“They are hiding the fact that Barbara O’Neill’s cousin was sentenced to life in prison for revealing these gatekept health secrets.”
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No proof Barbara O’Neill’s cousin ‘was sentenced to life in prison’
If Your Time is short
- We found no reports that the unnamed cousin of Barbara O’Neill, a naturopath banned from practicing in Australia, received a lifetime prison sentence for revealing purported health secrets.
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The image in the video was artificially generated.
Barbara O’Neill, a former Australian naturopath, was banned by New South Wales authorities from providing health services in 2019. A viral Facebook video claims one of her relatives has been prosecuted for carrying on that work.
The May 11 video begins with an image of an unnamed woman in an orange jumpsuit standing in a courtroom. The image’s text read, "They are hiding the fact that Barbara O’Neill’s cousin was sentenced to life in prison for revealing these gatekept health secrets."
The video follows with images of plants and nuts along with claims of their natural healing properties. Text on the video directs viewers to a website to buy products including capsules and oils made from the plants.
The Facebook video was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Threads, and Instagram.)
Barbara O’Neill is an Australian author whom the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission permanently banned from providing health services in 2019. The commission said O’Neill was unregistered and her advice, which included using baking soda to cure cancer, had "huge potential to have a detrimental effect on the health of individuals."
We found no news reports about O’Neill’s unnamed cousin being sentenced to prison. O’Neill’s active social media accounts have not posted about this. PolitiFact emailed Barbara O’Neill through addresses on her websites but received no answer.
Featured Fact-check
Artificial intelligence generated the image of the unnamed woman in the video. One giveaway is the woman’s missing eyelashes; AI-generated images often lack human features or distort them. A reverse-image search yielded only one news report — a Lead Stories fact-check rating the post false. Open-source AI detection tool Content at Scale gave the image a 97% AI-rating.
Our Sources
Facebook post (archived link), May 11, 2024
PolitiFact, ‘Dr. Sebi,’ promoter of controversial diets, died from pneumonia. He was not killed, May 25, 2023
New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission, Public Statement and Statement of Decision in relation to Mrs Barbara O'Neill, Sept. 24, 2019
The Guardian, Naturopath who said bicarbonate soda cures cancer banned for life by health watchdog, Oct. 3, 2019
The Guardian, The naturopath who claimed to cure cancer and the murky world of wellness, Oct. 31, 2019
Lead Stories, Fact Check: FAKE Image Of 'Barbara O'Neill's Cousin' On Trial Is AI-Generated; There Was No Such Trial, May 14, 2024
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No proof Barbara O’Neill’s cousin ‘was sentenced to life in prison’
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