Noel Edmonds on cancer: how I’m A Celebrity contestant’s view angered almost everyone

I’m A Celebrity‘s Noel Edmonds is well known for having some rather left-field ideas and opinions.

He has yet to provoke a national debate from any comments he’s said in the jungle so far, but only time will tell what views the TV presenter wants to impart on the nation.

Of all his controversies, he is perhaps best known for his claims two years ago that he “cured” his prostate cancer with electromagnetic waves and positive energy.

What does he believe happened?

Edmonds appeared on This Morning in November 2016, and told Phil Schofield and Holly Willoughby that he had been suffering with prostate cancer, which he says was caused by negative energy around him.

“I know why I got my cancer… the definition of stress is negative energy. It didn’t just decide to manifest itself, there was cause”

At the time, Edmonds was – and still is – in a legal battle with Lloyds Bank, as he claims his company, Unique Group, was pushed into failure by the fraudulent activity at the Reading branch of HBOS,  which Lloyds acquired in 2008.

It was the stress of this that caused him to get cancer, he said: “I am absolutely sure the negative forces acting on me impacted on my health… There is a wealth of information from various clinical studies of a direct link between stress and cancer… I am absolutely certain there was a link in my case.”

He told Schofield and Willoughby: “I was, I thought, very, very healthy. I know why I got my cancer… the definition of stress is negative energy. It didn’t just decide to manifest itself, there was cause.”

So far, so subjective. But what really got Edmonds into trouble was how he claimed he cured it.

Electromagnetism

Edmonds couldn’t have been clearer in his delivery: “Thanks to electromagnetism, I’m now cancer-free,” he told the This Morning audience, which usually clocks in at around one million people, daily.

The problem intensified when Edmonds started to claim on Twitter that an electromagnetic pulse device, made by EMP Pad Ltd costing £2,315, was “a simple box that slows ageing, reduces pain, lifts depression and stress and tackles cancer. Yep tackles cancer!”.

He then caused further outrage by tweeting to a man with kidney cancer, lymph node metastases and psoriatic arthritis that: “Scientific fact-disease is caused by negative energy. Is it possible your ill health is caused by your negative attitude? #explore.”

“Is it possible your ill health is caused by your negative attitude? #explore.”

Noel Edmond’s tweet to a man with kidney cancer

EMP Pad Ltd said it did not agree with Edmonds claim “in any way, shape or form”, and that he had received no payment from them for his public statements.

The Cancer Act of 1939

Part of the Cancer Act of 1939 makes it illegal to  “offer to treat any person for cancer, or to prescribe any remedy therefor, or to give any advice in connection with the treatment thereof,” especially in the case of advertising. The Advertising Standards Authority at the time said it was “urgently looking into a complaint” about this, but later said no rules had been broken.

Meanwhile, Cancer Research UK wrote an article to reassure the public. “The best studies looking at this topic have failed to show a link between emotional stress and an increased risk of cancer,” it said. “No reliable evidence has ever been produced that Rife machines – or any similar devices producing low-frequency electromagnetic pulses – have any benefit for cancer patients.”

What did academics in oncology have to say about this?

David Grimes, a cancer researcher at Oxford University said at the time: “It’s not just untrue, it’s patronising and victim blaming, cancer is bad luck… the healthiest people in the world get cancer and it’s not because they are negative”.

“It’s victim blaming… the healthiest people in the world get cancer and it’s not because they are negative,”

David Grimes, cancer researcher at Oxford University

Prof. John Gribben, Chair of Medical Oncology at Queen Mary University called it “complete gibberish” and said it “undermines all the good work everyone does with evidence-based medicine and targeted approaches”.

Edzard Ernst, Emeritus Professor at the University of Exeter, said: “The reason why most of us put ‘negative energy’ in inverted commas is simple: it is a pure figment of the imagination of fantasists.

“That would not be so bad except that, as we see, some VIPs seem to take this nonsense seriously. The result might be that some desperate patients believe them, and choose the nonsense over the best that real medicine has to offer. And that could hasten deaths.”

Does Edmonds still believe in the power of positive thinking?

Absolutely. He later claimed to have been “stitched up” by This Morning and tweeted: “Phil [Schofield], if you are unlucky enough to be seriously ill, I promise I wont be so callous and I will show you respect, sympathy and compassion.”

A few months later, he added: “Negative people are more vulnerable to serious illness and premature death – source Cambridge Institute and today Harvard University.”

Earlier this year, he was wheeled out on the Victoria Derbyshire show, where he reiterated his thoughts on the matter, once and for all.

“It is a scientific fact that negative energy causes disease and negative thoughts are part of that energy process.

“If you are faced with a serious illness, you have to come at it with a positive mental attitude. It changes the outcome and millions of doctors and scientists will tell you that,” he declared.