The Whole Pantry
After facing a wave of controversy in March over reports of false claims made towards her cancer diagnosis, Australian indie developer Belle Gibson this week spoke out, admitting that “none of it’s true” in regards to her ever having cancer (via News.com.au).
Last month, when $300,000 of her app sales failed to find its promised home at certain charities, the legitimacy of her cancer claims began to be questioned. Gibson is the founder of The Whole Pantry, a healthy lifestyle and diet app that focuses on naturally-occurring ingredients and solutions to complicated recipes.
Matt Novak (via John Gordon):
When the Apple Watch launched in 2015, Belle Gibson was touted by Apple as a star. Not only had Gibson supposedly cured her own cancer through healthy eating, she now had an app for both the iPhone and Apple Watch that could help others do the same. But now that her own cancer and “cure” have been exposed as fake, people are asking what responsibility Apple had to the public.
[…]
When the press started asking hard questions and raising doubts about her astonishing claims in April of 2015, Apple’s internal emails about their star app developer show that the company was ready to stand by Gibson.
This is the second-worst instance of Apple falling for “natural cancer cure” quackery.
2 Comments RSS · Twitter
I don't think Apple should be the gatekeeper, final arbiter if you will, of taste on the App store. They shouldn't editorialize apps beyond safety and security concerns. As such, I would be inclined to not hold Apple accountable for this fiasco. However, Apple has time and time again stepped in to editorialize apps and in this specific case, promoted said app and said developer. They deserve much of the blame for an obvious scam.....
As an aside, I was never sold with the idea the Apple Watch is the panacea for modern health concerns and promoting a blatantly unhealthy "lifestyle and diet" app confirms my fears.
>a healthy lifestyle and diet app
Randomly removing arbitrary foods from your diet is not healthy.
The fact that Apple fell for this obvious scam product is not surprising, but it *is* disappointing.