The Woman Who Fooled the World Quotes

“The thing about brain cancer is that it cannot be cured. Not ever.”
― Beau Donelly, The Woman Who Fooled the World: The True Story of Fake Wellness Guru Belle Gibson

“And the entire concept of a detox diet or a cleanse to help achieve long-term health is plain nonsense. (The liver and kidneys already perform this function, and the best way to help filter toxins is to not overload the body with processed foods and excess kilojoules in the first place.)”
― Beau Donelly, The Woman Who Fooled the World: Belle Gibson's Cancer Con, and the Darkness at the Heart of the Wellness Industry

“with most of these bloggers the inference is very clear: a byproduct of all of this wellness is weight loss. But striving for wellness is far more attractive than dieting.”
― Beau Donelly, The Woman Who Fooled the World: Belle Gibson's Cancer Con, and the Darkness at the Heart of the Wellness Industry

“For the most part, this new breed of wellness gurus is white and female, young and attractive, engaging, and media-savvy. Some are yoga teachers, or personal trainers, or martial-arts instructors, but scant few have any qualifications that equip them to give health advice. What they do have is an Instagram account.”
― Beau Donelly, The Woman Who Fooled the World: Belle Gibson's Cancer Con, and the Darkness at the Heart of the Wellness Industry

“Observational studies, at best, can only help demonstrate association, not causation. They cannot prove a clear, causal link.”
― Beau Donelly, The Woman Who Fooled the World: Belle Gibson's Cancer Con, and the Darkness at the Heart of the Wellness Industry

“Diet hypotheses are essentially about what will improve or impair our prospects of good health and longevity, so, in randomised controlled trials, this can mean having to convince thousands of people to change what they eat for 20 or even 30 years. ‘It’s almost impossible,’ Tim says. ‘Humans change their diets all the time … So what we end up with is needing to look at lower-quality evidence to get an idea of how food can affect our health.”
― Beau Donelly, The Woman Who Fooled the World: Belle Gibson's Cancer Con, and the Darkness at the Heart of the Wellness Industry

“while some people have intolerances to certain products, as a society we are becoming needlessly fearful of many foods. This, he believes, is in a large part because you can build a case for just about anything being bad, by selectively quoting scientific research and blowing it out of context.”
― Beau Donelly, The Woman Who Fooled the World: Belle Gibson's Cancer Con, and the Darkness at the Heart of the Wellness Industry