Elle Macpherson responds to rumour she’s engaged to ‘anti-vaccine’ campaigner

Elle Macpherson has set the record straight about those engagement rumours.

The Aussie model has reportedly been dating controversial anti-vaccine campaigner Andrew Wakefield since 2018.

Wakefield finalised his divorce from his wife Carmel last month and earlier this week Macpherson was spotted wearing a huge ring in a friend’s Instagram photo.

The picture sparked engagement rumours, but a spokesperson for the model told The Daily Telegraph there’s no truth to the rumours.

“Elle frequently wears her Yoga ring on her ‘wedding’ finger … it’s just a rumour,” the spokesperson said.

Elle’s man

Andrew Wakefield was a doctor before being banned from practising medicine in 2010. He is a key player in the controversial anti-vaxxer movement, and was found to have falsely linked the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism.

After he published a controversial paper in 1998, vaccination levels dropped dramatically in the UK (from about 90 per cent to 70 per cent). His theories were discredited in 2004 after they were found to be based on “false evidence”.

How they met

According to author Brian Deer, who has a new book about Wakefield called The Doctor Who Fooled The World, the couple met when the model was strategically seated next to Wakefield at an anti-vaccination event.

“They were introduced at an anti-vax event that they were both invited to in Orlando (Florida) where they were sat next to each other,” Deer told News Corp Australia. “It’s what anti-vaxxers do, they have put him together with the biggest celebrity they have got at the time and that’s how it took off.”