He boasted, in videos with hundreds of thousands of views, the benefits of food deprivation to treat hypertension, fibromyalgia or even cancer. One of the figures in the practice of intensive fasting, Eric Gandon, a 58-year-old naturopath, was indicted Thursday, at the end of his police custody, by the Tours prosecutor’s office. He is implicated for “manslaughter”, “endangering the life of others”, “abuse of weakness” and “illegal exercise of the professions of doctor and pharmacist”. His son Jérémy, who works with him, is also being prosecuted. Mr. Gandon was imprisoned, his son placed under judicial control. Both contest the charges against them. Contacted by The world, they had not answered on Friday.
On August 12, 2021, a preliminary investigation was opened after the death of a 44-year-old woman during a fasting course organized by Mr. Gandon in a castle in Noyant-de-Touraine (Indre-et-Loire), leading to the opening of a preliminary investigation. The naturopath had, at the time, excluded any link with the practice of fasting. And proposed, in an interview with the regional daily The New Republica completely different theory: “Between us, it is very suspicious, she had just been vaccinated against Covid-19. »
On social networks, Eric Gandon did not hide his hostility to vaccination and relayed a good part of the conspiratorial discourse around the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite this death, he had continued his internships until a decree from the prefecture of Indre-et-Loire prohibited it from being held, at the end of August 2021.
The death of this participant is not the only death of followers of the cures of “water fast” by Eric Gandon. As the prosecutor of Tours, Grégoire Dulin, specifies in a press release, two other complaints concern a 60-year-old former trainee, who died in 2020 due to cancer, a month after a cure; and a third former participant, who died in March 2022, again from cancer, for which she was in “break in processing”.
A lucrative business
On his YouTube channel with 72,000 subscribers, as well as on his site or during his conferences, Eric Gandon claims his long practice of supervising fasting and naturopathy, and claims to have “accompanied more than 4,000 people”. He has, in fact, spent most of his career in a field other than that of health: according to his CV, available online, he managed several chain stores in France and the United Kingdom, before launching in 2008 in coaching, naturotherapy and dowsing, after having had the “revelation” the benefits of fasting to treat one’s own health concerns.
You have 49.22% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.