Are conspiracy theories America’s biggest export?

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0:37These days, it seems like mistrust in science has never been higher. Fewer people are getting vaccines. Vaccination rates for kindergartners continued on a downward trend across the country last year. A known vaccine skeptic is now leading the most powerful health agency in America. I want to thank President Trump for entrusting me to deliver on his promise to make America healthy again. And this year, for the first time in almost a decade, people in the U.S. died from measles. This is completely preventable. This doesn't have to happen if we can get vaccination rates back to high levels again.

1:15The attacks on public health are escalating. In August, a gunman opened fire at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control, firing over 500 rounds and killing a police officer. White's deadly attack on the CDC was fueled by his deeply held beliefs in misinformation. Increasingly, this misinformation is being exported around the world. And an ocean away, one family is reeling from its real world impacts. My sister has passed away as a direct consequence of my mom's actions and beliefs. From the BBC, I'm Asma Khalid. And today on The Global Story, Mariana Spring, on how suspicion of science in America helped radicalize a British mom with devastating consequences.

2:05Mariana, hi. It's nice to meet you. Lovely to meet you. You have become the disinformation expert at the BBC. How did you first hear about this particular story about Kate Shemarani?

2:18Marianna Spring:Kate Shemarani was someone who came onto my radar very early on in me doing this job. So I started investigating all things, social media, disinformation, around the time that the lockdowns were first imposed during the pandemic here in the UK. And Kate Shemarani was a conspiracy theory influencer who didn't have a huge following at that point. She was posting on social media. She was attending these anti-lockdown rallies. And I remember being at Trafalgar Square in the centre of London and seeing her at one of these protests. And, you know, she was in this quite glamorous dress. She's got long blonde hair.

2:55Marianna Spring:She had a mic. And what was interesting is that she was someone who is, was trained as a nurse.

3:05Marianna Spring:She was there spreading completely untrue claims about the pandemic that went way beyond legitimate questions and concerns people might have about the proportionality of lockdown measures or vaccines.

3:21Marianna Spring:She builds this platform and she starts to get criticised more and more, particularly when she makes comments suggesting that doctors and nurses involved in administering the vaccination are similar to doctors and nurses in Germany who were hanged for their part in medical experimentation, etc, etc. But perhaps the main way that I came to understand her family was speaking to her children who reached out to me. In the summer of 2020, which was very early on in the pandemic, I heard from her eldest son called Sebastian, who said to me, I'm really worried about the harm that my mum is causing by promoting misinformation about the pandemic, particularly because she's often using her nursing credentials.

4:08And you met her in person during this time period?

4:10Marianna Spring:I did. I met her to speak to her about anti-vaccine videos that she featured in. It was a very intriguing experience. I went round to her house and when I met her, my impression was she really wanted me to like her, which surprised me given that I'd just interviewed her son, who was saying, my mum is a danger to society because she's sharing this kind of misinformation.

4:34Marianna Spring:We were at her house, met all her cats and chihuahuas, and there were these photos of the family on the wall. So she has four children. But I knew at that point they weren't in touch with her. So it felt like this veneer of, we want to be this happy family and it's all perfect and it's all great. But I knew behind the scenes that at least two of her children had decided they didn't really want to speak to her anymore because she was spreading misinformation. So this is happening 2020, 2021. Yes. As the COVID lockdowns were getting underway. What happens after that time period after you meet her?

5:14Did you stay in touch over the last few years?

5:17Marianna Spring:Yeah, she stayed in touch over text. She used to text me quite a lot, actually, usually warning me that I was somehow being used or misled by the evil BBC who want me to say and do certain things. Spoiler. That doesn't happen. I'm quite disobedient probably in that regard. But I stayed in touch with her and I also stayed in touch with Sebastian, her elder son, mainly because I was quite interested to see what happened next. Was it possible for their relationship to repair? Would his mum suddenly have this moment where she turned around and said, oh, actually, I don't know why I was posting that stuff and showing that content?

5:53Marianna Spring:I kind of wanted to keep tabs and see what happened. But I don't think I had any idea that it would get as bad as it did, really. Okay, there are a lot of characters in the story. So I want to take a moment and pause just to explain who is who in this family. There's the mom, Kate Shemarani, whom we've already met. She's this well-known British conspiracy theorist. Their eldest son is Sebastian. We met him earlier, too. Then there's a set of twins, Paloma and Gabriel. Paloma is central to this story. She's the daughter who ends up getting sick. Her twin brother is Gabriel. And they all seem to remember a childhood filled with conspiracy theories.

6:42Marianna Spring:It's interesting because when you talk to Sebastian and Gabriel Shemarani about this, they're often filling in the gaps, particularly because a lot of this happened when they were really little. So it was around 2001 when the 9-11 attacks happened in the United States. They say their dad in particular became extra fascinated in conspiracy theories. My dad was radicalised by 2001. He believed and still believes that 9-11 was an inside job. You know, it was staged in some way. It was an inside job. It was a hoax. He would come home from work around maybe 9 or 10pm at night and spend hours until the early hours of the morning watching conspiracy theory documentaries and videos.

7:32Marianna Spring:So they say that their dad got really into this 9-11 stuff and he was the person that drew their mum into that way of thinking and she also started to indulge in conspiracy theories. You know, I'd come home from school and she would tell me some new mystical property of a vegetable that she'd found. So there was a lot about lizards. Me and Sebastian believed that the Royal Family were lizards. Shapeshifting lizards that crossed across dimensions. Oh, this I'm not familiar with. This must be like a British conspiracy. Yeah, it kind of is. Although actually a lot of US conspiracy theorists share it as well.

8:10Marianna Spring:So there was a lot of talk about lizards. You know, bedtime stories with lizards. She gave me this book for Christmas by David Icke. It was all about the lizard people that live under the surface of the Earth. And then it started to sort of gradually escalate. About how the Rothschilds are plotting to go live on a space station, how there's going to be this mass genocide and stuff like that. It sounds like a bad Hollywood plot. But at the time, you know, I'm 10, 11 years old and I'm bricking it.

8:38Marianna Spring:They would listen to Alex Jones, the US conspiracy theorist, in the car on the way to school. About Sandy Herc. About Sandy Hook, the shooting that happened in Connecticut in 2012, and all of these false narratives that were being spread at that time, suggesting that it was a hoax or stage that the children had not really died. Really disturbing stuff. It sounds like what you're saying is these kids don't remember a time in their lives when they were not surrounded by conspiracy theories from their parents, that their mom was really predisposed to this. But was there a particular moment in which she becomes sort of deeply, deeply entrenched in these views?

9:19Marianna Spring:so 2012 was this pivotal year where Kate Shemarani was diagnosed with breast cancer and at the time the kids say they were kind of kept in the dark about it they didn't really know what was going on but she had a mastectomy so an operation which appears to be the thing that removed the cancer but she chose not to have subsequent treatment like chemotherapy or radiotherapy which you can have often to prevent the return of that cancer and she turned to alternative medicine. What does that even mean alternative medicines what would she have done? Alternative medicines can be a whole range of things so it can include diet supplements there's oxygen treatments that you can have often they're rooted in lifestyle change and what's important to say is that some alternative medicine can be and is intended to be complementary so people might choose to have conventional treatment and then also to basically eat healthily or do things that are good for their well-being but when it comes to Kate Shemarani she credited this alternative medicine on its own as being the cure as being yeah exactly so she usually uses this word cancer-free I'm cancer-free because I pursued this alternative medicine regime I chose to do the Gerson therapy 13 juices a day all organic it was more so around 2015 that she started actually sharing this stuff on social media.

10:42Marianna Spring:And an organic, fat-free, salt-free, sugar-free, vegan diet. Five coffee enemas a day also. And specifically using her own cancer journey as a key way of connecting with people online. Hi, I'm Kate Shumarone, natural nurse in a toxic world. And building up this brand too. So calling herself the natural nurse because she had those nursing qualifications. Everything I learned in nursing school, I'd had to unlearn and re-educate myself in a lot of things. and it's worth saying as well that at this point the children have absorbed quite a lot of the views that their parents were sharing I mean you trust your parents so for example when it came to Paloma you know her friends have spoken to me about how she didn't use sun cream because her mama told her that that could give her cancer or she wouldn't use toothpaste that had fluoride in it or she wouldn't eat meat there were quite a few things that she chose to do taking on her mom's health beliefs.

11:35Marianna Spring:But her process of separating from her mum in particular happens when she's at Cambridge University, where she begins to distance herself from her parents' views. And friends I've spoken to describe how she starts eating meat. She starts using toothpaste that has fluoride in it. She might take painkillers if she doesn't feel well, which she wouldn't have done. She does continue to try and go back home during the university holidays. But then the kind of unthinkable happens. So Paloma, she's graduated from university. She's living in Kent in a flat share. And then she starts to have some trouble breathing.

12:08Marianna Spring:She's got a pain in her chest. She goes and has a whole range of tests. And then she finds out that December in 2023 that she has non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a blood cancer. The doctors at the time say to her, look, obviously this is scary, but it's a really treatable cancer, especially in younger people like you. They give her around an 80 % chance of the cancer being cured if she has chemotherapy, conventional therapy. And at that time, she seemed to genuinely be considering that. And then her mum turns up out of the hospital.

12:53Hi there, I'm Asma Khalid. And I'm Tristan Redmond. And together we're the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. For those of you who might be new to our show, we here at The Global Story dive deep every weekday on one big story at the intersection of where the world and America meet. And you can now watch The Global Story on the iHeart app. Catch every brand new episode every weekday. Just tap into iHeart to start watching. And we hope you enjoy the show.

13:26I think it's totally understandable. Any mom would want to be there in the hospital with their kid when they're in a moment of crisis, even if they hadn't had the smoothest relationship. But when Kate does show up at the hospital, how does she then insert herself and her views into her daughter's treatment plans?

13:48Marianna Spring:So from the accounts of people who were there, Paloma's former boyfriend, for example, and his mom, who'd attended the hospital with Paloma. They say that the atmosphere changed very quickly when Kate Shemarani turned up. How so? So she was asking for blood work, histology. She wanted to know exactly what was going on. And some of these things are normal things. If you're a mum and you turn up, you want to know what's going on. But before Kate Shemarani had turned up, Paloma had expressed concern to medics that she was worried what would happen if her mum did end up coming. and I've seen evidence that the medics at the time were discussing safeguarding concerns.

14:26Marianna Spring:They were saying, hang on a second, what's happening here? And then when... Protect her from her own mother. At the time, I've seen text messages where Kate Shemarani was, you know, texting the former boyfriend, for example, saying, don't let her consent to chemo, don't let her consent to anything. And Paloma's kind of saying, okay, everyone, can we just calm down? All of the people I've spoken to who knew her really well have said to me, she was kind of on the fence. She didn't really know what to do. About doing the chemo. About doing the chemo, about whether she should go back and live with her mum, what she should do.

14:54Marianna Spring:And in the end, she decides, I'm going to go back and live with my mum. She didn't make a definitive decision about the chemo. She said, for now, I don't want to have it. And I want to pursue this other therapy, which is called Gerson therapy. What's that? I'm not familiar with that. So Gerson therapy is a type of alternative medicine. People use it for a whole range of different illnesses. and it involves a very strict diet of fruits and vegetables and juices and also coffee enemas. It can actually be harmful in and of itself. And that was something that really, really worried Gabriel and Sebastian.

15:32Marianna Spring:And how do they react? How do the brothers react to this? So straight away when Paloma has gone home to her mum, so around Christmas of 2023, Gabriel actually turns up at the house with the boyfriend at the time, Ander, and they try to get Paloma to leave. Paloma's really confused. She found the whole thing quite distressing because you end up with Gabriel and her mum arguing with each other. But there's this desperation and when you talk to Gabriel about it, he says, like, this is my twin sister and I just really needed her to leave. I was so worried that the minute she was back home with mum, that was it, that she was going to go down this alternative medicine route and no matter how poorly she got, she wouldn't seek help.

16:10Marianna Spring:And that was actually the last time that Gabriel ever saw his twin sister. that Christmas.

16:20Marianna Spring:Increasingly, Paloma is difficult to speak to. The relationship with her boyfriend breaks down over a period of time. And Gabriel then tries one last-ditch attempt to say, please, Paloma, can you have chemotherapy? I'm so worried, I don't want you to die. And he ends up getting blocked.

16:43and during the time period i imagine she's getting sicker because if you don't do anything to treat cancer right in terms of chemo how are you going to get better exactly that and

16:53Marianna Spring:she's started to fall out with everyone really family friends her boyfriend there is one friend who takes a bit of a different approach because she doesn't want to get blocked and shut out she said she really didn't want her friends getting involved with this stuff. She'd argued with so many people and she was just too tired to argue. And she'd always mention cutting people off. Or I thought, I don't want to be cut off, especially when she's struggling like this. She's called Chantal and she tries to keep speaking to Paloma, having video calls. And on one of those calls, Paloma says to her, look, I've got a new lump under my armpit.

17:29And Chantal's really worried. She had a new lump in her armpit. And her mum had told her that the cancer was going out of her body. It was just, you know, like leaving. And I remember thinking, well, that's not the case, you know. And I was like, are you sure? I think you should do scans. I think you should investigate. I don't know if that's true, you know.

17:52Marianna Spring:From April onwards, she seems to just be becoming more unwell. She does do this post on Instagram saying, I want to talk about my alternative health journey and thank my wonderful mum and practitioners. And some of her friends, including Chantal, are a little bit confused because this seems at odds with how unwell she is. She would tell me that she really lost control of her bodily functions. She was throwing up non-stop. She was very, very thin. It was hard. And the last few months, she was in so much pain, I could tell. Then it gets to July and Paloma collapses at home. her mum's friend comes round and her mum's friend calls the ambulance.

18:35Marianna Spring:I've heard that 999 call, which is really distressing, where her mum says she's dying. And then Paloma ends up being taken to hospital in Brighton. But by that point, she's lost consciousness and she stays in hospital for a few days before the decision is made to turn off her life support because they can't do anything.

19:07Marianna Spring:One of the most distressing things about this story, and a lot of it is very distressing, is that Gabriel and Sebastian didn't find out that Paloma had died until around a week after she died. And Gabriel talks to me about how hard it was that he knows he was walking around for a week and his twin sister wasn't alive anymore, which you can't even really imagine what that must feel like, particularly as a twin. So their mother did not tell them? No. And he calls up his mum and says, Paloma's died, why didn't you tell me? And he says that she responded by saying, who told you that?

19:52Marianna Spring:And he says that he at that time said, right, I'm going to hold you accountable for what's happened here. hangs up the phone, they don't speak again.

20:04You're describing this death that took place in the summer of 2024. What's happened in the interim since?

20:14Marianna Spring:So since Paloma died, I'd say Gabriel and Sebastian have been on quite a mission. I've tried to interview Kate Shemarani multiple times about Paloma. she's remained adamant that her conspiracy theory ideas did not influence her daughter. These were her own decisions. There's also been an inquest, which is something we have here in the UK. What's that mean? I heard you say that. So when there are any question marks over a death when someone's died, so it might be that there's suspected wrongdoing by medical authorities or by the police or anyone else involved. It might just be that it's unclear how someone died or why they died or that there needs to be...