Does your body tell the truth? Apple Cider Vinegar and the warning cry of wellness

Of all the snake oil salespeople who have dominated the wellness space, few have been as destructively, unsettlingly committed to the bit as Belle Gibson.

For a while, Gibson made her name on her own alleged suffering. A social media influencer, author, and wellness personality, she claimed to have been diagnosed with a horrifying assortment of cancers, from tumours in her brain, to tumours on her liver.  

More than that, she claimed that these cancers were responding not to mainstream medicine, but to a wholefood diet. Gibson, a young parent based in Melbourne, was essentially arguing that she had found one of the cures for cancer. 

Of course, she hadn’t. When it became clear that Gibson was not passing on some of the money that she had made from her successful cookbook and app to charity, as she promised, her tangle of lies began to fall apart. In fact, Gibson had never been diagnosed with cancer, as she admitted in a trainwreck interview with 60 Minutes, half an hour of television so actively unsettling that it is still seared into the mind of many of the Australians who watched it.  

But even then, even when challenged, she never quite admitted the truth. In one memorable moment of the 60 Minutes episode, restaged in the recent Netflix miniseries Apple Cider Vinegar, Gibson is asked to define what “truth” is.  

Her mumbly non-answer was taken as evidence that Gibson couldn’t stop lying, even when asked to respond to even the most basic of questions. But her inability to give a clean definition of truth cuts right to the heart of the wellness space – and, hopefully, teaches us how to stay clear of its worst impulses. 

The whole truth

Traditional medicine and alternative therapies are constantly lobbied by the likes of Gibson and other wellness influencers, who are suspicious of the “objectivity” offered by mainstream medicine. Gibson, and other traditional medicine advocates like disgraced chef Pete Evans, point to science’s flaws – to the way that medicine messes up. This, they say, is proof that mainstream medicine can’t answer all our problems. 

But these critiques of science are not just the domain of wellness influencers – they are also common in post-modern and pragmatist philosophy. 

In his book Against Method, Austrian philosopher Paul Feyerabend threw chaos into the established notion of the scientific truth. According to Feyerabend, there is no such thing as the “scientific method” – no way to make the multitude of different ways to enact science appear streamlined and “correct.”  

By contrast, Feyerabend advocated for an “anything goes” principle of scientific enquiry, arguing that scientists should follow whatever research paths seem particularly interesting to them.  

According to him, science is not some way to get to the heart of the matter – to understand what is definitely, objectively true. Instead, he sees medicine as a way of understanding the world, an art form in the same way that painting a picture, or writing a poem, is a way of understanding the world. 

In this way, Feyerabend echoes the work of pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty. Rorty argued that there is no viewpoint that exists outside of context – no way to get “more objective”. We can’t ever see past who we are and where we are in time. We are constantly mired in context. A “viewpoint outside history” does not exist. Science isn’t a mirror that can be better polished, and eventually represent the world exactly as it is. The most we can hope for is some sort of established consensus, a bunch of subjective viewpoints that align with each other, rather than an objective reality. 

Rorty and Feyerabend’s arguments do have some genuine pull to them. It is correct that science is always changing – that discoveries that seemed “objectively true” ten years ago get replaced and reordered. It is also correct that medicine mucks up, and that many are disenfranchised from mainstream forms of science because of the way it uses claims of objectivity like a cudgel, silencing all dissenters. As in, “this is true, and anything that goes against this is false.” 

But if we agree with the likes of Feyerabend and Rorty, and do away with the mainstream “truth” provided by science, are we stuck with the likes of Belle Gibson? Does throwing away objectivity mean that we must put up with the liars, scammers, and fraudsters? Does it mean that Gibson really does have the same claim to the “truth” – a truth she could not even name? 

The healing nature of balance

The short answer is, of course, no. If questioning the scientific method really did mean that Gibson, who definitely, plainly, simply lied – and made a great deal of cash off those lies, and the perpetuated suffering of those who believed her – then that questioning would be patently dangerous.  

But, as with so many things, the answer lies in the acceptance of balance. We do not have to treat medicine as a new form of religion, with iron-clad rules that we dare not ever question. Nor do we have to completely, constantly reject all of its findings, and put up absolute falsehoods in their place. 

Rorty was never advocating for the likes of Gibson. Even though he undid some of the foundations of objectivity, he was not arguing that we can do whatever we like, or believe whatever we like. One of his most important and practical ideas, as mentioned above, was the idea of consensus. Even if we take the postmodern approach that “objectivity” is a shaky concept, we can create a picture of what consensus is that gives us all the things we like about objectivity. 

As in, consensus can be reached by scientists and doctors. These specialists have dedicated their lives to uncovering the best ways to heal and help our bodies. When enough of these specialists find a common way to heal and help, then we have reached consensus. Consensus has the force of objectivity – it has reasons to explain itself. It’s not just random. It’s not Gibson just making things up. It’s a way of saying, “this works, and a lot of people agree that it works.”  

What separates this picture of consensus from “objectivity” and its potential harms, moreover, is that consensus can change. When new discoveries are made, they can be shared around specialists, who can alter what they believe. It’s not that they were “wrong” before. It’s that consensus is malleable, changeable, and ever in-flux.

Belle Gibson couldn’t define what the truth is. She used that messiness to exploit people, and to cause harm. But we can ever-so-slightly release our hold on objectivity, without becoming Gibson. And in doing so, we can embrace a modern medicine that does what it was meant to do: help people.