A BBC investigation in Britain has caused a stir about a young woman who died of cancer in 2024 after refusing chemotherapy.
She was estimated to have an 80% chance of being cured by chemotherapy, but under pressure from her mother, 23-year-old Paloma Shemirani chose not to undergo it and instead chose to follow the Gerson therapy. This involves drinking the juice of 9 kilograms of fruit daily, taking various supplements, and undergoing colon cleansing with coffee or castor oil.
When Paloma Shemirani was hospitalized, her mother, Kate, began pressuring her to refuse chemotherapy. An alternative practitioner Kate knew recommended the Gerson diet. She died seven months later.
Kate Shemirani has blamed the British National Health Service for her daughter’s death. She is a former nurse who has been spreading dubious ideas on her website for years. As The Natural Nurse, she sells all kinds of quack remedies, such as apricot kernels, for health problems. Subscribers to her website pay £70 a year. Even more expensive is the twelve-week health program she offers.
During the COVID pandemic, she campaigned against vaccinations, which she claimed were part of a conspiracy to kill people. In 2021, she was struck off her nursing license for spreading misinformation about the pandemic. Several social media companies also blocked her profiles for spreading misinformation.
Pamela’s brothers exposed the scandal. According to them, their mother was obsessed with conspiracy theories and forced them on her children. One of the brothers says she once decided to turn off the Wi-Fi because it was considered dangerous, even though he himself clearly stated that he needed the internet for his studies. “That only fed the joy that she had for using her irrational system of beliefs to control(() me.”
Several health institutions warn about the dangers of the Gerson diet. There is no evidence for its effectiveness and it can dangerously weaken a patient.
In a blog by the UK Health Security Agency it is reported that in 2024 there were 2,911 laboratory confirmed measles cases in England, the highest number of cases recorded annually since 2012. Most of these cases were in unvaccinated children under the age of 10. The agency further reports that more than 1 in 10 eligible children under the age of 5 have not had the Measles Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine or are only partially vaccinated, indicating a decline in vaccination rate over the last 15 years. ‘Vaccinations remain the best defence against infection, so it is very important that children attend their routine vaccination appointments and catch up on any they may have missed.’
The current UK Labour government faces significant concerns about the rising percentage of the population diagnosed with disabilities, leading to an increased number of individuals registered as unable to work. This surge places a substantial strain on benefit costs, hampering government efforts to reduce borrowing and stimulate economic growth. In response, the government plans to introduce more stringent criteria for disability diagnosis and to increase support for rehabilitation programs to help more people return to work . Meanwhile, these concerns have been echoed for many years now by some medical professionals worried about over-diagnosis and the growing tendency to medicalise everyday life problems, especially in the field of psychiatry. This discourse is reflected in the publication this year of least three books in the UK, addressing these concerns:
• No More Normal: Mental Health in an Age of Over-Diagnosis by Alistair Santhouse.
• Searching for Normal: A New Approach to Understanding Distress and Neurodiversity. by Sami Timimi.
• The Age of Diagnosis: Sickness, Health and Why Medicine Has Gone Too Far by Suzanne O’Sullivan.
A national patient survey conducted by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) on the experiences of 1,500 fertility-treatment patients in the UK has found that three quarters of patients are being offered unnecessary add-on treatments that ‘are not proven to increase the change of having a baby’. In fact, this has been happening for several years now and in 2016 was the subject of both a Panorama undercover investigation on BBC 1 television and a paper published in the online journal BMJ Open.
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