A Review of The Medical Medium — Anthony William — Marketing Spirit
17 May 2016

RECENTLY, a friend of mine recommended me a book written by Anthony William (aka The Medical Medium). The book was called Medical Medium and I read it with great interest, although some of the claims did not sit entirely comfortably with me. But I gave William the benefit of the doubt and, although healthy, adopted some of his recommendations. After all, those recommendations were spoken to William from a disembodied entity called Spirit who claims: "there is no spirit above me but God." With that sort of endorsement, the advice was certainly worth a try!

Doubts, however, started to accumulate when I watched some of the Youtube videos with Anthony William speaking or being interviewed. I could not help feeling that I was listening to a salesman rather than someone passing on information from "the Most High" [as Spirit calls himself]. His consciousness and energy just did not match the claims of basically being an open channel for Compassion itself. And further to that, all the videos on Youtube that William controls have comments restricted — always a sign of underlying controversy. What was really going on?

I reread the introduction and first chapter of the book and noticed how William arrogated great medical/health knowledge and mediumship abilities:

"You will not find these answers anywhere else."

"No other medium does what I do. No one else alive has a spirit voice providing profound on-target health information with crystal clarity."

"This book is unlike anything you’ve read. You won’t find citation after citation, references to study after study, because this is fresh, ahead-of-its-time information that comes from the heavens."

"This book unveils many of Spirit’s most precious medical secrets. It’s the answer for anyone who’s suffering from a chronic condition or a mystery illness that doctors haven’t been able to resolve."

"… the secrets this book contains *will* eventually be recognized by the scientific community."

"… the truth about healing is now in your hands."

These are strong claims for a book on medical advice, especially bearing in mind that these are only a small selection of similar such claims made by William in his book (more will be quoted later). If the medical information and prescriptions coming from this medical medium really have this claimed pedigree, then this is certainly the most important book on health ever written and one that will undoubtedly start a medical revolution as people cure themselves en masse.

These claims are also repeated in interviews that William has given, so are not just restricted to his book, although the book is perhaps the most accessible and concentrated source of these claims.

After a bit more online searching, I discovered an article written by Kate Leong on her blog Chasing Rainbows. In 2013, because her son Gavin was unwell and had neurological issues since birth, Leong paid $350 for a one hour reading with Anthony William (he has since put up his fee to $500 for 30 minutes). William told Leong that Gavin’s problems stemmed from mercury poisoning, and he gave her a specific diet and supplement program to follow in order to remove the mercury. Leong was excited at first and Gavin seemed to start responding, walking better than he ever had. But just 48 days later, Gavin sadly died.

In a follow-up blog in February this year, Leong wrote about her disillusionment with the Medical Medium. If he was as accurate as he claims, she mused, wouldn't the Internet be "blowing up" with testimonies of cures? Instead, she added, there is relative silence probably as an indication that "everyone is either ashamed that they fell for him, no longer with us or have just moved on with their life (less a big chunk of money)." Leong’s blog and her sad loss was the motivation for this review as I felt that it was important to a more lengthy review of the Medical Medium out there to help people make up their own minds.

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First off, I would like to state that I have no problem with the idea that we can communicate with disembodied entities, and that some of these entities can give us useful and insightful information. I myself have had enough "unusual" experiences in my life not to dismiss another’s "unusual" claims out of hand, and have had, I might add, a disembodied voice once speak to me when I was a boy. So I am certainly not in the sceptics' camp, a position that I think makes this review perhaps more appealing to the type of people open to alternative healing paradigms. It is all too easy for sceptics to reject Anthony William on the basis of mediumship "obviously" being nonsense, but this sort of dismissal will not be of interest to those drawn to William's work who obviously are a little more open-minded to begin with. (It is unlikely you would pay $500 to a medical medium for a 30 minute appointment if you totally rejected the possibility of mediumship. That said, desperation can rapidly open minds!)

Being aware of greater possibilities, however, does not mean that we indiscriminately accept claims that are being made, especially when lives are on the line. After all, William is advising thousands of people in life-and-death situations, and so it is important that his claims and advice are given some scrutiny and not just accepted on blind faith.

And just because Anthony William is making what many believe are "unsubstantiated claims", does not mean we either have to accept them on blind faith or reject them out of hand. They need to be examined with an open mind. At the moment, the reviews for him seem very polarised, with glowing testimonies from the believers and scathing critiques from the sceptics. Both groups are basically preaching to the converted. But if you are open-minded and uncertain about the Medical Medium, then there is not much information online to get your teeth into.

Examples of glowing testimonies abound on William's own website. Interestingly, despite there being 92 testimonies on this page, the word "cure" or "cured" appears only twice, and only one time in relation to William's healing program (in relation to a rash clearing up). Considering that testimonials are invariably the best cases hand-picked to promote products and services, this is quite an indictment against the claims that the Medical Medium is making about the ability of his treatments to "completely cure" various health conditions, often also giving specific time frames for these cures. The lack of "I'M CURED!!" testimonies, even on the one place they should be most concentrated, indicates that not a great percentage of patients are actually being cured. Of course they are raving about William, but it is quite normal for people to rave about any practitioner when first starting new programs. What would be interesting is for there to be a follow-up testimonial about 6 months later to see how these individuals are getting on, as this would get past the "novelty hype" invariably associated with new treatment programs, hype that can make people feel better all in itself!

An example of a sceptical review, on the other hand, can be found on the Skeptical Raptor blog. Here you will see William's medical advice being invectively rejected out of hand on the basis that mediumship is nonsense. The reviewer then highlights William's recommendation of homoeopathy as further proof of his phoneyness. So William is pushed over at the first couple of hurdles.

Obviously, when viewed using the standard scientific worldview or reality-map, mediumship and homoeopathy make no sense and therefore are non-sense. However, just because something does not appear on a map does not mean it doesn't exist! Later on in his review, the Skeptical Raptor points out holes in his health advice, such as cucumber being a high fibre superfood, that stand up better as they are more independent of reality-mapping issues. This is useful information because, not being so reality-map dependent, it allows people with different belief systems to access William/Spirit. And as has been said, most people who are considering having a consultation with William are leaving the door open to the possibility of mediumship (even if just motivated by desperation), so dismissing William primarily on the basis the absurdity of mediumship will mean little to these individuals.

So how do we objectively and open-mindedly assess someone like Anthony William making many so many medical claims from on High? We divide his claims into those that are testable (those with direct consequences that we can objectively assess) and those that are not (his spiritual claims). And then we further divide the testable claims into those that are easily testable (his treatment protocols), and those that may take a protracted length of time to test (such as confirming that there really are 40 strains of EBV).

So obviously, the Medical Medium can only be realistically assessed by the success of "his" various treatment protocols. And in an ideal world, the effectiveness of those protocols should also be measured against those of other natural health practitioners to determine whether he is doing anything "above and beyond". After all, natural health approaches are already renowned for their extraordinary effectiveness, especially for people who have poor diets and unhealthy lifestyles. Also, considering his claim that the treatment protocols he recommends work so quickly and completely, this should make testing with even small samples statistically significant.

The only problem is that, despite testing being relatively easy with only a small test sample actually needed, no such formal assessments have been done yet (as far as I am aware).

But then, who would test them anyway? I ask this because, to be quite frank, the health programs, advice and protocols being put out by William for various chronic diseases seem to be just simplified versions of those already used by many natural health practitioners. There really is nothing novel here.

So despite the Medical Medium claiming that "You will not find these answers anywhere else," practically all the information and advice he gives can be found elsewhere. Even his big "shocking" revelation that viruses — especially the Epstein-Barr Virus — are behind most mystery illnesses and autoimmune diseases is actually nothing new. Dr. Randall Tent has been putting out this sort of information for years now, long before the Medical Medium published his book: (see https://youtu.be/r8FCJ_VPyns) Interestingly, many of William’s other health assertions seem to parallel those of Tent. This could be a case of William/Spirit independently and divinely corroborating Tent, but a simpler explanation would be that William has watched Tent presentations at some point (they are all over Youtube) and picked up some of his ideas.

As for William/Spirit's supplement recommendations, again there is nothing particularly new or innovative. One will see many of the same vitamin and herbal supplements being recommended by natural health practitioners for the same conditions. Leong’s child Kevin, for example, was recommended for his mercury toxicity induced neurological issues liquid vitamin B12, liquid zinc, Hawaiian spirulina powder, liquid ginkgo leaf, and melatonin. Nothing extraordinary there, except to say that a natural health practitioner would have put together a much more comprehensive protocol involving many more nutrients and dietary changes. Reading William's book, it is as if he has just looked up a nutrient/herbal directory as if it were a pharmaceutical directory.

The problem with William/Spirit is that, not only is he not really coming up with anything original, but what he is coming up with is not systematically presented but seems piecemeal and over-simplified — a pastiche of natural health advice he has obviously gleaned from somewhere. He seems to have little holistic understanding of the body and mind, and no appreciation for the enormous complexity of the human body and chronic disease states. As a consequence, he puts forward inappropriate simplistic one-dimensional causal mechanisms for chronic disease states.

One example that immediately comes to mind is his assertion that Alzheimer's is 100% caused by mercury toxicity. In the natural health community, mercury has long been implicated in dementia, but so have a whole host of other causative factors such as poor diet, lack of sleep, lack of exercise and long-term use of certain pharmaceuticals. William's simplistic model does not take any other causative factors into consideration.

Ironically, William/Spirit's approach to medical conditions is similar to that of orthodox medicine, which also inappropriately puts forward simplified models for chronic diseases, which is why its success rate at dealing with chronic diseases is so dismal. Orthodox/allopathic medicine does this because of its success — medically and financially — in acute medicine where simple causative factors are appropriate. This paradigm is profitable because it justifies a standardised pharmaceutical approach rather than a individualised,complex and far less profitable lifestyle and natural herbal approach.

Because William/Spirit does not see the complexity of chronic diseases and instead clings to an oversimplified model more appropriate to acute medical conditions, he treats nutritional and herbal supplements, as well as superfoods, almost as pharmaceutical drugs. This is actually typical of someone who does not really understand natural health, and is the reason why the emphasis of his healing protocols is on specific and static supplement regimes (the drug model of disease), with lifestyle changes such as diet only really appearing towards the end of his book, and trite spiritual/angelic advice at the end. This order indicates a superficial pharmaceutical mind-set, which is also evidenced by William giving specific time-frames for complete cures for those following his protocols. The parallels with the pharmaceutical worldview are actually quite striking.

In addition to this, William/Spirit also puts out questionable information. For example, it would be a good idea to investigate further before accepting such claims as fruit being best for healing type 2 diabetes and Candida, fermented foods being unhealthy, Lyme disease not being caused by tick bites, type 2 diabetes not being caused by sugar abuse, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) being caused by glucose deficiency. Accepting these statements as gospel then could have serious consequences "if" these statements are not completely true.

It is for these reasons that it is unlikely his treatment protocols are particularly successful. He has little idea of a modern functional medicine approach that is patient and lifestyle focused, rather than disease focused. Of course, the natural approaches he does recommend are still very powerful, especially to those with poor diets and unhealthy lifestyles, and it is for this reason that a percentage of his clients WILL get substantial benefit just by following a healthier lifestyle. But this is very far from the perspective that William/Spirit is putting out revolutionary medical information that will basically heal the world of chronic diseases.

Simple cause and effect models of disease are also very appealing to those who are unwell because they present a clear road to recovery, and this could be another reason why he is so popular. On top of that, William categorically states that most of the diseases considered incurable — such as arthritis, type 2 diabetes, Lyme and the Epstein-Barr Virus infection — are completely and rapidly curable following his non-individualised simple suggestions. Whilst this approach is probably too simplistic to be successful, it has to also be said that belief in a protocol is a very important part of whether it will be successful or not, so this surety probably has some strong placebo benefits (which should never be sniffed at!).

A glaring absence from his book is the leading causes of death: heart disease and cancer. Considering that together these chronic diseases cause more suffering than all others combined, it is rather strange that Compassion itself would not have addressed them (although, no doubt, that they are the focus of a large proportion of William's private consultations). Of course, if you really do not know what you are doing medically, then avoiding treating the most lethal diseases is a good idea because then you are really putting your protocols on the line in direct life and death situations. At least with "mystery" diseases the consequences of ineffective treatment protocols are not so obvious.

It is not in the scope of this review to go through his various protocols for different diseases. As we have seen earlier, his whole medical model is a pharmaceutical one using herbs, vitamins and superfoods as drugs. But what I do suggest is that every time a particular assertion is made or nutrient/herb recommended for a medical condition, check it out with an Internet search and you will invariably find that others in the natural health community have already made those recommendations and suggestions. But, again, this does NOT mean that the information and suggestions will be unhelpful. Recommending to anyone a clean and natural vegan diet with plenty of raw components and without artificial and genetically modified ingredients will bring HUGE positive benefits, especially to those who have had a lifetime on standard Western diets. It does not matter what mystery illness you are suffering from, changing your diet like that, or going on a 28-day cleanse (nothing new there), will most probably make you substantially healthier.

This is just the nature of a natural health lifestyle… it really does work and can restore health considerably. This ability of natural health approaches to make big differences to chronic disease is no doubt the reason why William/Spirit has many positive testimonies. And if many amongst us need these sort of health recommendations to be divinely bestowed for them to be taken seriously, then that is still a good thing.

That said, if the whole "medium" aspect of his book were to be removed, the resulting medical information and healing protocols would be considered unremarkable, flawed, incomplete, simplistic and unauthoritative to those even in the alternative and natural health communities. William needs that added divine ingredient to turn something prosaic into a bestseller, and that ingredient is Spirit. I am not saying that Spirit has been contrived to sell books, only that without Spirit being woven into the narrative and giving everything a divine context, the book would have not made it into print, let alone become a bestseller. With Spirit's pedigree as second to only God Herself, everything literally becomes gospel. And you can't critique the Word of God!

So, to summarise, the Medical Medium's protocols are unproven, unoriginal and are unlikely to be taken seriously enough by researchers to be investigated properly. However, considering the number of people that Anthony William has helped ("tens of thousands" by 2015), Leong was right — you would think there would be a huge online response from the crowds of people cured. You don’t cure the incurable without kicking up a storm. And as far as I can see, what surrounds William is nothing more than a gentle breeze, despite the insane levels of marketing and PR hype. But a breeze is certainly better than nothing, especially for diseases considered incurable. And this is likely, as we have seen above, to be down to the fact that the natural approaches, even when prescribed poorly, do generally have positive consequences.

William, probably in conjunction with Hay House, was giving the chance to win prizes to anyone giving the Medical Medium an "inspiring" review [read 5-star review] on Amazon. The prizes included two free consultations. This type of marketing has been enough to garner William over 1,600 (85%) 5-star Amazon reviews at the time of writing. (See Joey Lott's excellent review and the addendum at the end of this article for exactly what was said on his website.)

This is unethical, and both Anthony William and his publisher Hay House should be ashamed of themselves. But it would not actually be that surprising as there is so much aggressive marketing around William, his book and his practice. The Medical Medium brand is now big business, and there are a lot of people making a killing [no pun intended] involved with it. Perhaps this is the future of New Age spiritual marketing. And all this hype paints a portrait of William that is very far from spiritual or compassionate. Which brings us to the second part of this review.

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In this second part of this review on the Medical Medium, I would like to move on to the spiritual aspect of Anthony William and the claims made about Spirit, the non-physical entity who speaks medical advice into William's ear.

Firstly, having a spirit or entity talking to you is nothing unique or new, despite what William's says. It is called clairaudience and many people have experienced it (including, one time, myself). Non-physical entities do appear to be able to communicate with us on certain occasions, but an important question always to ask is whether we can trust what they are saying. (Those of you who cannot accept this viewpoint of disembodied entities might instead regard them as parts of our unconscious mind, parts that appear to think and act independently.)

Can such disembodied entities be deceiving about who or what they are, and can they give us bad advice? Obviously they can when one considers the experience of some schizophrenics who can sometimes hear voices telling them to do destructive things. Disincarnate entities (whatever you believe about their actual nature) are just like incarnate entities, they have a vast range of spiritual development and integrity. So just because a voice tells us that it is a high spirit and gives us certain information does not mean we blindly accept everything it says. We need to use our discernment and intuition to determine where an entity is really coming from. And remember, an entity claiming that there is no spirit above it might genuinely believe that, so it is not necessarily a case of deception.

However, if Spirit was exactly who or what he claims to be, it is likely that his recommendations would be changing the planet as if a new Messiah were amongst us liberating us from the scourge of chronic diseases and mystery illnesses. But this is not unfortunately not happening, so it is more reasonable to assume that Spirit is not quite as high an authority on health as he claims to be. That is not the same as saying William is a charlatan or that Spirit's advice is of no use. As we have seen, what spirit is advising can indeed be beneficial for some people.

What we do know for certain is that many wildly inflated claims have been made and continue to be made by William/Spirit, claims that just so happen to have turned a flawed and simplistic natural health book (see above) into a bestseller, justifying William's $500 per 30 minute consultation charges. Here are some of them quoted from the introduction and first chapter of the Medical Medium book. As you will see, they seem to come more from a place of hubris than service to humanity:

Medical Medium / Introduction

"You will not find these answers anywhere else." [False: the information is widely available from other sources in the natural health community.]

"This book is unlike anything you’ve read. You won’t find citation after citation, references to study after study, because this is fresh, ahead-of-its-time information that comes from the heavens." [Another interpretation might be that it has no citations because William has little knowledge of natural health and has merely copied ideas from sources like Dr. Tent.]

"Science has discovered some of what I write about here, and has yet to discover much of it." [Maybe, maybe not. But it allows even William's errors to remain unquestioned.]

"Everything I share in these pages comes from a higher authority, the essence of compassion, that wants everyone to heal and live up to their potential." [In other words, what William writes is gospel and should not be questioned.]

"This book unveils many of Spirit’s most precious medical secrets. It’s the answer for anyone who’s suffering from a chronic condition or a mystery illness that doctors haven’t been able to resolve." [With a statement like that you cannot help but sell lots of books and lots of consultations, whether that statement is true or not.]

"It’s a book for everyone on the planet." [How does it help those with cancer or heart disease when they are not covered in his book. But then again, just imagine the income from those sorts of book sales!]

"Unlike other books in the health industry that repackage the same old theories with catchy new names, the pages that follow contain healing guidance that Spirit is revealing for the first time." [False: this book most certainly is repackaged natural health advice, and repackaged rather poorly.]

"What I know, and the secrets this book contains *will* eventually be recognized by the scientific community." [Some of it probably will, but those "secrets" are actually those of other health practitioners.]

"If you or a loved one is sick, though, do you feel you have 20 or 30 or 50 years to wait for answers? Can you bear to watch your daughter or son grow up to face the same health issues that you have, and the same limits of medicine? That’s why it’s time this book reached the public — so *you* can read it now." [Appealing to the health of our children strikes me as a pretty unethical marketing ploy.]

"This book has something for everyone, regardless of what food program, diet, or nutritional belief system you may practice. It’s for anyone who wants access to the most advanced knowledge about healing available." [Of course, and a statement like that will certainly maximise book sales.But again, it does not have something for everyone as it ignores cancer and heart disease, the two leading causes of death.]

"I’m about getting people better. I’ve helped tens of thousands of people fully recover from what ailed them, stave off further illness, and live vibrant lives, and I want to share this success with the wider world." [If this is true and tens of thousands of people have fully recovered, you would think there would be a huge media storm about it. Sadly there does not seem to be, unless people are just being cured and remain silent.]

Medical Medium / Chapter 1

"In this book, I reveal truths you won’t learn anywhere else. You won’t hear them from your doctor, read them in other books, or find them on the web." [False: these truths have already been put out by other individuals and are all over the net.]

"These are secrets that have not yet surfaced, and that I’m bringing to light for the first time." [False:these "secrets" are all over the Internet and were discovered by other people. Also notice the "I’m" that William is writing here which sounds very egotistical considering it is not really him but Spirit.]

Spirit: "I am the Spirit of the Most High. There is no spirit above me but God." [You say that, Spirit, but why should we believe you?]

Spirit: "At the fingertip of God sits a word, and that word is compassion. I am that word. A living word. The closest word to God." [Spirit is saying that he is closer to God than anyone else. But again, why should we take his word for it?]

"Other mediums sometimes hear inner voices, but mine isn’t internal. It’s a voice directly outside my right ear." [Misunderstanding of clairaudience: when you hear a disembodied voice it certainly sounds as if it is outside your head.]

Spirit: "*I* am compassion. And no other sits above me but God." [Spirit displays a huge level of hubris.]

Spirit: "The angels and other beings look to me for guidance. I provide all who care to listen with the lessons and wisdom of God. But on earth, I speak directly only to you." [More hubris from William/Spirit.]

Spirit: "Only one or two people per century are given this gift. It is not a typical intuitive or psychic ability." [And it goes on and on… ]

"I receive health information that’s incredibly accurate — much more so than any other medium alive." [You know this for sure? Prove it! Where are the tens of thousands of people that you have cured?]

"Plus I’m regularly informed about my own health, which is a great rarity. Even the most famous mediums in history normally couldn’t read their own conditions." [False: many medical intuitives receive information about their own conditions.]

"I don’t need to be in the same room with a person to perform a reading, so I arrange to speak with clients by phone. This allows me to help anyone in the world, regardless of location, and it minimizes the transition time between clients. I’ve helped tens of thousands of clients this way." [Certainly increases William's client base by many orders of magnitude!]

"Because Spirit is distinct and separate from me, it doesn’t matter if on a given day I’m feeling upset or ill or bored. Spirit is unaffected by my emotions and will consistently provide an accurate reading of each client’s health." [Delusional but useful for selling readings: Spirit is coming through William, and so the state of the channel certainly must have some effect.]

"Another way I’m different from most mediums is that I have no problem getting information about the health of my family and friends, or about my own health. Again, because Spirit is separate from me, all I have to do is ask, and he tells me what I want to know. This is one of the things that makes me unique." [All this just sounds like over-the-top PR… there is nothing spiritual, deep or insightful about any of these quotes. William appears to be more a salesman than anything else.]

"Padre Pio and Edgar Cayce, those famous mystical healers of the 20th century, were the only two mediums in recent history who accessed the level of compassion that Spirit demands of me. Their work as compassionate healers was in some ways similar to mine." [More hubris… do you really think someone like Pio or Cayce would make these sorts of ridiculous comparisons and claims?]

"No other medium does what I do. No one else alive has a spirit voice providing profound on-target health information with crystal clarity." [More hubris. And if William's health info is so spot on, again, why aren't the "tens of thousands" of people you have cured of very serious conditions not proclaiming their cures in the media and on theInternet?]

Does this really sound like the voice of Compassion to you… the voice of the highest spirit? Does Compassion really have to market itself like an egomaniac? I am not aware of any other deeply spiritual people making these types of egocentric claims. But in our marketing-saturated society, we seem to have lost perspective of what authentic spirituality is, evidenced by the many who quite comfortably accept these sorts of claims from a supposedly spiritual man channelling through the very highest divine compassion! Have we all gone mad? And these sorts of ridiculous boasts are not limited to his book. When you hear him interviewed (you can find interviews on Youtube) you can hear him do the same "I'm unique" PR job of a salesman. It is all one big over-the-top marketing exercise. He is the Marketing Medium not the Medical Medium!

Due to the high demand for his consultations (not surprising considering his claims), he now fulfils requests for appointments randomly from the huge waiting list, giving everyone at least a chance to have an appointment with him. This shows the level of interest that can be stirred up by making claims of spiritual authority. And combine that with health, and you have a winning formula.

William also states on that that he is no longer available for follow-up sessions with any particular client. Ostensibly, this is because demand is so high that he wants to reach as many people as possible, and he provides five other intuitive healers for "ongoing support and answers to your questions." They are currently: Nicole Galante, a chiropractor who is also an intuitive healer; Muneeza Ahmed, holistic health coach and another medical intuitive; Carol Ritchie, a holistic counselor; Carolyn Cavanagh, another medical intutive; and Robby Barbaro, a diabetes support coach. If you need a follow up consultation, it is likely that the road to recovery is not going according to plan [the Hawaiian Spirulina or Vitamin B12 have not cured you] or other medical issues have arisen, and so it is these helpers who have to deal with shortcomings in William's protocols.

A more veridical reason that he gives no follow-up consultations is probably as a means to avoid exposing his lack of medical/clinical depth when recovery does not go according to his "divine" plan. Sticking with new patients means that he never has to directly face the consequences of his medical protocols, consequences that any other practitioner would use to tweak treatment programs and become better practitioners, but which in William's case would challenge his psychic specialness and divine authority, and upset his whole gravy train. Unless he is a con man, William regards his information as absolute, so he probably feels that he needs no opportunity to learn in a clinical setting. Again this is dangerous hubris and will lock him into this fantasy of being omniscient and infallible. [I am giving him the benefit of the doubt here — he could very well just be a con man deliberately avoiding situations that expose his lack of medical knowledge.]

In this way, William isolates himself in a bubble of self-importance and clinical stagnation, cutting himself off from growth as a practitioner. In this scenario, his medical knowledge and healing protocols remain static and hidden— unchallenged by reality/nature. If he continues down this path, it is only a matter of time before he gets sued for medical negligence.

At the moment he seems to think that the copious disclaimers he writes everywhere will be enough to protect him. He also bans clients from recording their $500 sessions (note pad and pen only), no doubt because he does not want the flakiness of the medical consultations becoming public, and also because having no recording makes if much more difficult for clients who do not have the desired response to his medical advice to hold him responsible. Remember, although William avoids serious chronic illnesses like cancer and heart disease in his book, no doubt the bulk of his private consultations are with individuals suffering from these diseases because they are the most prevalent serious diseases in Western society, diseases for which orthodox medicine is not effective. And so, in life-and-death situations like this it no doubt behoves him not to have the session recorded as the consequences of ineffective protocols and medical advice are severe indeed. So the man is very shrewd, consciously or unconsciously, at hiding his tracks.

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Finally, let's look at William himself. Personally, I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he has good intentions in what he is doing (although tainted by greed and excessive egotism), and that he is "just" unconscious of the issues raised above. I hope he genuinely feels that he is spreading important medical information, and not just raking in the dollars. But psychic gifts can be seductive indeed, making us feel as if we are very special — at the centre of a divine plan — and that feeling can easily lead to hubris, evidenced by the quotations from William's book above. And it is that level of (presumably unconscious) hubris that creates the Medical Medium Juggernaut permitting £500 charges for 30min consultations (with no payment plans or reduced rates available for those without the money).

This is not new: I have done previous reviews on individuals who made inflated spiritual claims about themselves in order to set themselves and their organisations up as harbingers of absolute Truth. Perhaps this is just a human psychological characteristic of the spiritually ambitious (an oxymoron if there ever was one). Get it "right"… such as Ron Hubbard did… and you can literally start a religion.

Anthony William is still far from starting a religion, but I do think it sad that so many in the spiritual communities (including his publisher Hay House) seem to be taken in my him and cannot see the damage that this level of spiritual hubris can do to authentic spiritual awakening. Putting aside William's health claims, just his claim to be the only effective medical medium does great disservice to all the incredible beings out there who have added to human knowledge and human awakening. We are all one family in spirit and divine inspiration is our collective heritage, not the reserve of a select few who claim it for egotistical and marketing reasons.

Accepting or making inflated personal claims of this nature diminishes our own awakening by giving our pathological egos an external event on which to feed off. And so you have individuals like William who seem to have traded an inspirational talent (assuming what he tells us about his gift of mediumship is actually true) for a leading role on the commercial stage. A great shame. Yes, he is promoting natural medicine, albeit a distorted version, but at what cost to our collective psychological and spiritual awakening? For by giving simplistic views of diseases, their causes, and treatment plans, and presenting those views as absolute Truth from the highest spirit of all, William shifts authority for our health away from our centre. For ultimately, if we are to heal, we each have to become our own medical intuitive, deciding which healing path to take and which practitioner to consult etc. The path to health is an intimate one, and nobody can make that journey for us.

On that path it can sometimes feel good to give over authority for our health to another. But that only works for a limited time, and if we want to be truly healthy we need to take back that responsibility. This is because it is the normal everyday aspects of our lives that can, over time, have the biggest impact on our health and well-being. And that includes not only our lifestyles (especially our diets and physical exercise), but also our emotional, mental and even spiritual states. For health is ultimately about wholeness, and whilst it is essential we look outside the box for different healing modalities and suggestions, we cannot be whole if we remain looking outside.

If you decide to follow William's protocols, that is your choice, so long as the authority to do so comes from inside you rather than being strong-armed by false marketing statements such as: "No other medium does what I do. No one else alive has a spirit voice providing profound on-target health information with crystal clarity." This statement is untrue, disempowering, over-the-top, and damaging in the long-term. But then so much around William appears to be marketing hype with very little substance behind it, all seemingly in an effort to sell more books and consultations.

Perhaps the most worrying aspect of the Medical Medium is his total avoidance of responsibility and accountability for the outcome of his recommendations: no recording of his $500/30min consultations and no follow-up consultations. So when your life is on the line, can you really trust the advice of a medical practitioner who declines to "sign his name" to his recommendations, preferring to hide in the shadows, and who also refuses to do any follow-up consultations so there is no chance of tweaking your treatment protocol if it is not going according to plan?

When we are sick we do grasp at straws — that is natural — and natural healing protocols can certainly be more effective than allopathic ones for many chronic diseases. But accepting this Marketing Medium's claim of having "the most advanced knowledge about healing available" is not in our interest or that of humanity. The only person really benefiting in all this is Anthony William, a man who seems to have skillfully set himself up as the Emperor of holistic medicine, an Emperor who unfortunately has no clothes. Even if we give William the benefit of the doubt and assume he has a gift for psychic diagnosis (see below), his book demonstrates a sparse, simplistic and flawed understanding of holistic medicine and the enormous potential of natural health and lifestyle approaches in the recovery from chronic disease.