Gibson started a wellness app based on her breakthrough discovery and wrote a cookbook with cancer-curing recipes. She became a rising star in the wellness and alternative medicine industry and won Cosmopolitan magazine's "Fun Fearless Female" award for social media.
However questions were raised about Gibson's story and cancer diagnosis in March after she told Australian News that "she believed she was misdiagnosed by a medical team in Germany -- by someone who she now thinks wasn't a medical doctor. She was now seeking treatment from a conventional medical team, which she declined to name."
This curious explanation only raised more questions, such as why she wouldn't reveal the name of the person who allegedly misdiagnosed her, and how she could not know whether or not that person was really a doctor. She eventually came clean.
In an interview last week Gibson admitted that she made up the whole story: she never had cancer in the first place, and her claim that a special diet or therapy cured her cancer was false. In an exclusive interview with The Australian Women's Weekly, Gibson was asked outright if she has, or has ever had cancer. "No. None of it's true," she confessed.
Gibson is only the latest and highest-profile person to falsely claim to have been gravely ill. In 2009 a young Canadian woman named Ashley Kirilow made news for fighting bravely against breast, ovarian, brain, and liver cancers. She and her supporters raised over $20,000 for her treatments, but Kirilow eventually admitted that she never had cancer. She had shaved her head and eyebrows to fake the signs of chemotherapy, and had spent much of the money given to her on personal expenses. She was charged with fraud but spared jail time. She claimed she faked having cancer because she wanted attention from her family.
The Psychology of Factitious Disorders
Often cancer fakers do it for attention and sympathy, not because they are necessarily trying to scam people out of money. Some people really do have a disease -- not cancer but a mental illness known as a factitious disorder. People with this disorder pretend to have an illness (usually a terminal one) and often go to great lengths to maintain the hoax.
According to the latest edition of the American Psychiatric Association's "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders," the prevalence of factitious disorders is unknown. Many cases go undetected due to the deceptive nature of the patients. Often the person successfully ends their hoax by telling friends, family, and other supporters that they are cured, so their deception is never discovered.
The manual notes that "Among patients in hospital settings, it is estimated that about 1 percent of individuals have presentations that meet the criteria for factitious disorder. The course of factitious disorder is usually one of intermittent episodes."
In other words it's not merely one incident, such as a broken leg or a bout with the flu; potentially terminal illnesses such as cancer are often claimed by the patient, allowing them to carry on the deception for many months and even years.
In some cases the factitious disorder begins with a genuine health scare or preexisting condition that is then exaggerated over time. Patients will often go to great lengths to make their fake illness seem real to both doctors and supporters, including feigning seizures, manipulating lab results (for example by adding blood to a urine sample), and even physically injuring themselves.
It's not illegal to lie about having a disease, but if the person receives donations or free services under false pretenses, he or she may be charged with fraud.
Read more at Discovery News
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