists don't have access
to people's medical records. Um, but I took the number
of this friend of Belle Gibson's. Her name is Chanel,
and I gave her a ring. And that first call,
I probably spent about an hour on the phone with her.
(03:29):
And she struck me as someone who was very intelligent
and who was just horrified, really, for the role she
had played in supporting Belle Gibson, who she now believed
was was a cancer faker. She outlined to me why
she thought Belle Gibson was was faking cancer, and there
were a lot of things from, um, a seizure that
(03:50):
Belle Gibson faked at her son's fourth birthday party. Um,
there was an intervention that Chanel and other friends staged
where they went to Mel Gibson's house and basically called
her on on her claims and asked her to produce
evidence that she had cancer. Um, so I started that
call feeling very critical, um, almost dismissive of of Chanel's claims.
(04:14):
But I came away from it absolutely fascinated by what
she was saying. And so the first thing I did
was I went to Instagram and I looked Belle Gibson up.
I looked at what she'd been saying, and I very
quickly noticed that everything, including her health claims, were either
really vague or totally inconsistent or just seemingly implausible.
S1 (04:38):
Okay. And then the first story that you both wrote
on her, that was March 2015, but you didn't focus
on the questions about her cancer diagnosis. Instead, you focused
on the money specifically that she had not handed over
donations that she had promised to various charities. So, Nick,
I'm going to go to you. Why did you focus
on that?
S2 (04:56):
Beau and I, um. After a few weeks of looking
into Belle, having pulled everything we. We could find on
her and going through the chronology of the way she'd
explained her health situation, we were very doubtful, as Beau mentioned,
and we then started talking to even more of her friends,
her inner circle, people who were skeptical. We also spoke
(05:20):
to doctors on an off the record basis at that point,
to examine Belle's various cancer claims and her explanation of
how it had spread. These were collated through articles and
interviews she'd she'd done her various social media posts. They
were very doubtful as well. We were hoping to write
an initial article which would have said something like, there
(05:41):
are doubts about Belle Gibson's diagnosis, but none of her
friends who we were speaking to at that point were
prepared to speak on the record. We put the suggestion
and a draft to our lawyers at the age, and
they quite judiciously came back with the response that, no,
we we we can't write the article yet. So bow
(06:02):
and I then thought, well, if she's lying about this,
then what else is she lying about? And so we, uh,
we went through, um, her extensive social media presence, uh,
and she was also claiming at that point to be
giving large parts of all her profits away to various
charitable organizations, whether that's asylum seeker, uh, charities, charity supporting
(06:24):
birthing kits in Africa, all sorts of various causes. At
some point, she'd say, I'm giving away 10% of all
my proceeds. At some point she'd say, I'm giving away 50%. Um,
and also in some instances, she she was hosting online
fundraisers for specific causes. So we started looking into that angle,
(06:46):
and it really didn't take long for that to start unravelling.
I mean, Bo and I picked up the phone and
we called. We called these various charities that she listed
off by name, and we'd asked, have they ever heard
of Belle Gibson? And most of them said no. Had
they ever received a donation? Most of them said no.
So that was a story that we knew we could write.
S1 (07:07):
Okay, so what was Belle Gibson's response to all of that?
What did she say?
S5 (07:12):
It was a Friday afternoon, and we fired off a
list of questions to Belle Gibson. 21 questions. They were
about the charitable donations that she'd claimed to have made,
but also about many other parts of her life that
had been contradicted in her own posts or by others.
So we asked for her age because that that was
(07:34):
in dispute. At one point we asked where she grew up.
We asked where she went to school, where she studied,
where she worked, when she was diagnosed, what she was
diagnosed with, what the prognosis was. Um, and a whole
raft of other questions. What happened was that she immediately
hit the defines. So she started calling some of the charities.
(07:54):
She sent them money. She took screenshots of bank transfers.
She sent them to the charities. She was trying to
kill the story. Then she sent us a 1500 word
email explaining it all away as a cash flow problem.
She basically said, you know, we're a young business. Um,
we're we're struggling. We're getting our books in order. And
(08:16):
she spoke in a way that sort of, I guess,
I guess she wasn't taking responsibility for it. But she
was also sort of saying it's referring everything to the
whole pantry. The reality is, she was the whole pantry.
It was it was a one person show. So the
story about her failing to pass on the money raised
for charity went online on a Sunday night, and Nick
(08:39):
and I were in constant contact. Um, and watching social
media as the comments came flooding in. And then Belle
Gibson put up a post, basically bagging the story and
saying that we all got it, that we got it
all wrong at first, like there always was with Belle Gibson.
There was a huge outpouring of support for her along
the lines of, she's just a young mum, she's sick,
(09:00):
she's trying to do her best. And where a couple
of male journalists intent on tearing her down, that that
was really the theme. But then things turned and people
started asking why she hadn't donated money raised for charity,
and how charitable donations get mixed up in the business's
cash flow. Belle Gibson tried to put those fires out
(09:22):
by by responding to people one on one, but it
got to a point where they were coming in faster
than she could. She could keep up with, um, and
that's when she started deleting critical posts. And what then
happened within, I guess an hour or so was was
what we had expected, and that was that people would
start openly questioning her cancer diagnosis and her claims of
(09:48):
eating healthily and beating metastasized terminal brain cancer.
S6 (09:52):
How do you take it? What is it, exactly?
S3 (09:55):
Um, I don't know how I'm going to talk about this.
I might have to do some more reading on it,
but it's, um, a machine.
S5 (10:05):
Other publications then jumped on the story, and it really
opened us. Opened the door for us to publish on,
on the doubts that we'd already, you know, heard about
from her friends and from doctors.
S1 (10:16):
And I think it's fair to say that things then
really picked up steam after this. So, Nick, tell us
what happened next.
S2 (10:21):
Well, the next story that Bo and I wrote in
the Age was something along the lines of friends and
doctors cast doubt over healing. Bell's cancer claims Healing Bell
was the the Instagram moniker she used in that article.
We were able to, to quote sources from her inner
circle saying they doubted her cancer claims were were able
to mention the fact that she was being openly questioned
(10:45):
on her various social media pages about her diagnosis and
had been deleting posts, and we got the all clear
from our lawyers and editors at the age to publish, um,
quotes from a leading neurosurgeon, Doctor Andrew Kay, who we
spoke to, who said something along the lines to us
of this would be a highly, highly unlikely way for
(11:07):
cancer to behave, and this would be more than a
1 in 1,000,000, 1 in 1,000,000 case, it would be
a 1 in 100,000,000. From there, things snowballed very, very quickly.
For Bell, every publication in the country and overseas started
jumping on the story.
S7 (11:25):
She deceived hundreds of thousands of followers on social media,
developing a wellness guide, the Whole Pantry app, to help
other cancer sufferers.
S8 (11:34):
Bill Gibson profited off misery and desperation. What she did
is despicable.
S9 (11:39):
It's unconscionable and still be in some hope that I
too could get better. I really hope that she, you know,
gets brought to justice for what she does.
S2 (11:51):
Belle Gibson went to ground Penguin. Her her publisher went
into crisis mode and, um, before long began pulling a
book from shelves and pulping copies of it. Apple refused
to have refused to say anything. They pretended like they
didn't know her. They they they wouldn't comment to us
or to other publications at all. Belle Gibson remained quiet
(12:13):
until re-emerging, um, a couple of weeks later, after she'd
hired a crisis PR manager to have an interview with
the Australian Women's Weekly.
S7 (12:22):
After months of speculation, the 23 year old mother of
one finally admitted in a magazine interview. No, none of
it's true.
S2 (12:30):
Not long after that, she she was paid $75,000 to
agree to an on camera interview with Tara Brown at
60 minutes, which goes down in the history books as
one of the biggest trainwreck interviews of all time.
S8 (12:44):
You had three heart operations. You suffered two cardiac arrests.
You died twice on the operating table. You had a stroke,
and you were diagnosed with inoperable brain tumor and given
four months to live.
S3 (12:56):
Correct.
S1 (13:00):
We'll be right back. And so, what did you discover
since then about when she sort of first started lying?
Because the Netflix show, which comes out on Thursday and
it's based on your book, it paints her, at least
at the start, as this vulnerable, isolated young mother. You know,
she's getting validation and support from the lies that she's telling.
(13:21):
But why do you think she did what she did?
S5 (13:24):
That's a really tough question. It's very difficult to know.
I mean, it's something that I think Sam Strauss, the
the Aussie writer of the Netflix show, tried to get
into in the same way that we tried to answer
this question in our book.
S10 (13:38):
It has 90,000 likes. She does not have spleen cancer.
S5 (13:43):
This series could have just focused on the cancer scam.
It could have just been a surface level kind of
production that didn't deal with the bigger themes of social
media and the allure of miracle cures and unproven cancer
treatments and misinformation, and who Belle Gibson is. But Sam
didn't do that. She just went for it. And she
(14:04):
did what we had tried to do, which is to
go back and look at what drove Belle Gibson.
S11 (14:10):
You have to be an actual sociopath to do that.
And I am not. I mean, I could do like
50 personality quizzes right now, and I am an empath.
S5 (14:19):
So we we delved into her childhood and we learned
that she had a very troubled childhood and that she
told lies about her health from a very young age.
We also spoke to her mother. We visited with her grandmother.
And I mean, the next Netflix series also features Belle's mum.
She's a really interesting character and it's very close to
(14:39):
the truth, and I think that gives a really good
insight into the kind of Chaotic childhood that Belle Gibson had.
The other the other thing is, I think by the
time Belle Gibson started the app, she was a young,
broke mum, a young, broke single mum living in a
new city. She was definitely vulnerable and I would say
(15:00):
that she's probably always been vulnerable. That said, a lot
of people are vulnerable or have had difficult childhoods and
they don't go on to become a cancer scammer.
S1 (15:10):
Now I really want to turn to how this Belle
Gibson story. It was a massive wake up call about
the dangers of the wellness industry. So I want to
get into that. I mean, were there people who really
did have cancer who were sucked in by her and
who were at risk of going off, say, chemotherapy or
radiotherapy because they believed that they too could beat cancer
(15:31):
by eating well.
S5 (15:33):
Nick and I have never had a response to a
story quite like the stories that we wrote about Belle Gibson.
We were absolutely inundated with emails and phone calls from
cancer patients, their families, their friends, people who have lost
(15:53):
loved ones to cancer. We were contacted by oncologists, GPS, nurses,
and then we were just contacted by many, many people
in the community, the general public, people who were just
really pissed off at the idea that someone would do this.
We spoke to one woman. She told us that she
had Belle Gibson's book, and she had the app, and
(16:16):
her father was dying of terminal cancer, and she said
that she and her sister every week would go and
go to the markets in Melbourne and pick up all
the rare ingredients that were listed in the recipes in
Belle Gibson's book. And so while they never thought that
this would cure their dad, they were they were really
(16:38):
sucked into the story and thought it would help him.
And As we spoke to more people like this and
more people who who lost loved ones to other cancer scams,
we realized this is the the bigger issue here. It's not.
Obviously there is the element of of false hope, uh, that,
that you're peddling, which is very dangerous and always costs
(17:01):
money as well. But it's this time that is lost
when family members, uh, are trying to save their loved ones,
whether they go to the markets or they're running around, uh,
trying to find, you know, an alternative medicine, or they're
researching on the internet or following some sort of social
media account. And so that's what's really heartbreaking about this
(17:26):
whole story. In our book, Nick and I dedicated two
chapters to a young woman in Melbourne called Kate, who
we spent a lot of time with. She was diagnosed
with breast cancer, and she she was really hooked on
Belle Gibson's story because he was a woman living with
terminal cancer who was traveling the world. She was successful
in business. She was kicking goals. And this was it
(17:51):
just couldn't be further from the truth. For Kate's reality,
I mean, Kate had gone through, uh, chemotherapy. She'd had
a mastectomy. She felt like crap. Um, she couldn't work.
And so she was really drawn in by this. And
it got to a point where she started saying to
her husband, I want to sort of look at my
(18:12):
options here. And we spoke to the husband, and he
was just completely just horrified at the thought of this.
And he actually called his mother, who was a nurse,
and she flew in to Melbourne and they sat her
down and, and had to talk her out of it.
And it wasn't an easy thing to do.
S1 (18:28):
And to be clear, Bell actually wasn't in any way
a trained professional, right? I mean, she wasn't in medicine,
she wasn't a dietician. She didn't have any expertise to
be giving out advice. Right?
S5 (18:38):
No, I mean, Bell Gibson had no no formal training
in anything, as far as we know. Um, certainly no
medical training. I think it's important to remember, too, that
I mean, we aren't. Personally aware of someone who stopped
their conventional treatment and started, you know, just eating the
(18:59):
recipes in Belle Gibson's book or taking her advice online.
But I think it's important to remember that cancer scamming
is nothing new. This is still going on today. Uh,
you know, not just in clinics in Tijuana, but it's
happening all around Australia, in towns. It's happening online. I
guess the the thing about Belle Gibson is that her
(19:21):
explosion to success was made possible by this rise of
influencers who are able to attract followers unchecked. And she
had the backing of companies like Apple and Penguin, who
not only partnered with her, they endorsed her. They pushed
out her lie. They propelled her Her online fame to
fame in the real world. But every day there are
(19:45):
people who are desperate and hopeful, searching for miracle cures,
and they will pay anything. They will travel anywhere to
get them. And this is something that I'm I'm really
pleased is is shown in the Netflix series.
S1 (20:00):
I mean, it's such a good point. It really is
a perfect storm of people desperate for hope in the
most horrible of situations. And of course, social media, which
can just like rocket, you know, this hope into the stratosphere. Really.
So let's get into that, Nick, because she was one
of the first wellness influencers before influencers were even a thing.
You scroll through social media now and of course you're inundated.
(20:20):
So has the wellness industry actually improved in any way?
I mean, are there more checks and balances?
S2 (20:27):
You're right. Sam. Um, I mean, wellness influencers. You can
barely open Instagram without being completely flooded with that sort
of content. Belle Gibson was one of the first. Yeah,
in 2015, Instagram was still in its infancy, and she
was something of a trailblazer in that sort of in
that space. I think those dangers are as present as
(20:47):
ever on, um, on, on Instagram and elsewhere. I, I
guess what we'd, what I'd like to think would be
a lasting impact of the highly public, um, rise and
fall of of of Belle Gibson is that people might
apply greater scrutiny to these sorts of miracle cure claims
(21:08):
when they're presented on, on Instagram, because, you know, there's
nothing wrong with eating healthy and doing yoga or whatever
it might be. But the real dark side of the
wellness industry is often found on places like Instagram, where
it's espousing do this instead of conventional medicine at the
expense of conventional therapies. That's a real dark underbelly of
(21:29):
the movement. Um, that's still there. But yeah, I guess
we hope that, um, we hope that people will apply
greater scrutiny. And I guess a tangible impact is, um,
Penguin Random House, one of the world's biggest publishers, who
partnered with Bell Gibson and propelled her star. They as
part of the federal court proceedings against Bell. They were
(21:50):
penalized $30,000, but more importantly, they have been required to
include a disclaimer in every cookbook or book that promotes
nutrition and unproven health claims they have to include include
a disclaimer now that says this, this is, uh, this
is not medical advice. I think that will make also
(22:14):
big corporations the likes who partnered with Bell Gibson to
fact check these too good to be true claims of
health miracles, which are often too good to be true
for a reason.
S1 (22:24):
Okay, so let's talk about what consequences Bell Gibson faced,
if any Bo did police or anyone step in? I mean,
what's happened?
S5 (22:33):
No. Victoria Police ruled out a criminal investigation fairly early
on in the piece. Consumer affairs did launch an investigation,
and they ended up taking her to the Federal Court
of Australia. That case wrapped up in 2017, and Belle
Gibson was convicted of engaging in misleading and deceptive conduct
(22:56):
in relation to her health claims, and also in relation
to the fundraising appeals. So she was fined more than
$400,000 in the end.
S12 (23:06):
A fine of $410,000, but still no apology from Belle Gibson.
S5 (23:11):
Instead, Nick and I have over the years checked in
with Consumer Affairs Victoria to get an update on that. Fine.
The last meaningful update that we got from the agency
was towards the end of 2023, when they said that
the fine was still outstanding, and I followed up and
I asked how much of the fine was still outstanding,
(23:31):
and they said the entire fine. So I. She was
convicted in 2017. As of late 2023, she hadn't paid
a cent. I went back to Consumer Affairs Victoria a
couple of months ago and asked them for an update,
and they refused to tell us. They said they were
still pursuing her for the fine. But when asked how
much was outstanding, they wouldn't say. So I personally I
(23:57):
highly doubt anything has changed. Um, but I find it
astonishing that someone can be fined 400 grand in the
Federal Court of Australia and not pay it, and nothing happens.
I said to Nick the other day, most people get
a parking ticket and pay the fine. This is this
is $400,000. I mean, she has been held to account,
(24:20):
I guess, in public. She's gone through one of the
biggest public shamings in Australia that I can recall. So,
I mean, her reputation, uh, is completely shot. But yeah,
I think I think the fact that she's managed to
sort of wriggle out of, of actually paying back some
(24:41):
of the money that she earned from this scam would
infuriate the people who followed her. But Apple, I mean,
Apple has really escaped this, um, scot free. Apple has
never said a word about this. Their approach, when it
came to the sort of publicity storm around Belle Gibson
was just to remain silent. And as the world's most
(25:05):
valuable company, who backed her and handpicked her to have
her app as one of only 12 on the first
Apple Watch alongside Nike and Pinterest and Twitter. I mean,
I think it's I think it's a cop out.
S1 (25:20):
And so, Nick, tell us, where is she now?
S2 (25:23):
She hasn't been heard from since the conclusion of the
federal court case against her. She pops up here and there.
She ingratiated herself with an African community in Melbourne at
one point, and received a lot of questions in the
media about what she was doing now.
S3 (25:42):
So you are here today. We met in Melbourne, Australia.
Our diaspora community, Oromo Community of Australia, met to discuss
the current situation of Ethiopia, specifically Oromia.
S2 (25:57):
The last time she was heard from a TV news
crew ambushed her at a at a petrol station.
S13 (26:02):
Is it time to pay that money back? Belle.
S14 (26:04):
Don't put that camera up at me. I haven't paid
things because I can't afford to.
S2 (26:10):
That was the last time we've seen her. She's keeping
a relatively low profile these days.
S1 (26:17):
And finally. I mean, just to wrap up, I think
many listeners would assume, you know, putting out a book
and having a Netflix show being made based on the
book that you've written, that would be a super exciting thing.
But what is it actually like to revisit this story again?
S5 (26:31):
Revisiting the story is it's interesting because it's a lot,
a lot of the issues that were raised in the
Mel Gibson case are still very prevalent today. You know,
it was almost ten years ago that we wrote the
first critical piece about Mel Gibson, and I don't think
a lot has changed. I think social media is still
(26:52):
awash with false claims and and people spruiking all sorts
of rubbish.
S2 (26:57):
It's not just the the rise and fall of of
a scam artist. It's about the, the dangers of, um, of,
you know, unregulated health advice, the power of social media,
people's willingness to, to to swallow miracle stories a little
too easily, the failure of big companies to scrutinise these claims.
(27:17):
We were really pleased to see the show do a
good job of giving a bigger platform to those sorts
of issues.
S1 (27:23):
Well, it's been an absolute pleasure speaking to both of
you about this. It's such a crucial topic. So thank
you so much, Nick and Bo for your time.
S2 (27:31):
Thanks, Sam. Sam.
S1 (27:44):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Julia Carcasole.
Our executive producer is Tami Mills. Our head of audio
is Tom McKendrick. The Morning Edition is a production of
The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. If you enjoy
the show and want more of our journalism, subscribe to
our newspapers today. It's the best way to support what
we do. Search The Age or Smh.com.au. Subscribe and sign
(28:09):
up for our Morning Edition newsletter to receive a comprehensive
summary of the day's most important news, analysis and insights
in your inbox every day. Links are in the show. Notes.
I'm Samantha Salinger, Maurice. This is the morning edition. Thanks
for listening.
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