Amazing Facts Promotes Aussie Health Crackpot Barbara O’Neill
14 March 2025 |
A recent announcement by Amazing Facts shows Doug Batchelor hosting Barbara O’Neill, whose offbeat health teachings have led to a ban on her providing any health-related services in Australia. Batchelor describes her as a “health educator.”
Sacramento Central is the host church for O’Neill this week, and according to the church’s Facebook page, the event is sold out.
Erroneous claims
The Guardian reported in August that
“Five years ago, Barbara O’Neill was permanently banned from providing any health services in New South Wales or other Australian states. O’Neill, whose website describes her as ‘an international speaker on natural healing’, was found by the NSW [New South Wales] Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC) in 2019 to have given highly risky health advice to vulnerable people, including the use of bicarbonate soda as a cancer treatment. Since then, her views have found a much larger audience overseas and online, supported by elements of the Seventh-day Adventist church and US media networks. So far this year, O’Neill has spoken in the US, the UK and Ireland, and advertised retreats in Thailand for thousands of dollars.”
O’Neill has continued to expand her network. According to Wikipedia, she is
“an Australian alternative medicine personality, known for promoting dangerous and unsupported alternative medical practices and ideas. She previously presented these treatments at alternative medicine schools, wellness retreats, and Seventh-day Adventist churches despite not having any recognised qualifications and failing nursing training.… She ran the Misty Mountain Health Retreat near Kempsey with her husband, charging clients up to A$8,800 per stay. She also provided paid telephone consultations. According to O’Neill’s website, she provided detox services claiming to aid recovery from heart disease, diabetes, hormonal imbalance, chronic fatigue, candida/fungus, drug addiction, cancer, heartburn, and obesity.”
Naturally, O’Neill is against vaccinations.
“Children can be naturally vaccinated against tetanus by drinking plenty of water, going to bed early, not eating junk food and running around the hills.”
She also said that she can “cure cancer and urged clients not to use chemotherapy.” O’Neill promoted the discredited claim that “cancer is a fungus that can be treated with baking soda.” She has also claimed, without evidence, that one doctor had cured 90% of his cancer patients with baking soda injections.
A Cook Islands man died from following Barbara O’Neill’s advice, “having declined medical intervention and attempting to treat his disease with bicarbonate soda, lemon juice, and boiled water.” She discourages antibiotics because “no baby has ever died from Strep B.” She advises that lacking breast milk, women could feed their newborns unpasteurized goat milk, or almond milk mixed with bananas or dates.
An undated article in the Southern Tidings union magazine calls her an “international sensation,” describing O’Neill’s lecturing to a “packed house for six days at the Rogersville Seventh-day Adventist Church in Tennessee.”
General Conference recommendation
A 2021 letter from Fred Hardinge, long-time Nutrition and Lifestyle Specialist of the General Conference, said, “We are not able to recommend her as a speaker for churches or any gatherings.” He cites her dodgy claims about her training, the Australian government’s findings that she should not be trusted to do health education, and her claim that “once you straighten out the lifestyle, all diseases, including CVD [cardio-vascular disease] and cancer, will be cured.” Writes Hardinge,
“Much of what she communicates (i.e., basic principles of a healthy lifestyle) is good to a point, but frequently, the rationale for doing so is faulty, based on misinformation or pure scientific fiction. This is most likely due to her lack of training in the sciences and the biases introduced by naturopathic philosophy. Physiology, biochemistry, and nutrition texts will need to be radically rewritten if she were to be correct!”
Hardinge also cites her opposition to vaccines, “based primarily on the misinformation that is rife on social media.”
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