I work for surgeons who remove kidneys… I’m sure they would LOVE to know about artificial kidneys lol!
9 Likes
Hi all. I’m a freelance journalist in Canada who’s working on a feature about Eric for Toronto Life magazine. I’m looking to talk to people who know/have known him, or have worked with him. If you’re willing to speak with me, I can be reached at 1-647-268-0175 or rh3russell@gmail.com.
Thank you.
Rhiannon Russell
3 Likes
Can you please figure out whether he ever had any kind of brain cancer?
I find it truly bizarre that this question has still not been definitively addressed in any number of news articles about him. People deserve to know if he lied about having brain cancer the entire time.
4 Likes
No evidence (not fabricated) of him ever having cancer has been provided.
The fabricated evidence he had his lawyer file was to “prove” that he had cancer. But it wasn’t real.
So no … as his lawyer said, he was sick, but not with cancer.
4 Likes
I agree. But news article after news article leaves the question of whether or not there was EVER a cancer diagnosis back in 2017/2018 nebulous and unexplored, and just focuses on the fraudulent claims he and his lawyer/s presented to various courts in the US and Canada in 2021-2023, all of which amounted to claims that his “brain cancer” had “spread”, and he was in the midst of various surgeries, and thus he couldn’t show up for various court dates, etc etc.
It’s been clearly established that the later claims of the cancer having spread were fraudulent legal delay tactics… but I have yet to see a report directly address the question of whether or not there ever was ANY original diagnosis a few years earlier. I really think it’s important that there is clarity on THAT issue. He didn’t just perpetrate a fraud on the court… he has manipulated public sentiment for years. Most especially the feelings of the group of people who love equestrian sport, and have also had experiences with devastating cancer. He assumed the status of “heroic survivor” … and if that was a 100% fraud and sociopathic manipulation of the public… I think people have the right to know about it, in no uncertain terms.
As I have said earlier on this thread… I strongly suspect he lied about ALL of it, and he never had ANY kind of cancer.
4 Likes
@Canadian_journalist do you mind me asking, did you pitch the story, or were you approached by Toronto Life to do the article? I am wondering what the focus of the story, or angle is intended to be. That is, is this intended to be an investigative piece into recent and ongoing events, or just a general article about him and the ‘glamourous’ world of international show jumping?
Thanks!
ETA I just googled you and you are described as a fact checker - there are going to be a lot ot facts to check with this story! Best of luck! I will be interested in reading it,
6 Likes
Wouldn’t that be protected information though? I am not sure the court can force someone to make health issues public…but I would think Lamaze’s team would have made it public if the information was available.
I feel like the Lamaze story will be quite a docu series one day!
2 Likes
As much as we would all love to know, it isn’t really anyone’s business if indeed he has brain cancer.
1 Like
Very good point.
Possibly news organizations are treading carefully because they don’t want to get caught in a lawsuit. Regardless of if they are right or wrong.
Ironically, it can be harder to prove that something didn’t happen, than that it did. The fraudulent acts committed by Lamaze stand up tall as what they are. Lots of hard proof and documentation to support the findings.
But how does a news organization protect itself with objective, hard-document proof that there never was a legit doctor’s diagnosis of brain cancer?
When the party claiming brain cancer can continue to dodge around the lack of proof with one tale after another. And no one has the right to investigate every possible doctor to further expand on the absence of such a formal diagnosis.
In my opinion, the totality of Lamaze’s behavior leaves me in no doubt that the brain cancer was all a big lie. Although he does seem to be in very poor health for other reasons. But that’s just my opinion. I don’t have the documentation, and don’t know where such documentation could be found, to make it an incontroverteble statement of fact.
The very fact that there is nothing supporting the lie actually helps the story-teller build out the story. Embroidery on their part about why they have not produced the documentation that they insist is out there. Etc. & so on. It may sound like a ridiculous story that doesn’t stand up to even basic common sense. But that common sense is all we have to disprove it.
4 Likes
I don’t know if Canada has an analog to HIPAA but it’s not clear to me that a news organization CAN get the information at issue here.
Red Flag #1 (imo) to any lie told by anyone: You can’t see the evidence of the thing you are supposed to believe. There is no visible hard proof of it. The hard proof may be claimed to be out there, but for fanciful reasons no one gets to see it.
We only get the story, which we are supposed to believe. Because not believing would insult the story-teller. And that would make us an unkind person. I think that’s how it works. 
My favorite embroidery as to why we can’t see the thing is because it is so so so secret.
Because it’s coming on the market soon but is a trade secret until then. Or it is very secret medical research that will never be public. Or because of a gov’t conspiracy, maybe a military conspiracy (lots of those). Or because there is an underground organization that is either a) protecting it in a heroic manner, or b) hiding it in a sinister manner. And so on.
Like the aliens that the U.S. military is hiding in Roswell NM – according to the believers. The aliens are there, but nobody can see them. But they’re there. For sure. Only the select team of researchers will ever see them. Or see images. Or official documentation. It’s so secret. It’s almost as if the very secrecy is proof enough, to certain believers.
So therefore, not believing in the aliens is proof of the failure of the individual who doesn’t believe – failure of belief, of imagination, of trust. Thus creating a gulf of separation between those who believe, and those who do not. 
The brain cancer diagnosis is kind of like that, it would seem. To me, at least. Any of us who don’t believe it, who insist on credible documentation, that’s our own fault for failing to understand … according to Lamaze.
5 Likes
Exactly.
Now the level of fraud and other criminal activity is another story entirely, but his health status is his business and should remain his business unless he decides to tell the world what the issue is. But don’t be looking for the courts, journalists or doctors to do that for you.
1 Like
See… I disagree in his case. If he had been private about his health issues all along, that would be one thing, and I totally would respect that privacy.
But he wasn’t. He did interviews and there were MANY MANY articles written about him that spoke all about his cancer, and how amazing it was that he was riding and competing. He soaked up the public support related to this, and frankly used it to rehabilitate his public image to a significant extent.
I find that… disturbing.
I am not advocating for any medical provider to illegally or unethically disclose any of his private health information. But I see no reason why a journalist can’t track down longtime close contacts of EL’s from over the years and ask them about their observations going back to 2017, and if his behavior and health and activities in private were consistent with someone going through serious and grueling treatment for brain cancer.
Frankly, it was the equestrian related media in particular who promoted his whole feel good story as a heroic cancer survivor. I think they owe it to the public who consumes their “journalism“ to go back and dig some, and correct the record if it was all a bunch of manipulative PR…
24 Likes
Right. It’s a person’s perogative to disclose as much or as little of their health status as they like, no matter how distasteful we might find their application of that disclosure.
I spent my early years in health insurance compliance (long before HIPAA privacy laws were around), in the early stages of the GRID/AIDS/HIV emergence, watching this country simultaneously struggle with the idea of medical privacy, while ALSO demanding to know who was infected (this was driven home regularly when you had to track the ever changing legislation). And while his case is in not even in the same moral universe of that horrible era, the “we have a right to know” vibe has some resonance here. It’s just that defending the morally delinquent is a lot harder than defending the average person’s rights. But the medical privacy rights that arose from that era (including HIPAA) is comprehensive and doesn’t get to be tossed out because we are offended that he played the sympathy card.
Which would be fine. It’s been done to some extent, but without some sort of confirmation it would just be glorified gossip and would stay that way until he confirmed it (legal) or one of his medical professionals confirmed it (not legal, and for reasons discussed above, not ethical). So I doubt you are going to get the sort of story you want from reputable journalists.
9 Likes
It is very difficult to prove a negative. But generally speaking, statistics and data don’t lie.
Judges asked him to prove that he was ill - the evidence he tried to submit was thrown out as it was fake.
According to news reports, he said he was diagnosed with glioblastoma in November 2017.
Only 3% to 5% of patients survive more than three years. Reports of survival exceeding five years are sporadic.
He’s at almost 6 1/2 years. Which, knowing several people who have lost their family members in less than a year to this terrible disease, is extremely fortunate or exceptionally unlikely.
Personally? I think unlikely. But you can gauge as you wish.
Edited to add a link to the endorsement (judicial decision) in Ontario. You can see what he was asked to provide, and what was instead submitted.
12 Likes
The court could require full disclosure of his medical history. Canadian court documents are not as freely published as American documents seem to be based on the pleadings that have been posted here in various threads, but court proceedings are open to the public. I agree that the courts couldn’t order him to make a public declaration.
Edit to fix an auto-correct/typo that completely reversed what I intended.
The Sun is essentially a tabloid, and the article is from September 2023. It uses the same quotes as other articles of the time, just with a more extreme headline.
9 Likes
lol It might be a bit more sensationalized publication but if it says all the same things as other publications then what’s the issue?..… anyways point in sharing was the point that the UK court determined he did in fact lie about his cancer diagnosis.
2 Likes
Not precisely. All it really concluded is that the documents were forged and the judge, like us, reached the reasonable conclusion that the only reason you would do that was because you didn’t have the condition. I agree with him, we all agree with him, but again, that’s not the same as actual confirmation. But yeah, we all know it.
4 Likes
