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 told AFP, saying their mother “was against her daughter seeking medical treatments that could have saved her”.
Gabriel’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, vaccines and organ transplants, and has called chemotherapy “the poison path” and “mustard gas”.
Gabriel’s twin sister, Paloma fell ill in 2023 aged 22, shortly after graduating from university, and was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin Lymphoma, a type of cancer which is in most cases “very treatable” according to the UK’s National Health Service.
But Gabriel told AFP his sister opted not to start chemotherapy treatment advised by an oncologist, influenced by her mother’s distrust of conventional medicine. “85 percent of people with my sister’s cancer… would have survived” with chemotherapy, said Gabriel.
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