She was considered the “popess” of her milieu. Irène Grosjean, a controversial figure in naturopathy and raw foodism, died following an accident on Tuesday at the age of 93, her daughter announced on social media and her publishing house in Le Parisien.
“Irène Grosjean left us yesterday,” the Biovie platform, which notably published “La Vie en abondance”, one of the naturopath’s flagship works, told Le Parisien on Wednesday.
The nonagenarian died in a road accident, declared Nelly Grosjean, in an Instagram post made on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday. “It was on this beautiful night of shooting stars that my mother, our mother – Irene – chose to change space… A car accident, a shock, an immediate departure…”, she explains.
A controversial popularity
On YouTube, Irène Grosjean had accumulated hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of views with her videos and interviews praising the merits of naturopathy and raw foodism, a practice aimed at eating raw and unprocessed foods. She had built her popularity through her very critical positions on vaccination and conventional medicine, which, according to her, “only seeks to suppress the symptoms of the disease, without ever asking and changing what caused them, can only make diseases more and more serious and more and more difficult to cure.”
On her personal website, the practitioner offered to treat many ailments through naturopathy, whether it be “digestive, intestinal, urinary, respiratory, skin disorders, or pain, insomnia, dark thoughts, anger, fear, lack of self-confidence, or even your weight or any other discomfort or suffering.”
Commitments marked by controversy: during the summer of 2022, a collective of Internet users fighting against disinformation had notably unearthed, in one of its videos, comments advocating sexual touching of young children to cure them of fever. Later, a France 2 investigation reported the testimony of a man whose father, who suffered from cancer, had abandoned his chemotherapy, on the advice of Irène Grosjean, before dying.
Close to Thierry Casasnovas and Miguel Barthéléry
As a “guru” of naturopathy, Irène Grosjean has trained and supported many practitioners of this pseudo-medicine, like the YouTuber Thierry Casasnovas, currently under investigation for breach of trust, deceptive commercial practices and illegal practice of medicine, and placed under judicial supervision.
Irène Grosjean was also the partner of another controversial figure in naturopathy: Miguel Barthéléry, sentenced in 2023 to two years in prison suspended for illegal practice of medicine, accused by several families of having caused the death of their loved ones, who died after following his protocol and refusing conventional care.
Despite the many criticisms of her unregulated practice, Irène Grosjean continued to run naturopathy and raw food courses in Provence, the Hautes-Alpes, Greece and Morocco, according to her website.
The promotion of Irène Grosjean’s profile online sparked a wave of criticism on social media during the summer of 2022, prompting Doctolib to increase its vigilance with regard to professionals who use unconventional medicine on its platform.
In 2023, the Interministerial Mission for Vigilance and the Fight against Sectarian Abuses (Miviludes) and the National Council of the Order of Physicians jointly warned of the potential harm caused by unconventional medicines, which are increasingly popular but which can “become dangerous when they call into question the medical prescriptions of health professionals or when they are considered the only effective means of combating diseases such as cancer”.
