CHAPTER 1: Introduction

Belle Gibson from Melbourne, Australia, launched the Whole Pantry iPad app in August 2013. The launch coincided with her announcement on Instagram that she was suffering from terminal brain cancer and that she had only a few months left to live. She retold this story in her cookbook, also called The Whole Pantry, which was printed but recalled quickly from sale in late 2014.¹  She recounts:

She makes several remarkable claims: to have been hospitalised for heart surgery, during which she had a cardiac arrest and died on the operating table (twice), and to have undergone chemotherapy and radiotherapy for cancers of the blood, brain, spleen, uterus, liver and kidney—all by the age of 23. Even more impressively, she claims to have cured her cancers by adhering to a special diet and avoiding certain “chemicals”.

Belle's blog, app and cookbook made approximately A$1 million in revenue. Her A$3.79 iOS app achieved more than 300 000 downloads, and the book would have sold for A$35 had it ever hit the shelves. Belle's cookbook didn't just focus on food: she included instructions on how to make your own lip balm (from oil, honey, sugar and salt), body scrub (with salt and oil), laundry detergent (from borax, sodium bicarbonate, vinegar and soap) and medicine (see next paragraph)—all using simple ingredients you can find in a supermarket.² 

In an extensive table titled “natural medicine cabinet”, Belle suggests eating coconut oil to treat depression, dragon fruit to treat cancer and “black foods (zinc)”—whatever that means—to reduce bloating. There's a section on “bad” ingredients that includes those derived from coal tar, including bisphenol A (BPA), and a list of vegetables that should always be purchased “organic” because they absorb large amounts of pesticide. (She includes capsicum, cucumbers and apples in the list.) The Whole Pantry exaggerates the dangers of everyday objects then claims that eating Belle's food can protect people from the toxins that supposedly surround us.

While Belle Gibson's The Whole Pantry cookbook was being released, fellow Melbourne health blogger Jessica Ainscough died from her real epithelioid sarcoma after years of self-treatment with scientifically unproven Gerson therapy.³  Newspaper reports claim that Belle attended Jessica's funeral and broke down soon afterwards while being questioned by a journalist from The Australian newspaper. This breakdown and the journalistic investigation that followed ultimately led to Belle's elaborate A$1 million scheme being exposed as a fraud. In reality, Belle never had cancer. She never underwent chemotherapy, and she never died on any operating table. At the age of 18, she wrote on internet forums several times that she was recovering from surgery in a hospital bed when she was in fact at home and never had the surgery. In her short career as a blogger-turned-Instagram celebrity, she lied about her name, her age, her health and her entire medical history. Her mother insists that she even lied about being abused and neglected as a child. Belle Gibson had driven a juggernaut into the mainstream media, and chemophobia was its engine.

Belle Gibson's business model appears to have been threefold:

1. pander to young people's innate chemophobia by frightening them into believing that ordinary objects such as vaccines and lunchboxes cause cancer;

2. fabricate stories that exaggerate the side effects of conventional cancer treatments such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy with graphic details, and spread those stories online to imply that mainstream diet, lifestyles and medicines will ultimately lead to intolerable suffering; and

3. sell her followers a A$3.79 app, a A$35 cookbook and links to affiliated products that could satisfy their yearning for nature and offer them salvation from the horrible suffering that Belle describes.

Belle made around A$1 million in app sales before her hoax was exposed and made another A$75 000 by giving an interview for 60 Minutes afterward.⁴  In that interview, she denied all allegations of fraud and unapologetically projected blame onto a non-existent quack doctor. Eight of the nine cancer charities for whom she claims to have fundraised have never received their money. Belle has never explicitly admitted any wrongdoing but the fact that she failed to attend all her court appearances when summoned for fraud does not suggest innocence.⁵  Belle was fined A$410 000 for defrauding the charities she claimed to support. Belle claims to have “lost everything”.

Belle defrauded her followers, eight cancer charities and many cancer patients who were lured into rejecting effective medical treatment so that she could bask in the money and fame.^6,7  I wonder how many of Belle's followers were genuine cancer patients who shunned medical treatment in favour of quack medicine (e.g. lemons and dragon fruit) instead. It would be interesting to find out how many people died as a direct result of taking Belle Gibson's dangerous advice. Belle perpetuated two of the most common fallacies in 21st century science: that the chemicals around us pose great danger, and that this non-existent danger can be overcome by eating her definition of “natural” food.

Conquering such fallacies requires a rational analysis of chemicals. First, we should understand that whether a compound is “natural” tells us nothing about its function, toxicity, safety, bioavailability or persistence in the body.

Toxicologists ask three key questions when assessing the safety or efficacy of a chemical.

1. What's the subject involved?

Chemicals have different effects on different creatures. Boric acid causes vomiting and diarrhoea in adults but is harmless to birds. Catnip (Nepeta cataria) is a powerful aphrodisiac for most cats (including tigers and cougars) but has almost no effect on humans.

2. What's the method of exposure?

Chemicals have different effects when they interact with our bodies in different ways. For example, while the ingestion of copious amounts of water is unlikely to cause harm to a human, inhalation of just a tiny amount of liquid water can cause suffocation and death. When placed on the skin, water is even less harmful than when it's swallowed. When we consider the effects of a chemical we encounter, we need to consider the route of exposure: inhalation, ingestion or dermal contact.

3. What's the dose involved?

Chemicals can have completely different effects depending on the doses in which they're used. We're all familiar with dosage recommendations on medicine packets that instruct adults to administer different medication dosages to children depending on their age or weight. For example, inadequate intake of vitamin D can cause rickets and osteomalacia (weakened bones). At the other end of the spectrum, too much vitamin D causes insomnia and renal failure. There's a “sweet spot”; a “Goldilocks dose” for each of the chemicals we use in industry and in our homes. Too little, too much and “just right” have three completely different effects on our bodies or the environment.

We cannot consider a chemical's naturalness when assessing its safety. A chemical's origin is an interesting fact, a piece of trivia, but does not tell us anything about the safety, efficacy or toxicological profile of that chemical. If chemicals are likened to people with personalities, strengths and weaknesses, then a chemical's naturalness is akin to the concept of race in humans. Just as whether a person is black or white tells you nothing about that person's character, strengths or weaknesses, a chemical's origin (plant or mineral) tells you nothing about its safety, efficacy or toxicological profile.

The key to overcoming a fear of chemicals is threefold. First, we need to understand the origins of chemophobia and accept the uncomfortable fact that we all (chemists included) possess a biological predisposition to fear chemicals. Second, we must learn how to judge chemicals rationally, which is the only way to overcome the irrational gut feelings that give rise to prejudices such as chemophobia. Understanding the effects of a chemical requires considering the dosage, route of exposure and subject encountering the chemical. A fresh look at the history of synthetic chemistry will highlight not only the enormous benefits that the industry has given to humankind but will also make obvious the roots of some of the misconceptions about chemicals (that they are sticky, smelly and toxic) that people have today. Third, we need to empower ourselves to look at labelling claims more clearly so we can make wiser choices in the supermarket. Is organic body wash really any better (or even any different) from conventional body wash? Is the presence of a single drop of avocado oil in a shampoo bottle worth the extra dollar commanded by the price tag? Understanding the ways in which marketers manipulate consumers' thinking by amplifying our innate fear of chemicals can alleviate our anxieties about chemicals, save us money—and sometimes even improve our health as well.

Let's start with the first of those steps: understanding why we're predisposed to fear chemicals, and accepting the uncomfortable fact that the propensity to become chemophobic is present in all of us.

BPA

Bisphenol A