Health blogger Belle Gibson hits back at critics
The founder of The Whole Pantry app Belle Gibson, who has been accused of falsely claiming to have cancer, has hit back at her critics for speaking out against her.
Breaking her recent social media silence, Ms Gibson lashed out at former friends and acquaintances who had publicly doubted her claims of being ill, telling them via a long Facebook post to “make yourself invisible to me”.
The 23-year-old Melbourne woman has been under close scrutiny after it was revealed many of the charities the organisation had promised to donate to had not received any money.
• Friends, fans, shocked by Whole Pantry ‘sham’
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Ms Gibson was diagnosed with multiple cancers from 2009 but claimed to have beaten the illness by shunning conventional medicine in favour of a healthy lifestyle.
The Whole Pantry app is on sale for $3.79 and has been downloaded 300,000 times. Photo: Facebook
She has since admitted she may have been misdiagnosed.
The Whole Pantry app, along with a Penguin book of the same name, promoted healthy living and Ms Gibson boasted natural foods and alternative therapies had fought off the multiple cancers she claimed to suffer.
However friends and work colleagues have questioned whether Ms Gibson ever had cancer.
On Friday night Ms Gibson hit back in a rambling Facebook post, sarcastically encouraging her followers to speak to the media if they needed to because “it says more about you, and your priorities than me or the story you’ll get paid to tell”.
Ms Gibson, who wrote of being “bullied to my death”, went on to defend the work of The Whole Pantry.
“…I know the work my company and it’s [sic] contents did changed hundreds of thousands for the better,” she wrote.
In another post she said those who had spoken publicly about her were “knowingly contributing to the blatant attacking and bullying of myself and my family”.
Can’t see this rushing off the shelves now #BelleGibson pic.twitter.com/5ZgS9yFcWE
— Adrian Lowe (@AdrianLowe) March 15, 2015
The Whole Pantry smartphone application is on sale for $3.79 and has been downloaded 300,000 times.
The Whole Pantry recipe book was released in Australia last year and is scheduled to be launched in the USA and England next month.
Penguin Random House would not say if the international launch of The Whole Pantry book would go ahead.
