VIDEO: Elle Macpherson's wellness guru questioned

REPORTER:  Elle Macpherson, at 23 her success is global. 

HAGAR COHEN, REPORTER: Elle Macpherson, known as the Body, has long been one of Australia’s proudest exports.

Now with the release of her autobiography, she’s still making headlines. 

ELLE MACPHERSON:  What do you want to know? I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Let’s put it simply.

HAGAR COHEN:  After a lumpectomy to remove her pre-invasive cancers, Elle said she was given confronting news.

ELLE MACPHERSON: Mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation and hormone replacement. 

INTERVIEWER:  Were you going to do that?

ELLE MACPHERSON:  I had a feeling that there was a different way to approach this. 

HAGAR COHEN:  Elle says she opted for alternative methods that included fasting, solitude and holistic dentistry.   

This approach worried many in the medical profession. 

PROF. FRAN BOYLE, ONCOLOGIST:  We've already started to see people here in Australia saying, well, if Elle can cure her cancer by an alternative approach, then that's what I want to do, and that's very concerning.

HAGAR COHEN:  Have you seen that happen among patients here? 

FRAN BOYLE:  Yes.

HAGAR COHEN:  Elle said she consulted several wellness gurus about treatment options.

One of them, Simone Laubscher, an Australian, is Elle’s longtime nutritionist and business consultant. 

SIMONE LAUBSCHER:  Hi everyone, as per my latest blog...

SIMONE LAUBSCHER: I’ve put together a brand-new protocol...

SIMONE LAUBSCHER: Black seeds, chia seeds. 

SIMONE LAUBSCHER:  I get my bare feet on the earth for at least 20 minutes per day.

SIMONE LAUBSCHER: It’s a reflection of my own healing journey.

HAGAR COHEN:  Elle’s wellness company, Welleco, is registered in Australia. Simone is a shareholder and formulated the company’s ‘Super Elixer’ supplements.

ELLE MACPHERSON:  I’ll answer it from a consumer point of view, and then Simone can answer it from a doctor’s point of view

HAGAR COHEN:  Simone Laubscher featured several times in the company’s ‘Ask the Doctor’ Q+A series.   

Elle wrote in her book that Dr Laubscher was one of the first people she contacted after her diagnosis, because Simone already had many patients with cancer.

Simone helped sort through various alternative and pharmaceutical treatments most suited for her diagnosis including chemo and other alternative options. 

SIMONE LAUBSCHER:  I understand that mind body connection and the emotional roots of disease, and you work on those, and patients get well.   

HAGAR COHEN:  Over the years Simone has had her PhD described in different ways:

A PhD in Nutrition and Toxicology.

A PhD in Longevity and Internal Pollution. 

A PhD in Nutrition and Oxidative Stress.

And a PhD in cancer.     

SIMONE LAUBSCHER:  I treat everything. I’ve got a PhD in cancer. 

INTERVIEWER:  Today, one of my favourites - Dr Simone Laubscher. 

HAGAR COHEN:  And she says she’s currently completing another PhD. 

SIMONE LAUBSCHER:  I'm doing another PhD at the moment in neuroscience with my hubby. 

HAGAR COHEN:  Simone claimed in her bio to have bachelor’s and master’s degrees in nutrition, and a PhD from the University of New South Wales.   

UNSW has confirmed that Simone has none of those.

Her only degree from the university is a Bachelor in Sports Science, completed in 1998.

The university contacted Simone in 2022 demanding she immediately stop false and misleading representations of her academic qualifications from UNSW. 

Simone agreed to comply. 

FRAN BOYLE:  When someone describes themselves as a doctor, it can be confusing and dangerous for patients if they believe that person is an oncologist and believes that they are medically trained and are giving appropriate advice. 

HAGAR COHEN:  In a statement Simone said the claims in her bio were an error made by her IT team. 

However, Elle Macpherson’s company Welleco, continued to promote Simone’s UNSW PhD well after the university demanded she stop.   

There is no suggestion that Elle Macpherson or Welleco were aware that Simone was falsely claiming to have a UNSW PhD. 

In response to our questions Simone provided certificates showing she holds a Master’s in Nutrition and Naturopathic Health, awarded in 2006, and a Doctor in Philosophy in Naturopathic Health awarded in 2010 from the Global College of Natural Medicine.   

The online college was shut down in 2012 and was involved in a class action by former students who claimed they never received the degrees they paid for. 

The college was not endorsed by any accreditation bodies recognised by the US Department of Education. 

7.30 has found evidence Simone was being referred to as a 'doctor' from as early as 2004 - at least six years before she says she was awarded her PhD.     

Simone said she is currently studying a doctorate in Integrative Medicine at Quantum University - also not recognised by any US Department of Education accreditation bodies. 

In the early 2000s, Simone moved from Sydney to London where she began working in a Soho based clinic. 

DR ERIC ASHER, GP AND HOMEOPATH:  She was a nutritionist, and she had a particular interest in anti-ageing.

HAGAR COHEN:  Dr Eric Asher was head of medical services at Third Space Medicine from 2001 until 2021.

It was a holistic medical service offering alternative therapies. Dr Asher is a GP and homeopath. 

ERIC ASHER:  I was her boss.

HAGAR COHEN:  What was your impressions of her professionally? 

ERIC ASHER: Competent, charismatic, very, very confident. 

HAGAR COHEN:  Outside work, at her church Hillsong in London, she was regarded as a health expert says Rachel Bennetts who met Simone through church.     

RACHEL BENNETTS:  I've known Simone for 20 years. She developed a real reputation as a health practitioner, someone that people would see just for general lifestyle changes, but also over time, people would see her with genuine medical conditions as well. 

HAGAR COHEN:  Rachel says she has grown wary of Simone’s advice - some of it was too alternative for her liking 

RACHEL BENNETTS:  I remember one of them was to administer, I think it was a daily coffee enema, and I just thought, no. And then the second one was having naked infrared saunas and that was always like a little flag to me. 

I remember listening to her and thinking, well, for someone with a PhD, this isn't scientific. 

HAGAR COHEN:  Back in 2004 what did you understand her profession to be?

RACHEL BENNETTS:  I understood her profession to be a doctor, I knew it wasn’t a medical doctor. I just simply accepted Dr Simone and she said that she had a science degree and that she had done a master's and a PhD in I think it was toxicology and nutrition.

HAGAR COHEN:  Was she a doctor? 

ERIC ASHER:  No, of course not.   

HAGAR COHEN:  Eric Asher was joint head of medical services at the Soho clinic. 

Simone Laubscher told 7.30 she held that role from 2003 until 2004 for around 18 months while also working as a nutritionist. 

SIMONE LAUBSCHER: Working there as a nutritionist, and then I was handpicked as joint head of medical services. 

HAGAR COHEN:  On her LinkedIn she said she held that title for five years. We showed Dr Asher a copy of her LinkedIn account. 

ERIC ASHER:  What a load of rubbish. That's nonsense, absolute nonsense. I have no idea why she would put such a thing down. It is not true. 

HAGAR COHEN:  Because this is publicly available on her LinkedIn account. 

ERIC ASHER:  Yes, and it's not true.   

HAGAR COHEN:  After 7.30 contacted Simone, she changed the claim on her LinkedIn account

In 2006, Simone left Third Space Medicine and opened her own wellness practice.

Rejuv had an office in London’s esteemed Harley Street. 

It was there that one day in 2013 Elle Macpherson turned up for a consult.

Elle wrote in her book that she had a cancer scare, and Dr Simone Laubscher PhD was renowned for her work in a number of conditions, including cancer. 

The scare turned out to be a benign cyst, but Elle wrote that she still booked an appointment with Simone to talk about her diet. 

ELLE MACPHERSON:  I brought her this array of vitamins I was taking, put them all out on table to her and I said I am taking all these vitamins, I don’t know why I feel like this. 

ERIN KURT:  We will talk with my very special guest today, Dr Simone Laubscher 

SIMONE LAUBSCHER:  My mother got cancer. So I thought, I really wanted to go off and maybe I didn’t see many good results back then with Western medicine with cancer.

I'm going to go on a mission to get myself well and I'm going to use that science to help my mum.

HAGAR COHEN:  Simone said that in 2017 she was also diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer but cured it herself. 

SIMONE LAUBSCHER: I  know what I need to do and I saw my oncologist. She said, I told you the other day, she patted me. And she said, "See you after the summer holidays in September, I'll do surgery, chemo radio". And I'm like, "Ah, give me 100 days and it'll probably be gone." 

She patted me, said, "Oh yes, yes. See you in September," rolled her eyes at me. Came back, the lump had gone. She was like, "What?"

No surgery, no chemo, nothing because I’ve been doing this a long time, so I knew what to do, and that was all emotional junk and trauma that I hadn’t dealt with even though I was physically well.

HAGAR COHEN:  Simone has said in an interview she supports a patient’s choice when it comes to chemotherapy, but she believes that their bodies can heal the cancer.

INTERVIEWER:  You mentioned cancer briefly and what we haven’t told the audience yet that you were able to reverse…

SIMONE LAUBSCHER: Yes!

INTERVIEWER:   …your cancer. Can you talk to us about that because that is an interesting story. 

 SIMONE LAUBSCHER:   Yes, I was even talking to a patient in Egypt yesterday, and she's a medical doctor, and she's on the cancer journey, and she said, "But, but how? Like, how? No, you can't, you can't clear the tumour." And I said, "Let me ask you a question, if your body knew how to create the tumour, why do you think it's not intelligent enough to dissolve the tumour?" 

I could see her brain was just, whoa. She was like, "What, I made a mistake,"

INTERVIEWER:  Okay, so you didn't go through chemo, didn't do radiation. 

SIMONE LAUBSCHER:  No, didn't need to.

INTERVIEWER:  You did your own protocols and it worked. 

SIMONE LAUBSCHER: Yeah. 

INTERVIEWER:  That is phenomenal.

HAGAR COHEN:  Is it phenomenal?

FRAN BOYLE:  It's actually unbelievable. 

HAGAR COHEN: Oncologist Professor Fran Boyle watched a number of videos where Simone Laubscher describes her approach to cancer patients including herself.

Professor Boyle says she was alarmed at what she saw. 

FRAN BOYLE:  That's very upsetting for people who have been recommended surgery, chemo, radiotherapy, to hear someone say, oh, you know, all you have to do is fix up your stuff, and that makes it sound like it's your fault that you've got cancer, and I hate that. 

RACHEL BENNETTS:  When you go and see a doctor, there's an expectation of the level of professionalism. People are going to trust you and you're putting on your website that you treat all these serious illnesses, and you don't have those qualifications. This is, this is dangerous, and something needs to be done.