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Inside Elle Macpherson's Bizarre Relationship With Disgraced Anti-vaccine Doc Andrew Wakefield Before Their Split
ELLE Macpherson endured a bizarre relationship with disgraced anti-vaccine doctor Andrew Wakefield before their split in 2019.
Their union raised eyebrows at the time, especially since they made an odd couple—a supermodel dedicated to wellness and a doctor infamous for being a global health menace.
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Elle Macpherson is known as being one of the original band of 80s supermodelsCredit: Sky Living
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Ellie previously dated a disgraced doctorCredit: Splash News
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Andrew Wakefield was struck offCredit: Getty Images - GettyYet, there they were, sharing a kiss and being touchy-feely as they picked up fruit and veg from the market.
The news that Elle was dating Wakefield, who was struck off as a doctor in the UK due to his fraudulent claim linking the MMR vaccine to autism, not only turned heads—it sparked serious concern.
Wakefield's anti-vaccination campaign had led to significant increases in childhood diseases that were nearly eradicated.
There was growing worry that Elle's association with him could tie her to the anti-vaccination movement, potentially intertwining it with the type of wellness she promotes.
Her union with Wakefield has been brought back to light following her revelation that she chose not to undergo traditional medical treatment after being diagnosed with breast cancer seven years ago.
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Dunnes Stores fans rushing to buy 'effortlessly chic' €30 dress for autumnAfter undergoing a lumpectomy, the WelleCo founder was diagnosed with HER2 positive estrogen receptive intraductal carcinoma.
Her doctors recommended a treatment plan that included a mastectomy, radiation, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, and breast reconstruction.
However, Elle chose to forgo conventional medical treatments.
In an interview to promote her upcoming memoir, Elle told Women's Weekly that she spent time praying and meditating on a Miami beach, ultimately deciding against pharmaceutical treatments.
She also rented a house in Phoenix, Arizona for eight months where she "holistically treated" her cancer under the guidance of her primary doctor, a doctor of naturopathy, her holistic dentist, osteopath, chiropractor and two therapists.
Though alternative treatments can help with symptoms of cancer, such as nausea and fatigue, there is no evidence to say they can cure the disease.
Cancer Research UK states: "There is no scientific evidence to prove that any type of alternative therapy can help to control or cure cancer.
"Some alternative therapies might be unsafe and can cause harmful side effects."
Alternative therapies, which include acupuncture, aromatherapy, cognitive behavioural therapy, hypnosis, massage and more , are not available on the NHS and so are only available to those who can pay to go private.
At the time of her union with Wakefield, investigative journalist Anna Merlan wrote on Jezebel, the online women's magazine: "If the relationship lasts, Macpherson could be instrumental in introducing Wakefield and his ideas to a whole new world of monied and influential people — people who are, like her, concerned with the somewhat spongy and ever-more-profitable concept of 'wellness'."
Wakefield's estranged wife Carmel, 61, is also shocked. Her brother, Finbar O'Donovan, said: "We had no idea that Andrew was seeing Elle Macpherson.
"My sister and Andrew only split up a few months ago. They are not divorced yet but they plan to."
Mr O'Donovan, 71, of Dronfield, Derbys, said his sister called him on Tuesday when pictures emerged of loved-up Wakefield and Elle at the farmers' market in Miami.
He said: "She sounded shocked and said she was very surprised but also seemed amused that her husband had found a new girlfriend, who is a top model. She feels let down because it would seem they got together soon after she and Andrew split."
Wakefield, 61, fled to the US with Carmel and their three children in 2001 after becoming a pariah in the UK. He left the family home eight months ago.
A friend explained: "There wasn't a big argument, he just said he was moving on. He said he wanted to find himself."
At around the same time, in November last year, Australian Elle was spotted draping her arm over Wakefield's shoulders at the Doctors Who Rock awards in Orlando, Florida.
The pretentious-sounding awards celebrate medics for their "pioneering paradigm-shifting solutions in the fields of longevity, regeneration and chronic health issues such as autism".
Elle who moved to Miami in 2013 after marrying American billionaire Jeffrey Soffer, was listed as a "health advocate" and was invited for a "special appearance". It is not known if this is where the pair first met or how long they have been dating, but perhaps it gives a clue as to where the attraction lies.
Elle, dubbed The Body, is a passionate advocate of alternative health ideas. Back in 2014, feeling rundown, she sought guidance from nutritionist Dr Simone Laubscher who advised that her pH levels were off kilter.
The doctor suggested eating an alkaline diet, in which 80 per cent of foods are alkaline, such as kale and tofu, while just 20 per cent are "acid", such as pasta and cheese.
Soon Elle was saying she felt better than she had ever done in her life, and even declared: "I believe that most ailments come from having an acidic body."
She is now such a devotee of the doctrine she carries around testing sticks to keep check on the pH level of her urine. Elle also co-founded health supplement company Welleco, which sells "super elixirs" including alkalising powders. These cost about £800 for a year's supply.
The Super Elixir Greens powder alone, for example, costs £96 for 300g. It is made of turmeric, mushrooms, horsetail extract and barley grass.Kate Moss once said she was adding the powders to her morning juice drink, and Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw is a fan.
Supporters believe the alkaline diet does wonders for the skin, can ward off ailments such as osteoporosis and can even prevent cancer.But Sian Porter, a spokeswoman for the British Dietetic Association, said: "This is based on pseudo-science. Food doesn't affect your blood's pH and the whole premise of the diet is wrong.
"Your diet may impact the pH of your urine but there is no health benefit to changing this. It certainly doesn't help to treat cancer."
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A women's website has claimed Macpherson could be instrumental in introducing Wakefield and his ideas to a whole new worldCredit: Getty Images - Getty
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Elle has revealed she turned down chemoMeanwhile, in January Elle attended an event in New Jersey run by the website Fearless Parent — which has warned of the "dangers" of vaccination. Wakefield was guest of honour at the evening titled A Celebration of Medical and Parental Rights.
Mum-of-two Elle has never made her opinion on vaccination public, while Wakefield's history on the subject is, of course, notorious. He was struck off by the General Medical Council in 2010 after he was found guilty of fraud, misconduct and unethically carrying out unnecessary tests on children, relating to his now fully discredited and retracted 1998 paper that claimed a link between MMR and autism.
But by then the damage to the health of the world's children had been done. His paper, published in medical journal The Lancet, and publicity surrounding it threw a grenade into the UK immunisation programme.
Take-up rates of the vaccine plummeted and the country suffered spikes in measles and mumps, including the first death from measles in 14 years. When Wakefield, once a gastro- intestinal surgeon at London's Royal Free hospital, headed to the US to start his new life in Texas, the same thing happened there.
While he does not practise medicine in the US, Wakefield has continued to promote his "anti-vaxx" views and has amassed a wealth of support. Last year, his views were linked to the largest outbreak of measles in years, in Minnesota, where he had previously campaigned.
He has also been blamed for 45,000 children opting out of school vaccinations in 2016 in Texas. Measles had been eliminated in the US by 2000, yet last year there were more than 60 cases, and estimates show one in ten parents in the USA think vaccines are unsafe.
The New York Times accused Wakefield of "irresponsibly starting a panic with tragic repercussions" — but the country's anti-vaxx movement has only gained ground.
This has been helped by the emergence of passionate bloggers and celebrities including Jim Carrey and his ex-partner, model Jenny McCarthy, who believe her son's autism is down to vaccination.
Hollywood legend Robert De Niro has also spoken of his fears that vaccines may have caused his own son Elliot's autism. And another major backer of Wakefield's beliefs is now the President.
In 2014 Donald Trump tweeted: "If I were President I would push for proper vaccinations but would not allow one-time massive shots that a small child cannot take — AUTISM."
He has also reportedly asked another vaccine-sceptic, Robert F Kennedy — nephew of JFK — to lead a commission into vaccine safety. Trump and Wakefield have been pictured together, and Wakefield attended a meeting with the President in 2016 as well as going to one of his inauguration balls.
Wakefield said of the 45-minute meeting: "He (Trump) interjected and said, 'You don't need to tell me that vaccines cause autism. I've seen it, I've seen it personally'.
"We went on to discuss the issue of the autism crisis that is set to affect 80 per cent of boys if nothing is done. He said if he was to be elected he'd do something about it."
Elle — who once reminisced about partying with Trump in her modelling heyday, saying it was "pretty cool" — is used to high-profile liaisons.
She has notched up romances with Billy Joel, Kevin Costner, Green Shield Stamps heir Tim Jefferies, and wed French fashion photographer Gilles Bensimon in 1986.
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Her second marriage, to Jeffrey Soffer, ended last year after four years. It was recently reported that she received £40million and their Miami mansion in her settlement.
But Elle believes that no amount of money can match being in love. She once said: "My favourite body part is my heart. Nothing beats loving and being loved."
20 years of chaos
1988: Combined triple vaccine is introduced for measles, mumps and rubella, known as MMR. It replaced the single jabs.
February 1998: Dr Andrew Wakefield and 12 co-authors publish a paper in The Lancet linking MMR with autism and bowel disease.
March 1998: Medical Research Council states there is no evidence for Wakefield's claims.
2001: Wakefield moves to America. PM Tony Blair refuses to comment when asked in the Commons if his toddler son Leo had been vaccinated. It later emerges he was vaccinated.
2003 : The World Health Organisation states there is no evidence to link MMR and autism.
That year, rates of take-up of MMR had dropped from above 90 per cent to 79 per cent.
2004: A Sunday Times investigation reveals Wakefield's research was funded by lawyers mounting a case gainst vaccine manufacturers. Ten of his co-authors withdraw their support.
2005: This year there are 43,378 cases of mumps in England and Wales, up from 94 cases in 1996 before Wakefield's claims.
2006: A boy, 13, in Manchester becomes the first UK measles fatality in 14 years. Recorded number of measles in UK for the year is 449, up from 56 in 1998.
2007: General Medical Council opens investigation.
February 2010: The Lancet retracts the original paper. Its editor describes parts of it as "utterly false".
May 2010: General Medical Council finds Wakefield guilty of serious professional misconduct, including four counts of dishonesty and 12 counts involving the abuse of developmentally delayed children for carrying out unnecessary and invasive tests. He is struck off the medical register.
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Elle was spotted kissing him at the time they datedCredit: Splash News
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Elle has revealed she secretly battled cancer seven years agoCredit: Getty Images - GettyWhich Vaccines Should You Get And Recommend This Fall?
In this video interview, Paul Offit, MD, of Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of FDA's Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, gives recommendations for who should get the lineup of fall vaccines this year.
The following is a transcript of his remarks:
The goal of the COVID vaccine is to keep people out of the hospital and out of the intensive care unit. So the critical question then is: who's getting hospitalized? Who's getting hospitalized with COVID?
And the answer is, it generally falls into four high-risk groups. One are people who are elderly, which is to say those over 75. Two are people who are immune compromised either because they were born with certain immune deficiencies or they're taking drugs that suppress their immune system because of cancers or rheumatologic disease. Three are people who are pregnant. And four are people who have high-risk medical conditions like obesity, diabetes, chronic lung disease, chronic heart disease. So that's who you're trying to keep out of the hospital.
And so if you look at the data in terms of the ability of these yearly vaccines to keep people out of the hospital, they're about 50% to 55% effective in the first few months, assuming the strain is matched to the circulating strain. So that is valuable.
Novavax is a purified protein vaccine that has a relatively long reduction cycle, about 6 months. They had to make a decision about what strain to include earlier than the manufacturers of the mRNA vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna. So they chose the so-called JN.1 strain because that's what was the predominant strain circulating at the time that they had to make a decision to have a September rollout.
In June, the FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee met and ultimately the decision was made to use the KP.2 strain in the two mRNA vaccines. So the Novavax [vaccine] has JN.1, the two mRNA vaccines, Pfizer and Moderna, have KP.2.
Is there a functional difference? Not really. I mean, KP.1 and KP.2 and KP.3 and KP.3.1.1 are all derivatives of JN.1, so there's a lot of cross-reactivity. I think functionally it really doesn't make any difference which of those two vaccines you get.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Novavax this year because Novavax has generally been slow to market, so you don't have a lot of comparisons between Novavax and mRNA vaccines in terms of longevity of protection and also degree of protection. Hopefully, we'll get those kind of data this year.
Influenza, like respiratory syncytial virus, is basically a winter respiratory pathogen. So it's important to get the influenza vaccine before the winter season. Same thing with RSV, it's important with respiratory syncytial virus to get it before the winter season. Now, the influenza vaccine is recommended for everybody over 6 months of age. I'm definitely getting my influenza vaccine before the winter starts.
The RSV vaccine is recommended for adults who are either over 75 years of age or who are 60 to 75 years of age and have high-risk medical conditions like obesity, diabetes, chronic lung disease, chronic heart disease. So that's who the RSV vaccine is recommended for.
Those two viruses are winter viruses; therefore, you need to get that vaccine before the winter starts.
COVID has been surprising. I think everyone assumed that COVID would settle into a winter respiratory pattern, but that really hasn't happened yet. It still occurs year-round. So if you get the vaccine before the winter, you know you're going to be protected against what is invariably a winter peak. But that immunity will fade to some extent 4 to 6 months later, and the virus will still circulate and cause disease even in summer months.
I'm going to get an influenza vaccine probably in October. I'm not going to get an RSV vaccine because I'm not over 75 and I'm not in a high-risk group for those less than 75. I am going to get a COVID vaccine this year because I'm getting close to 75.
I really haven't had a COVID vaccine since the Wuhan strain. I had three doses of the Wuhan strain and I've had one natural infection, which I think frankly gives me a high frequency of memory B and T cells, which are likely to protect me -- especially memory T cells, which can then become activated and become cytotoxic T cells -- and that is very much an important immunological component in protection against severe disease.
That's my goal. My goal is to keep myself out of the hospital. I assume I'm going to get a mild or moderate infection as the years go on, but I just want to stay out of the hospital.
Emily Hutto is an Associate Video Producer & Editor for MedPage Today. She is based in Manhattan.
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