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A brother whose twin sister died after becoming ill with curable cancer has claimed they were fed ‘dangerous’ supplements as children.
Paloma Shemirani, 23, a Cambridge University graduate, died last year after opting for bogus treatments due to her mum’s influence following a non-Hodgkin lymphoma diagnosis.
Gabriel, her twin brother and one of three siblings, has now spoken about their childhood growing up surrounded by health conspiracies and how they tried to escape it.
Speaking to Good Morning Britain today, Gabriel, who is estranged from his mother, said it was his dad, Dr Faramarz Shemirani, who was first into conspiracy theories involving the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks.
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Things escalated after mum Kate was diagnosed with cancer in 2012, which was treated with conventional surgery to cure it, followed by alternative therapy, Gabriel said.
He said: ‘Then the conspiracy theories took on a distinctively anti-medicine form.
‘Overnight, we were no longer allowed to drink tap water, drink fruit juices, and everything had to be organic.’
Gabriel claimed the siblings were having ‘sometimes dangerous supplements put on our drinks or forced on us.’
He alleged: ‘Mum would repeatedly give us apricot kernels, for example, which are known to the public for their quite high cyanide content.
‘Supplements that I worry may have had a number of adverse health effects on me and my siblings.’
The devastated brother insisted that Paloma was ‘coerced’ into ditching medical treatment ‘by a mother who essentially wanted to use her daughter as a test subject.’
‘If it goes badly – well, who cares because she just dies and my mum never really loved her that much anyway if I’m brutally honest,’ he said.
Gabriel said he was able to separate from the conspiracies swirling in the family home by going to ‘good schools’ and ‘trying to keep away from it as much as you can.’
He said: ‘It was the exposure to the outside world. Conspiracy theories, especially in a family, thrive on the oxygen of isolation.
‘It was the interaction with the outside world and education that saved us.’
Gabriel has publicly blamed Paloma’s death on his mum, Kate Shemirani, an anti-vaccine and conspiracy theorist, and accused her of blocking her access to treatment.
Last week, a coroner ruled that their mother contributed to Paloma’s death by pushing a controversial alternative treatment involving up to five coffee enemas and green juice cleanses.
Gabriel insisted that Paloma’s death could have been prevented.
He told GMB: ‘Not only was it a treatable cancer, but something should have been done, and there were so many points where someone should have said “this woman’s going to kill her.”‘
Paloma’s older brother, Sebastian, 26, has also said his younger sister was ‘brainwashed from when she was born.’
Sebastian said previously that the trio were ‘brainwashed’ and ‘lectured,’ and that there was ‘never any option for Paloma to make a free choice about the very thing she was brainwashed about.’
He said they were lectured ‘in the bathtub when we were kids.’
‘We would be sitting around the dinner table, and we’re being told how “big pharma’ is plotting to kill us,”‘ he said.
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