. . . flashing as they do in front of those desperate for a cure or explanation of chronic health issues or those gullible enough or so set in their distrust and hostility to the medical “establishment” and supposed cronies in the “mainstream media” that they become willing victims to the 21st century reincarnation of that most ancient of archetypal figures – the confidence trickster.
In this vein, I give you Barbara O’Neill, a self-styled naturopath and nutritionist who lectures internationally on “natural self-healing” but who has been banned from providing any health services in her native Australia. However this prohibition is not preventing her from embarking along with her husband[1] Michael on a series of events in the UK and Ireland despite criticism from scientists, health charities and academic bodies.[2]
Ms O’ Neill has previously claimed that cancer is a fungus that can be treated with bicarbonate of soda, that vaccines have caused an epidemic of conditions including autism and cot death, and that pregnant women with group B streptococcus do not have to take antibiotics. For these and other such pearls of wisdom, in 2019, our Babs earned a permanent ban from the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC), enforceable across all of Australia, from providing any health services either voluntarily or in a paid capacity after it concluded an investigation into her.[3]
Among the HCCC findings were that she:
Ms O’ Neill has previously claimed that cancer is a fungus that can be treated with bicarbonate of soda, that vaccines have caused an epidemic of conditions including autism and cot death, and that pregnant women with group B streptococcus do not have to take antibiotics. For these and other such pearls of wisdom, in 2019, our Babs earned a permanent ban from the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC), enforceable across all of Australia, from providing any health services either voluntarily or in a paid capacity after it concluded an investigation into her.[3]
Among the HCCC findings were that she:
does not recognise that she is misleading vulnerable people … by providing very selective information. The misinformation has real potential to have a detrimental effect on the health of individuals because Mrs O’Neill also discourages mainstream treatment for cancer, antibiotics and vaccinations.[4]
Barbara O’Neill has promoted herself as a naturopath, nutritionist and health educator since at least 2004, despite having no relevant qualifications or training. She presents her claims at alternative medicine conferences, wellness retreats and Seventh Day Adventist Churches. She is married to Michael O’Neill, the founder of the Informed Medical Optics Party, now the Health, Environment, Accountability, Rights, Transparency (HEART) Party - an anti-vaccine and anti-fluoridisation political group. [5] His reaction to the HCCC investigation against his wife is classic persecution complex of conspiracists and quack medics alike, asserting that the HCCC has "serious legal flaws” that are under investigation, and that “there are political moves to place the HCCC organisation under investigation for their bias against natural wellness practitioners”.[6] Regulation by recognised professional bodies with the appropriate codes of ethics (such as the British Council for Counselling and Psychotherapy [BACP] might help such practitioners prove such discrimination.
But where there is a market for wellness woo, do follow the lucre. As of 2019, she ran the Misty Mountain Health Retreat near Kemply, NSW with her husband charging clients as much as AS$2,450 for a one-week stay for one person; and AS$8,800 for two people for two weeks. According to O’Neill’s website, she provided detox services claiming to aid recovery from heart disease, hormonal imbalance and chronic fatigue.[7]
After her ban from working in health services in Australia, Barbara O’Neill continued to dispense her alternative health wares internationally including in the USA, New Zealand and Fiji. She continues to deliver programmes aimed at cancer patients in the US as of July 2023 as at a cost of almost US$ 6,000. In October 2025, O’Neill was awarded the satirical Bent Spoon Award by the Australian Skeptics for her unfounded medical claims such as her promotion of cayenne pepper for curing ulcers; placing sliced garlic on a baby’s front was stronger than any antibiotic and using chopped onions to cure pneumonia. She has recommended that parents unable to breastfeed their infant use substitute formula including unpasteurised goat milk and a mix of almond milk and dates or bananas. When provided with National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) infant feeding guidelines for health practitioners, O’Neill said that she had never read then and that she would refuse to read them. In August 2026, the online newspaper Egypt Independent reported that Egypt’s Council for Media Regulation (SCMR) prohibited her from appearing across Egyptian media outlets.[8]
Another one of her egregiously false claims was made in Part One of her lectures on TikTok when in attempting to dissuade women from having Pap Smear tests and mammograms she said that they cause cancer; contrary to all expert advice on cervical cancer detection.[9]
Never shy of protesting faith in the power of a deity and of victimhood at the hands of perpetual evil, our Babs in her online petition calling for the HCCC to reverse its 2019 decision proclaimed:
It looks a bit dark but the Great God of the Universe will not let this wonderful health truth to be eliminated regardless of how men and women may try.
She also claimed to the press that she was a victim of a Nazi style propaganda campaign.[10]
And now the O’Neill roadshow has come to the British Isles. Among the venues that the pair have given seminars in are Donald Trump’s luxury Turnberry golf course. A five-day retreat, a Taste of Mist Mountain, is scheduled for the De Vere Cranage Estate in Cheshire with tickets priced at £700. The programme includes lectures by Barbara O’Neill: “What Really Causes Disease”, “The Science of Breath” and “The Immune System” plus a session by Michael on “Barbara’s Under Attack”. The couple are also scheduled to appear at the Founders and Future at Glasgow University Union (GUU). According to the Union President, events held in the building by external organisations in no way reflected affiliation to or endorsement by the GUU Board of Management. Likewise, the Cranage Estate take no responsibility for “content or opinions expressed at privately organised events.”[11]
Across the Irish Sea, the Christian health group Balm of Gilead (with all the creepy connotations associated with the totalitarian, misogynist theocracy of that name described by Margaret Attwood in her classic works The Handmaids Tale and The Testaments) has organised from 13th to 15th October a multi-day event at the City North Hotel and Conference Centre in Gormanston, County Meath in which the O’Neills have starring roles. Later this week, she is hosted by the “holistic”, “spiritual” and “inspirational” organisation Positive Life at a sold out one-day event in Jackson’s Hotel, Ballybofey, County Donegal with Front Row tickets retailing at €85 and General Admission at
€75; not quite the outrageous outlay in terms of client fees cited earlier.[12]
And now the O’Neill roadshow has come to the British Isles. Among the venues that the pair have given seminars in are Donald Trump’s luxury Turnberry golf course. A five-day retreat, a Taste of Mist Mountain, is scheduled for the De Vere Cranage Estate in Cheshire with tickets priced at £700. The programme includes lectures by Barbara O’Neill: “What Really Causes Disease”, “The Science of Breath” and “The Immune System” plus a session by Michael on “Barbara’s Under Attack”. The couple are also scheduled to appear at the Founders and Future at Glasgow University Union (GUU). According to the Union President, events held in the building by external organisations in no way reflected affiliation to or endorsement by the GUU Board of Management. Likewise, the Cranage Estate take no responsibility for “content or opinions expressed at privately organised events.”[11]
Across the Irish Sea, the Christian health group Balm of Gilead (with all the creepy connotations associated with the totalitarian, misogynist theocracy of that name described by Margaret Attwood in her classic works The Handmaids Tale and The Testaments) has organised from 13th to 15th October a multi-day event at the City North Hotel and Conference Centre in Gormanston, County Meath in which the O’Neills have starring roles. Later this week, she is hosted by the “holistic”, “spiritual” and “inspirational” organisation Positive Life at a sold out one-day event in Jackson’s Hotel, Ballybofey, County Donegal with Front Row tickets retailing at €85 and General Admission at
€75; not quite the outrageous outlay in terms of client fees cited earlier.[12]
Predicably so and justifiably so, medical and scientific experts have sounded the alarm about somebody in the words of Dr Robert Grimes, a biomedical science expert and author of a book on medical misinformation, who is “a leading vector of medical misinformation”. A letter organised by Dr Grimes asserts that:
her repeated misguided medical assertions, unqualified advice, and abject demonisation of conventional medical treatment have directly led to harm.
The letter addresses the venues staging O’Neill’s events in these admonitory terms:
she will spread dangerous health fictions to a susceptible audience, leeching off an illusion of legitimacy afforded to her by the surrounds of your respectable establishment.[13]
Among the signatories to the letter are Orla Dolan, Chief Executive of Breakthrough Cancer Research; Prof Colin Doherty, Head of Trinity College Dublin School of Medicine; David Colquhoun, fellow of the Royal Society, University College London, and a science communicator; and Sander van der Linden, professor of psychology at the University of Cambridge. [14]
The warnings in and the tenor of the letter just cited raise crucial issues around how to safeguard vulnerable people from the spread of dangerous health fictions vis-a-viz free inquiry concerns that potentially arise from the regulation or even civil or criminal sanctioning of such misinformation.
How is health security imperatives, particularly in the post- Covid era and the possibility of future pandemics, to be balanced against the liberty of the citizen in a liberal democracy to make their own healthcare choices despite their possible adverse consequences for the individual concerned? Is there a right to be wrong and who decides what is right and wrong? To what extent can Isaac Berlin’s concept of negative liberty, of freedom from external interference (usually from the state) _be asserted and validated in the domain of health freedom? Staying within a liberal philosophical frameworks but eschewing ultra libertarian versions of them; I would argue that Berlin’s concept of positive liberty in which human flourishing is enabled though a right to truth and access to the most up-to-date information and knowledge is a better ideological framework to resolve such trade-offs. Healthcare is a fundamental human right and it is incumbent of health providers to be as abreast of changing epistemology as is humanely possible. It is the right of and also the responsibility of human beings with agency and autonomy to acquaint themselves with the most accurate health information available which is not always available through consultations with Dr Google and certainly not with fraudulent alt-health false gurus like Barbara O’Neill.
I have previously argued that since consumer law penalises companies and private service providers from making untruthful or exaggerated claims about the efficacy of their products; this principle should be extended to politicians and other powerful interest groups. In other words, it should be a criminal offence to lie. Nutritionists, counsellors, aromatherapists, and other complementary health professionals should be protected terms which would provide a legal framework to put charlatans like Barbara O’Neill out of business and practice bans imposed in one democratic jurisdiction should apply to all other democracies. Truth must never become a casualty in any information war.
References
I have previously argued that since consumer law penalises companies and private service providers from making untruthful or exaggerated claims about the efficacy of their products; this principle should be extended to politicians and other powerful interest groups. In other words, it should be a criminal offence to lie. Nutritionists, counsellors, aromatherapists, and other complementary health professionals should be protected terms which would provide a legal framework to put charlatans like Barbara O’Neill out of business and practice bans imposed in one democratic jurisdiction should apply to all other democracies. Truth must never become a casualty in any information war.
References
[1] Nicola Davis. Lecturer is “spreading health fictions” The Guardian. 2 October 2026
[3] Ibid
[4] Ibid
[5] Wikipedia
[6] The Guardian, op cit
[7] Wikipedia
[8] Ibid
[9] Ibid
[10] Ibid
[11] The Guardian, op cit.
[12] Wikipedia
[13] The Guardian, op. cit
[14] Ibid
⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.
