Episode 110: Cancer Fakers (Apple Cider Vinegar)

Belle Gibson is an Australian woman who faked surviving several bouts of terminal cancer, and has become the subject of a Netflix dramatisation of those events, entitled Apple Cider Vinegar. Gibson became famous for her nutrition app The Whole Pantry, after claiming to have cured her cancer through healthy eating. We discuss what makes people fake having cancer, the understanding between illness and morality, and New Age lifestyle moralism as a kind of feminine personal policing. Plus, how caring for the sick as a cultural value is not universal, Münchausen syndrome and the accruing of medical evidence, radical feminism's promotion of naturopathy, Trump’s diet, veganism, placebos, and traditional Chinese medicine.