Fasting courses billed for several hundred or even thousands of euros: this is the solution proposed by Eric Gandon for “cure your cancer”, “improve your eyesight” or treat high blood pressure. The 58-year-old naturopath was indicted on Thursday January 12 after several deaths that occurred during these “water cures”, announced the parquet floor of Tours. He was imprisoned and faces up to three years in prison.
The excesses of naturopaths: from detox to intox
Eric Gandon is implicated for manslaughter, endangering the life of others, abuse of weakness and illegal exercise of the professions of doctor and pharmacist for facts that occurred from July 2020 to January 2023. An investigation had been opened in 2021 after the death of a 44-year-old woman during one of her internships organized in Noyant-en-Touraine (Indre-et-Loire). Despite the death of his trainee, Eric Gandon had continued the sessions in progress.
72,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel
The guru has his followers. His YouTube channel has over 72,000 subscribers. And on his site, “Fasting for his health”, he claims to have accompanied “more than 4,000 people fasting”. “I haven’t always been a naturopath, but I have always been passionate about food”explains Eric Gandon in a video published in March 2017 in which he praises “the body’s ability to heal itself through fasting and emotional hygiene”.
Before embarking on naturopathy, Eric Gandon had a rather classic background. On his CV, available online, we can see that after studying in Maine-et-Loire and Ile-de-France, he began a career in marketing and managed several chain stores in France, in Belgium and the United Kingdom.
Irène Grosjean, investigation into the methods of the star of naturopaths
It was in 2004 that he discovered the “alternative methods” in contact with another naturopath, while he was suffering “Allergies, migraines, foot fungus, permanent bad breath and sleep problems”. In 2010, he left his position as general manager at EuroFlorist to train and created his own naturopathic company, Eric Gandon SARL, surrounded himself with “temporary co-hosts” claiming to be art therapists or mediums, and began to lead numerous courses, based on fasting.
A lucrative business
For support over fourteen days, it was necessary to count 1,100 euros and no less than 2,800 euros for a cure of forty-two days, “excluding accommodation”. After decrees issued by the prefectures of Indre-et-Loire and Vendée prohibiting these cures, the naturopath had continued his activity via online videos and distance training, for the modest sum of 140 euros for a video consultation, and 250 euros per week for remote monitoring.
“For a profound change and for certain diseases (chronic bronchitis, polyarthritis, cancers, autoimmune diseases, osteoarthritis, fibroids, etc.), depending on weight reserves, vitality, or the length of the disease, it may be recommended to carry out long-term therapeutic fasts”still maintains its website, on which it is also possible to buy anti-radiation protection (up to 100 euros), books, enema bags or “happiness cards”.
Trial of a naturopath: “You replaced the doctors”
Eric Gandon’s professional retraining has proven to be particularly lucrative. In 2019, his company achieved gross sales of nearly 293,000 euros. During his arrest, the Central Office for the Repression of Violence against Persons seized 32,000 euros from the guru’s home.
Reported by Miviludes
Judicial information was quickly opened in Tours after the death of a first patient and made it possible to identify four other victims, two of whom have since died, the prosecution said on January 12. A complaint concerns a man in his sixties, who died on July 18, 2020, a month after taking part in an internship organized in Vendée when he was suffering from terminal cancer. Another is linked to the death, on March 15, 2022, of a young woman who had taken training organized by Eric Gandon the previous year when she suffered from liver cancer and was out of treatment, details the prosecutor. . Two other complaints come from participants in the course organized in the summer of 2021.
Several participants told France Inter the absence of medical support and the lack of consideration of the supervisors for the suffering of the participants during these long fasting sessions. ” When we didn’t come because we weren’t well – the first week of fasting is quite hard – none of the organizers heard from us. We are really on our own. And when we end up coming again at dawn and we explain that we have been hurt, that we are trying to understand, they explain to us that it is we who have not managed to let go of our emotion , when it was a physical illness”testifies a man who completed a four-week internship.
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Eric Gandon was mentioned in the 2021 activity report of Miviludespublished in November 2022. “Eric Gandon assures that it is the anti-Covid vaccine that the young woman would have received which is the cause of her death”says the study, with reference to an interview given by the naturopath on a daily basis “The New Republic”refuting any connection with the practice of fasting.
The Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Aberrations warned in particular of the dangers of fasting. “Vulnerable people, sometimes intolerant to the side effects of certain treatments or suffering from incurable pathologies, can be tempted by these fasts presented as “miraculous””, she pointed out. However, a summary report published in 2014 by the National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm) concluded that“no clinical data based on rigorous methodological trials can support” the supposed benefits of this practice.
