Brothers blame influencer mum’s ‘conspiracy theories’ after sister’s death

LONDON – Mr Gabriel Shemirani blames his influencer mother’s belief in conspiracy theories about medicine for his sister’s death from cancer, after she rejected chemotherapy.

“She was being fed fake information,” the 24-year-old British student said, adding that their mother “was against her daughter seeking medical treatments that could have saved her”.

Mr Shemirani’s mother, Kate Shemirani, is one of a growing cohort of health influencers on social media accused of advocating and selling unproven treatments.

She promotes alternative theories about Covid-19, vaccines and organ transplants, and has called chemotherapy “the poison path” and “mustard gas”.

Mr Shemirani’s twin sister, Ms Paloma Shemirani, fell ill in 2023, aged 22, shortly after graduating from university, and was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer that is in most cases “very treatable”, according to Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).

But Mr Shemirani said his sister opted not to start chemotherapy treatment advised by an oncologist, influenced by her mother’s distrust of conventional medicine.

“85 per cent of people with my sister’s cancer... would have survived” with chemotherapy, said Mr Shemirani.

Ms Paloma Shemirani died one year later at 23 after opting for a controversial treatment called “Gerson therapy”, involving vegetable juices and coffee enemas.

Ms Kate Shemirani often talks about surviving breast cancer by doing this, although she underwent surgery as well.

According to Cancer Research UK, there is “no scientific evidence” for Gerson therapy as a cancer treatment.

Australian “wellness” influencer Jess Ainscough died from cancer in 2015 after trying the therapy.

Misinformation

Mr Shemirani and his older brother Sebastian took legal action in Ms Paloma Shemirani’s last months to get her medical care assessed, and asked social services and police to intervene.

Ms Kate Shemirani released a statement on X saying Ms Paloma Shemirani was “never coerced” and presented a written statement signed by her daughter in April 2024.

“I have suffered no abuse from my mum,” Ms Paloma Shemirani wrote, describing her cancer diagnosis as not definitive.

Ms Paloma Shemirani said she questioned medics about survival rates on her mother’s advice, before discharging herself from the oncologist and moving in with Kate.

Ms Paloma Shemirani said she was “delighted with her chosen treatment plan”. But she died in July 2024 after suffering a heart attack at home.

Ms Kate Shemirani blames her death on “a chain of gross medical failings, breaches of consent law, falsified medical records, and reckless emergency drug use”.

The brothers are awaiting an inquest on July 28, and hope a police investigation will follow.

Many wellness influencers like Ms Kate Shemirani, who calls herself a “natural nurse”, are accused of touting unproven treatments that are promoted by algorithms to ill people.

A US study in 2023 found 70 per cent of cancer patients questioned had seen cancer misinformation on social media.

Royal ‘lizards’

Ms Kate Shemirani was struck off as an NHS nurse after her speeches at anti-vaccine rallies made her a public figure during the Covid-19 lockdown.

“My mum’s a national conspiracy theorist who called for doctors and nurses to be hung,” said Mr Shemirani.

The student at London School of Economics says he grew up hearing conspiracy theories from his parents and once believed “the royal family were all lizards”.

Ms Paloma Shemirani shared some of these beliefs, such as rejecting the Covid-19 jab, her friends told the BBC, who first covered the story.

Mr Shemirani is estranged from his mother, who he said “needs to feel important. And for her, conspiracy theories allow her to do that, to feel like this messianic figure”.

Suspended from Twitter in 2022 over her Covid-19 statements, Ms Kate Shemirani was reinstated on X in 2023 and has over 81,000 followers. She also has 28,000 followers on Facebook and 21,000 on Instagram.

Her website offers paid consultations and sells apricot seeds and vitamins.

While these figures “aren’t actually huge”, she is “definitely a prominent figure”, said Dr Stephanie Alice Baker, a sociologist researching health and wellness misinformation at City St George’s, University of London.

Mr Shemirani is urging tighter social media controls on those making such unproven health claims.

“You shouldn’t be able to make medical claims against (scientific) consensus, and there should be a third-party body that social medias have to be accountable to with medical claims,” he said.

Dr Baker said she has seen a surge in content creators “selling unregulated products like soursop tea, apricot kernels and horse and dog dewormer”.

“This is something I feel very concerned about, and I think needs to be seriously regulated, both from social media companies, but also in terms of government regulation.” AFP