On an autumn Sunday, I went along to the auspicious premises of the Glasgow University Union for The Founders & Future Festival – an event created by Poonam Gupta OBE as a place “where heritage inspires, wellness empowers, and innovation creates new futures”.

The hall had around 100 chairs laid out facing the front, around 60% of which were full – by far the majority seated were women. There were a few stalls in the room: one selling gold jewellery, one selling lassi-based drinks, and another with aromatic therapies. 

After the initial opening speeches from Ms Gupta, some Indian dancers from the Nikkan Dance Academy, and talks on empowering women from other Indian female entrepreneurs, we came to the person that I – and if the enthusiastic round of applause was anything to go by, much of the audience – had come to see.

If you are unaware of Barbara O’Neill, let me try to enlighten you. From Australia, Barbara and her husband Michael were in the UK to promote their ideas of “natural healing”; and sell some books.

Michael describes his wife as a “humble and caring lady, who had devoted her life to helping people arrive at a healthier and happier way of living”. Unfortunately, the help she offers is given by someone with no medical training other than a “short psychology course at Sydney University”, which led to her role as a psychiatric nurse, and as an instrument nurse in a hospital’s operating theatre. This “gave her an insight into the body and its internal workings” as Michael puts it in his book, The Assassination of Barbara O’Neill.

Most everything else she later learned came from studying the work of the C19th writer, Ellen G. White, founder of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and her own dive into naturopathy, which O’Neill believed cured her son of asthma through hot and cold packs on the child’s chest, herbal remedies, and a light fruit-based diet – rather than drugs with “nasty side effects”, as she later put it.

As their family grew, Michael and Barbara promoted their natural remedy ideas by creating a wellness retreat in the hills north of Sydney, where they charged patients in excess of A$8,000 (approx. £4,000) for a stay at the resort, offering cure-all services for many ailments including infections and cancer. O’Neill ‘theorised’ that cancer is a fungus, and claimed that a doctor had had a 90% success rate curing it with sodium bicarbonate injections.

She spread her ideas using lectures and in online videos, offering advice that demonised the “allopathic” (read: conventional and evidence-based) medical industry, and instead made “dubious and dangerous health claims that are not evidence based or supported by mainstream medicine”. According to the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission, these claims regarded areas such as infant nutrition, antibiotics, vaccinations, and the causes and treatment of cancer. Their 2019 report summarised the accusations against her, including that she confidently stated:

• Raw goat’s milk is an appropriate substitute for breast milk in infant nutrition; 
• Cancer is a fungus that can be treated with bicarbonate soda and can be cured by following a program that includes the cancer conquering diet and sodium bicarbonate wraps for the body; 
• Pregnant women diagnosed with Strep B do not have to take antibiotics; 
• There are no safe vaccines; vaccinations have caused an epidemic of ADHD, autism, epilepsy and cot death.

As a result of their investigation, the HCCC permanently prohibited Mrs O’Neill from “providing any health services […] whether in a paid or voluntary capacity” in Australia.

It was armed with this knowledge that I went along to see her talk.

The audience in Glasgow was enthusiastic to hear what she had to say. She spoke for about 45-50 mins using only an old-fashioned A1 flipchart and marker pen. Perhaps unsurprisingly, she offered health advice throughout. In the talk, which she interspersed with bible quotes, she confidently announced that:

• It is your God-given right to treat your child as you see fit and not to just accept what the medical establishment say.
• You are the ultimate health professional, you know your body, and pain is your friend.
• Being pregnant (eight times) gave her “the best education in health”.
• Individuals must choose their own treatment as only we know what works, and our body is designed by God to self-heal – we just need to help it by consuming the right foods.
• All “allopathic” medicine is gut medicine.
• Sea water is the same mineral balance as body-fluids.
• Many people fail to access the full potential of our brain [doubtlessly parroting one of those zombie myths].
• Sleep in a tech-free zone with no synthetic fibres. Apparently, marines (US?) wear woollen underwear exclusively drawn from the neck of sheep.
• Eight hours sleep, eight hours work, eight hours play is the perfect ratio.
• Eight hours sunshine is ideal daily (she has previously decried the use of sunscreen).
• She raised eight kids, all without antibiotics.
• Always inhale through the nose, mouth breathers will get ill.
• Always stick to fresh fruit and veg, no meat.
• Always trust in God.

Though much of her talk was offering advice, it was mostly generic information that on its face is hard to call out. Sure, there were ridiculous assertions comparing bodily fluids to sea water, but she steered noticeably clear of the more overt cancer claims she has promoted in the past, and carefully avoided any claims around curing anything. However, she did demonise conventional medical treatment.

The one outrageous claim, which she made in a slightly jokey way – perhaps to give an air of deniability – was that if a doctor suggests you have a disease, you should leave and buy her book. O’Neill’s her talk was delivered in a way that offered no doubt that her ideas of removing oneself from the mainstream medical establishment was the best way to live and that you were definitely going to get ill – and stay ill – if you did not follow her ideas on natural healing rigorously. After all, she and her family were living proof that believing in God and trusting in nature is the only way to a healthy life.

After Barbara, Michael stepped up to the plate. Some of his talk worried me, especially around his ideas on child-rearing. His rules for his grandchildren certainly seemed onerous, especially his demand that they do the cooking and cleaning around the house, from infancy. He insisted they had to talk well, be financially sound, and totally honest in all things – though it was said with an air that made me think of an army drill sergeant, rather than simply offering moral guidance. He explained that he was against state education in general and claims he persuaded his granddaughter not to attend university.

He also elaborated on some of the health claims made by Barbara. He claimed to have survived a gunshot wound received in a robbery, with only one of his wife’s poultices, rejecting an ambulance that had been called at the scene. He also asserted that one of the retreat’s patients had been cured of a “dead kidney” with a simple change of diet. He also confidentially maintained that girls with bulimia, and other illnesses, can be cured with the advice Barbera had previously talked about.

Of course, both O’Neills are anti-vax. Michael was the founder of a small Australian political party: The Health, Environment, Accountability, Rights, Transparency (HEART) Party, registered in NSW and promoting all the usual unscientific suspects, including anti-vax myths, climate change denial, and anti-fluoridation scaremongering.   

The takeaway from both talks was that you must not trust the medical establishment under any circumstances – instead, rely on your own trust in a deity and your body’s natural healing properties, fed by a wholesome natural diet to keep healthy. As Australian Skeptic Tim Mendham once observed, “With all her references to vegetables we’d say she was a shill for Big Farmer.”

I did notice that Michael had a small bookstall selling their publications. I asked about buying one (the cheapest was £10 for a 49-page book, but I had no cash and, of course, the O’Neills deal only in cash. I think he took pity on me, as he gave me a free copy. Something for me to write about at a later date.