The death of a woman who declined cancer treatment, allegedly on the advice of her mother, a conspiracy theorist and former nurse, is proof of the need to legally protect the title ‘nurse’, according to campaigners.
Paloma Shemirani, who had non-Hodgkin lymphoma, died last July aged 23 after suffering a heart attack, which was understood to have been caused by the tumour. An inquest into her death remains ongoing.
Paloma’s brother, Sebastian Shemirani, recently appeared on BBC Panorama’s Cancer Conspiracy Theories: Why Did Our Sister Die?
In the programme and on other public mediums since, Mr Shemirani accused his mother, Kay Shemirani (who goes by the name Kate), of causing his sister’s death by pressuring her into declining chemotherapy.
Mr Shemirani has now spoken with Nursing Times about how he hopes his sister’s death will spur on changes to the law limiting who can present themselves as a healthcare professional.
His mother was struck off the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) register in 2021 by a fitness to practise panel.
An outspoken denier of Covid-19, Ms Shemirani had told people to not wear face masks, bother with social distancing or have the vaccine.
As well as, this, she had said nurses were “complicit in genocide”, “criminals and liars”, and claimed that the vast majority of nurses were “crap”.
However, despite being struck off, Ms Shemirani said at the time that she would continue to use the title of ‘nurse’.
She has since built a business marketing herself as a ‘health adviser’ and on her website, she refers to her service as ‘natural nurse’ and sells health consultations.
On social media, Ms Shemirani has also referred to healthcare as a “scam” and said that “the NHS is a cult”.
Kate Shemirani
A consultant haematologist recently told Paloma’s inquest that Ms Shemirani had been “influencing” her daughter’s decision to decline treatment for her cancer.
The 23-year-old had been on a daily “treatment plan” of coffee enemas, a strict diet and “lots of green juices”, according to a family member.
Ms Shemirani has denied any involvement in her daughter’s death, having told the inquest that she blamed it on paramedics and the administering of “experimental” medication during her treatment.
Speaking to Nursing Times following the broadcast of the BBC programme, Mr Shemirani, who cut ties with his mother nine years ago, said she sees herself as a “conduit of the truth” and that her former professional title – which she sometimes still uses – gives her a false air of authority.
Mr Shemirani described the environment in which he, and his siblings, grew up in as a “cult”.
He said that Paloma was “not in the frame of mind to make an unbiased decision” about her cancer treatment.
This, he said, was because Paloma, unlike himself and another of their siblings, continued to have a relationship with Ms Shemirani and be influenced by her.
“You cannot make an informed decision to reject chemotherapy, that has an 80 per cent five-year survival rate, over something that is untested, and is basically the same as doing nothing,” he said.
“The fact that Paloma made this decision is evidence that she wasn’t in a decision making mindset,” he told Nursing Times.
“You cannot make an informed decision, for example, to kill yourself, in most circumstances… a 23-year-old cannot make an informed decision to reject chemotherapy, because, by definition, that’s not informed; by definition, something is wrong.”
The campaign to protect the title of the nurse, led by Professor Alison Leary and Paul Trevatt, found some success earlier this year when the UK government announced it would be reforming regulation to make it a criminal offence for a person to call themselves a ‘nurse’ without being on the NMC register.
However, the rules have not yet changed. As a result, it remains legal for anyone to use the title until the regulatory reform comes into effect.
Mr Shemirani said that the sense of authority his mother’s former title provides makes it harder to reject the misinformation she gives.
“The fact that she calls herself a nurse, and once called herself a nurse officially, makes it harder to reject your information, because part of her selling point is that she has been an insider, and now she’s bringing the truth,” he continued.
“The vast majority of [her] followers are not healthcare professionals, so they have to take what she says. And you see this a lot with these conspiracy theorists… we love a contrarian, we love an underdog in our in our media and in our stories.
“It combines all together so that it gives them some credibility,” he said. “So yes, it made it harder to fight.”
Mr Shemirani fully backed the campaign to legally protect the nurse title and called for harsh punishments for anyone who impersonates a healthcare professional.
“Civilisation is based on the distribution of different skillsets,” he added. “Not everybody can be a nurse and a mechanic and a financier and a builder at the same time, so we need to be able to trust other people when there’s an information asymmetry.
Sebastian Shemirani
“If we don’t have that, then we can’t make informed decisions. And one of the ways that we make informed decisions… is by having standards for what people can and can’t say.”
He compared it to regulations on other industries, such as tobacco: “It’s not against the free speech of a cigarette manufacturer to make them put ‘smoking kills’ on their cigarette packets.
“That is not anti-free speech. That’s more than free speech. That’s saying you have to say the truth.”
Mr Shemirani said that falsely claiming to be a doctor or a nurse without the proper qualifications and regulatory oversight was inherently “putting people’s lives at risk”.
Reflecting on the impact of misinformation has had on his late sister’s life, Mr Shemirani also said he believed terms like ‘alternative medicine’ and ‘natural medicine’ should be banned.
“There’s no such thing,” he said. “There is no alternative to the scientific method.
“You are either doing medicine, which is the science of healthcare, or you are not.”
Ms Leary and Mr Trevatt agreed that the case of Paloma Shemirani was a case study for why they continue to fight to protect the nurse title.
“[Paloma’s death] was a tragedy,” Mr Trevatt said. “My reaction to the [Panorama] programme… was, [that it was] in some ways a vindication of the work that Alison and the campaign team have been doing.”
He added that Ms Shemirani was the “most well-known perpetrator” of abusing the nurse title, but that there were many others and that legal protections were the best way to prevent further harm.
Alison Leary
“[Ms Shemirani] takes part in multiple podcasts, online interviews with a variety of different agencies and organisations with their own beliefs and values, and continues to use the title nurse, and is introduced on the podcast as nurse.
“This misinformation continues to be basically spread around the world… the fact that she can do this without penalty or recrimination, and potentially can do so for years, until we get that title protected, is a huge concern.”
Professor Leary added: “This has clinical consequences for the people taking advice, and we’ve seen a lot of examples of that since we started this campaign.
“But there’s also the trust in the profession. Nursing is the most trusted profession in the world.
“If you’ve got people that are bad actors and who are exploiting that and then exploiting people’s trust that can also risk losing the trust of the public in the profession.”
The pair’s next step, they explained, was to continue to pressure the government and regulations to push the reforms through quickly and in full.
Nursing Times approached Kay Shemirani for comment.
