Australian supermodel and actress Elle Macpherson turned 60 in 2024, a perfect age to join the bandwagon of celebrities publishing their memoirs. Hers, titled Shehave arrived in bookstores this Tuesday, September 3. “This open-hearted book reveals the real-life experiences that empowered Elle to overcome challenges, illnesses, and internal conflicts,” describes the biography, a quote that she herself has used to advertise the book on your Instagram profilewhere he has 745,000 followers. Diseases? What diseases?, his followers will ask. The answer is in a chapter he has titled Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff (Don’t sweat the small stuff), in which she reveals for the first time that she was diagnosed with breast cancer seven years ago. “It was a shock, it was unexpected, it was confusing, it was daunting in many ways and it really gave me the opportunity to dig deep into my inner sense to find a solution that would work for me,” she explained in an interview with the Australian edition of Women’s Weekly to promote memories.
Finding that solution was not easy at first. As she says in the book, she deliberated for several weeks and sought advice from 32 doctors and experts. They advised her to undergo chemotherapy, but she was not convinced by the idea. In the end, she went to a beach in Miami, prayed, meditated and made the decision not to undergo this treatment. Instead, Macpherson, who publicly declared herself an anti-vaxxer, opted for “an intuitive, holistic and heart-guided approach” to treating her cancer under the guidance of her family doctor, who specializes in integrative medicine, based on a combination of therapies and lifestyle changes. “I chose a holistic approach. Saying no to standard medical solutions was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. But saying no to my own inner sense would have been even harder,” says the Australian.
Her two sons, Arpad Flynn, 26 (then 19), and Aurelius Cy, 21 (then 14), had different reactions to their mother’s decision to refuse the treatment advised by doctors. “Cy simply thought that chemotherapy kills you. That’s why she never wanted me to do it, because she thought it was a kiss of death. Flynn, who is more conventional, was not at all comfortable with my choice. However, he is my son and he would support me in everything and love me despite my decisions, even if he did not agree with them. My children were very supportive, each in their own way, but I knew they were very scared,” she admits now in the interview. Her ex-partner and father of her two children, the financier Arpad Busson, also did not agree with what she was doing. “However, he wrote to me to tell me how proud he was of the courage I was showing. Of course, he was scared because I had decided not to take the conventional medical route. He considered it extreme. “I, on the other hand, thought that chemotherapy and surgery was an extreme option,” he explains.
Ignoring the advice of 32 specialist doctors and some of her family, Macpherson rented a house in Phoenix for eight months to treat her condition holistically under the guidance of her GP, a naturopathic doctor, a holistic dentist, an osteopath, a chiropractor and two therapists. Now the model who was nicknamed The Body says she is in “clinical remission”, although she prefers to call it “absolute wellness”, she says in the magazine. “It’s true, from every perspective, from every blood test, every scan, every imaging test… but also from an emotional, spiritual and mental point of view, not just physically. It’s not just about what your blood tests say, it’s about how and why you live your life on every level,” she says.
At one point in the interview, the editor of Women’s Weekly She tells Macphershon that this approach to cancer reminds her of Olivia Newton-John. In 2018, the Australian singer and actress explained on the show Seven Night Sunday that she was treating her breast cancer “with modern medicines and natural therapies,” and that she was “doing well, very well.” However, the actress passed away in 2022 due to her illness. “We spoke a couple of times when I was diagnosed and also during our healing process,” Macpherson replies to the editor. A healing process that did not cure the actress who rose to worldwide stardom for her role as Sandy in Grease. “We did things differently, but we shared experiences and how we felt and how we approached things,” he adds. Steve Jobs is another famous and wealthy face who turned to alternative medicine when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. His biographer, Walter Isaacson, revealed that the Apple founder had refused cancer surgery for nine months, ignoring his family’s advice and opting for alternative medicine, and that when he finally opted for surgery the disease had spread to the tissues surrounding the organ. Jobs died in October 2011 from respiratory arrest resulting from metastasis of pancreatic cancer.
Elle Macpherson has also been an outspoken anti-vaccine advocate over the past decade. Her involvement with the anti-vaccine movement began when she began a relationship with British physician Andrew Wakefield, author of discredited research linking the MMR vaccine to autism. The publication of her thesis in 1998 in the journal The Lancet It led to a sharp decline in vaccination rates and new outbreaks of measles around the world. The investigation also led to his being struck off the medical register in 2010 after a General Medical Council tribunal found 32 charges proven, including four of fraud and 12 of abusing children with developmental disabilities. Despite all this, the Australian woman maintained a relationship with him between 2017 and 2020 and publicly supported him when Wakefield claimed the pandemic was “divine timing” to promote the anti-vaxx campaign.
