Elle Macpherson’s gratitude journal must have written itself last week. Most days, any leader in the wellness industry is right to feel gratitude for the gigantic profits to be made seemingly out of human gullibility: the welcome for her latest venture suggests that the market for experimental self-care may have been wildly underestimated.
Since the exclusive revelation of Macpherson’s “cancer journey” in the Australian Women’s Weekly, there can hardly have been enough time in the day, without contracting the work out to a gratitude assistant, to record the amount of joy experienced by a model turned entrepreneur when her apparent rejection of evidence-based medicine is widely presented – with only limited space for objections – as a tale of fully vindicated heroism.
Top of the gratitude list are headlines such as the Daily Telegraph’s “I relied on my inner sense, not chemotherapy to beat breast cancer”; Sky News’s “Elle Macpherson says she is now ‘in utter wellness’ seven years after finding out she had breast cancer”; and the LA
Times: “Elle Macpherson explains why a holistic approach to breast cancer treatment worked for her”. You appear to gather that, when holistically vanquished, cancer never returns like the conventionally treated kind did with one of my dearest friends, and kills you.
Next on the list: the numerous reports in which Macpherson’s previous connection with Andrew Wakefield features barely, if at all. Crucially, the disgraced doctor’s name was missing from the first, long account of her recovery, which was however generous with mentions of her wellness venture, WelleCo, purveyor of exclusive dietary supplements.
Even in less doting accounts, Macpherson’s public, as well as personal, association with Wakefield escapes close inspection. As gratuitous as it can be to mention a woman’s old relationships, awareness that she promoted an anti-vaccine film made by an individual held to be responsible for measles and mumps outbreaks, and still disseminating doubts about vaccination, might have assisted readers wondering if apparent Macpherson-style science rejection might be right for them.
Even more massive gratitude for no mentions – yet – of the rhino horn. Any day nobody remembers that you once talked about consuming the powdered horn of a species being hunted to extinction is a good day for a vegan health guru: in the week you want your health insights taken seriously pending the publication of a new memoir, it’s practically priceless.
Another gratitude-generating omission: the alkaline diet with which Macpherson launched her career in wellness. Macpherson told the Standard in 2015: “I believe that most ailments come from having an acidic body.” Debunked by Cancer Research UK, it was one of the Telegraph’s worst celebrity diets of the year, up there with Michelle Mone’s TrimSecrets. Do we theorise that, even with Macpherson’s patent supplements, a person may not achieve perfect health? Whatever her own conclusions nine years later, some of her converts must be wondering if they can stop pH testing their urine now.
Overall, perhaps the greatest cause for joy chez WelleCo is also good news for all celebrity wellness entrepreneurs: coverage of Macpherson’s “remission ” suggests, as nothing before, that their industry has somehow transcended years of ridicule to place itself beyond rational consideration, including, it seems, in news sources once wary of dignifying alternative claims that might end up, if popularised, killing people. In the same pages where not long ago it was routine to find the then Prince Charles accused of, for example, “outright quackery”, crankphobia has diminished to the point where readers discover that Macpherson’s “intuitive, heart-led holistic approach” merits serious attention.
Her achievements are acknowledged by no less a person than herself: “It was time for deep, inner reflection. And that took courage.” After seeming to reject medical advice, we learn, Macpherson spent eight months in Phoenix, Arizona, her support team including her personal doctor, a holistic dentist, osteopath, chiropractor, naturopath and therapists. Research has yet to indicate which, if any, of these are optional. It must be bitter indeed for the advocates of caffeine enemas that their cancer cure was endorsed by a prince, not a former supermodel. For the owners of Airbnbs in Phoenix, however, the future looks bright. Just as celebrity health narratives can improve public health, as after Kylie Minogue’s breast cancer diagnosis, their influence is great enough, research suggests, to undermine it.
Enterprises such as Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop, a Kardashian’s Poosh and WelleCo can at least argue that proselytising drivel about self love and the ingestion of apparently unproven supplements is their line of work. An occasional controversy, like vaginal steaming, does little to shake consumer confidence in the world of “clinically studied” (apparently not proven) ingredients, where it’s normal to defer to a “medical medium” (Goop) or to remark (like Macpherson), “I also really look after my mitochondria”.
The only evidence required for the followers of Paltrow and Macpherson’s absurd health regimes, it seems, is the appearance of their creators. If you don’t believe in the power of structured water (a Macpherson favourite), or think you could decrease your intestinal permeability with bovine colostrum supplementation (Goop), the work of the wellness industry, like astrology perhaps, or the planchette, is probably not for you.
A strong preference for Macpherson over Paltrow – as well as the king – seems unlikely, by itself, to explain why previously Goop-averse sections of the media should now disseminate a rival brand of bollocks, especially one that appears so manifestly irresponsible.
Maybe it reflects an observably advancing – most recently after the Cass review – dismissiveness about medical evidence. Or maybe the dream of a bespoke, individually tailored course of self-care, “saying no to standard medical solutions”, appeals particularly at a time when many GP surgeries seem dedicated, above all, to avoiding human contact.
But even NHS care at its worst is rarely as cruel as the approach that Macpherson takes to recovering from cancer, in seeming to imply that the dead were just not courageous enough to cure themselves.
• Catherine Bennett is an Observer columnist
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