These are concepts and practices that we’re deeply curious about. They typically fall outside the realm of conventional biomedicine but really resonate with some.

Editor’s note: We trust that you’ll quickly understand that this medical medium is operating well outside the bounds of medicine and science. But to avoid any confusion, our in-house PhDs want to remind readers that his claims cannot be substantiated by science.

Taking medical advice from Spirit—the divine voice that Medical Medium Anthony William says speaks through him—involves a leap of faith for many, but we’re continually amazed by the testimonials of readers and friends who have been helped by doing so, particularly for thyroid-related issues. William—author of three books, including the forthcoming Thyroid Healing: The Truth behind Hashimoto’s, Graves’, Insomnia, Hypothyroidism, Thyroid Nodules & Epstein-Barr—shares his view on thyroid cancer and the link he sees to the Epstein-Barr Virus. For those not familiar with the Medical Medium’s work (see more on goop here), it’s clear that current science does not support all his theories, but (again) many people find them incredibly insightful—and they’re certainly thought-provoking. (As always, we’d love to hear from you whether you have supporting or contradicting info and feelings—feedback at goop dot com.)

Thyroid Cancer

My introduction to cancer came at age four, at the same time that I first received my gift from Spirit. I was seated at the family dinner table when Spirit appeared to me, instructing me to inform my grandmother that she had lung cancer. Though I didn’t know what the term meant, I repeated it, much to the shock of everyone at the table. The doctor soon confirmed that the revelation was true.

Afterward, I asked Spirit how it had happened. Why had my grandmother gotten cancer? Spirit answered that it was a combination of a virus, EBV, plus a variety of toxins in the form of heavy metals, DDT and other pesticides, solvents, plastics, and petroleum. The words were foreign to me at that young age, though I could tell they were serious. Since then—for the entire time I’ve had this gift—I’ve taken cancer personally. Over the decades, I’ve helped countless people who were battling cancer to find answers, safety, and healing.

“My introduction to cancer came at age four, at the same time that I first received my gift from Spirit. I was seated at the family dinner table when Spirit appeared to me, instructing me to inform my grandmother that she had lung cancer.”

Cancer is a big and scary topic, and it remains a mystery to medical research and science. The answers aren’t out there about why it even exists or how to protect yourself and your loved ones, so people are left with a void.

With every book, I want to include as much healing information as I possibly can. I set out to give you every possible insight at once, and then I always come up against the reality: that it’s just one book, and I can’t fit in everything there is to say. Until now, there simply hasn’t been room to address cancer in more detail. I believe it’s finally time to change that.

The Not-So-Distant Past

You’ll hear from other sources that cancer has always been part of our human history. Going back five hundred years, one thousand years, even going back to ancient times, cancer has gotten in the way of life, these sources say. You’ll be told that cancer can be found in mummies, and one day, you’ll even be told that cancer was discovered in a caveman found preserved in ice for tens of thousands of years.

The truth is that real, malignant cancer is a comparatively recent development. While the tumors of old could be life-threatening if they grew in such a way that they impeded organ function, they weren’t caused by cancer cells; they were benign. When the ancient Greeks used the word that eventually led to our English word cancer, they weren’t referring to what we mean today when we say “cancer.” Theirs was a blanket term for all disease, when someone was ailing, not recovering, and even dying without explanation. Tumors—and there were only non-cancerous tumors—made up only a tiny fraction of that definition. The tumors of the day formed from old scar tissue from flesh wounds and from toxic heavy metals saturating living tissue. Real, malignant cancer’s true origins only go back to the Industrial Revolution.

“If we’re convinced that we create cancer within ourselves, or that cancer is our fault because we’re frail human beings, we won’t look harder for the answers we’re not supposed to know.”

Why are we told otherwise? Why are we led to believe that cancer is practically prehistoric? Because if we believe that cancer has been with us since the beginning of humankind, then we’ll think that a predisposition toward it is written into our genes—and therefore we’re the ones who should take the blame for it. If we’re convinced that we create cancer within ourselves, or that cancer is our fault because we’re frail human beings, we won’t look harder for the answers we’re not supposed to know.

Well, you deserve answers—so let’s get rid of the mystery around thyroid cancer.

The Thyroid Cancer Virus

Ninety-eight percent of the time, cancer is caused by a virus and at least one type of toxin. There are many viruses that can be involved with cancer; the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) is one of them. Ever heard of mononucleosis, also called glandular fever or “the kissing disease”? That’s an early stage of EBV, and it’s rampant, though the symptoms are often so mild that they aren’t diagnosed as mono. In a later stage, years after any mono symptoms have disappeared, and in combination with toxins, EBV is the virus responsible for thyroid cancer. (EBV is also responsible for breast cancer, liver cancer, almost all lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, colon cancer, prostate cancer, women’s reproductive cancers, leukemia, and many more. More in Medical Medium Thyroid Healing: The Truth behind Hashimoto’s, Graves’, Insomnia, Hypothyroidism, Thyroid Nodules & Epstein-Barr.)

It’s easy to think that a mother and daughter who look alike and sound alike and both develop thyroid cancer in their lifetimes get that same cancer because of genes. That’s what we’re supposed to think, because it keeps us from investigating outside sources.

While of course facial features and vocal chords are genetic, disease isn’t. Here’s the real equation: Virus + Toxins = Cancer

When a particular virus has the right fuel in the form of particular toxins, cancer can result. Notice how genes aren’t part of that at all? What medical communities interpret as genetics with cancer susceptibility is really the passing along of viruses and toxins from generation to generation, or exposure within a family to the same viruses and toxins because the family lives together. That mother and daughter could have both inherited EBV through the family line, and then, during the daughter’s childhood, both could have been exposed to nasty toxins that fed the virus.

“Ever heard of mononucleosis, also called glandular fever or “the kissing disease”? That’s an early stage of EBV, and it’s rampant, though the symptoms are often so mild that they aren’t diagnosed as mono.”

To examine how the Epstein-Barr virus became part of the cancer equation, let’s touch back on the historical development of EBV. First, the Industrial Revolution came along, and with it, the development of brand-new, heavy-metal-laden chemical compounds that began to pollute our world and our bodies. EBV would feed off of these poisons to try to protect us from them like the good, loyal virus it still was (that’s right—EBV used to be beneficial to our bodies, like some bacteria are). In processing them, the virus cells would essentially remanufacture the poisons into more toxic form, releasing them in order to protect itself into whatever tissue surrounded it—whether in the liver, lungs, pancreas, breasts, thyroid, or elsewhere. Once eliminated as EBV byproduct (waste excreted by the virus), these remanufactured poisons could serve as food again to the virus. This would happen continually, with only the strongest virus cells—ones that could tolerate the ever-stronger poisons—surviving and multiplying.

When EBV was first morphing like this, it wasn’t yet cancerous. Benign tumors could form from the dead human tissue killed off by EBV’s poisonous remanufactured byproduct; for the most part, that was it. (Malignant EBV tumors were still extremely rare. Those that did form were a result of the very first mutated strain of EBV that came into contact with early, experimental chemical compounds.) What this time period really did was set the stage for certain strains of EBV to go cancerous eventually, when they encountered the right fuel.

As the decades passed and we entered the second half of the 1800’s, the virus grew even stronger. Then came more industrial chemical creations, this time the experimental fungicides, herbicides, and pre-penicillin antibiotics of the late 1800’s that took EBV to a new level, forcing the virus to mutate so that it was no longer beneficial to our bodies. With these new chemical compounds as fuel, EBV’s toxic waste was more poisonous than ever before in its history. When this viral byproduct saturated the living tissue of whichever part of the body it was in at a given time—for example, the thyroid—the formation of keloids and benign tumors from damaged, scarred tissue and dead human cells became more common. EBV, at the same time, was mutating in order to tolerate its own remanufactured, poisonous waste. It was only out for itself now.

As we moved into the 20th century, certain varieties of EBV became signature to creating cancer. And through the last one-hundred-plus years, these EBV strains have continued to mutate as they consume more advanced, newer brews of toxins.

How Thyroid Cancer Forms

When someone contracts one of the mutated strains of EBV that can cause cancer, the strain keeps mutating inside the body—if it has the right fuel in the form of toxins. The virus takes in the toxins in its path and goes through that remanufacturing process, releasing poisons that are stronger than when they went in, almost like the trial-and-error synthesis process that goes into chemical companies’ creation of new, potent chemical compounds. This probably sounds similar to the description in Thyroid Healing of how neurotoxins and dermatoxins are produced, and it is. The difference is that cancer-causing EBV strains tend to produce fewer neurotoxins and dermatoxins than some other EBV varieties; instead, they’re geared to remanufacture toxins into more overall cell-damaging poisons. If the virus is in the thyroid at this point, the remanufactured poisons will saturate the area of the gland where the virus cells are located, damaging thyroid tissue. The virus will consume the dead tissue cells that are filled with remanufactured poisons, and much of the virus will start to die off from the toxicity—in fact, someone’s viral load inside the thyroid could reduce 50 to 70 percent at this stage.

Another cycle will begin. The EBV cells that survive will be the ones best equipped to handle poisons. They’ll feed on any old or new toxins in that person’s body. Plus their viral byproduct—this time even more potent after another round of reprocessing—will saturate the thyroid tissue again, killing off some of the healthy thyroid cells, and the virus will consume these poison-saturated tissue cells, too. The EBV cells that can’t tolerate the increased toxicity will die off, and the new round of survivors will be even stronger than before.

A third cycle will start. This time, as the virus re-synthesizes and remanufactures another batch of poisons, it again saturates adjacent thyroid tissue and consumes the toxic, dead thyroid cells that result. Instead of a normal die-off, like the virus cells from the previous cycles that took place six months to two years earlier, the virus cells that are poisoned this time reach their mutation capacity. As a last-ditch method of survival when no longer able to mutate, these dying virus cells produce an enzymatic chemical compound that transforms them into living cancer cells. Now, instead of being on the brink of death, they have an afterlife.

With new structures, these cells consume the remanufactured-poison-saturated thyroid cells in order to reproduce and multiply, this time as cancer. As they do this, the cancer cells will in turn release a new enzymatic biochemical into nearby thyroid tissue, slowly morphing those human cells into cancer cells as well.

Both the formerly viral cancer cells and the formerly human cancer cells have life to them, and they group together to survive. In these clusters, they need food. A process of angiogenesis occurs, where tiny blood vessels form—similar to the tiny veins in a leaf—to draw up nutrients past the microscopic membrane holding the cluster of cancer cells together. (Angiogenesis as a concept has been discovered by medical science and research, though the specifics we’re looking at here are not yet known.)

Meanwhile, there are still active EBV cells in the thyroid that haven’t turned cancerous. They’re continuing to cycle through consuming and re-consuming toxins, and their waste matter can continue to kill off living thyroid tissue. The vessels of the cancerous cell mass will suck up both the remanufactured poisons and the dead human cells as fuel, allowing a malignant thyroid tumor or cyst to form—and then to grow and expand.

It Takes Two

Let’s be perfectly clear that EBV does not automatically translate to thyroid cancer. First of all, only some mutated strains in EBV Groups 4 and 5 can form cancer cells. Secondly, a particularly strong brew of toxins needs to be part of the equation, too. As you could see in the process we just examined, EBV needed fuel at every step of the way in order to advance to the point of cancer.

We’re not supposed to think too much about the toxins involved in cancer. We’re not supposed to know we inherit them. Instead, as I said, we’re supposed to think cancer is genetic. If it’s genetic, then it’s our fault, and if it’s our fault, then no one else will pay the price. Think about mesothelioma, a cancer caused by asbestos exposure (one of the rare few cancers that does not involve a virus). When the cause of mesothelioma came to light, companies were forced to put together a multibillion-dollar fund for patients and families affected by the cancer. That’s just one industrial-borne toxin. Now imagine if the industries responsible for the production of all the various toxins that feed EBV were exposed. Billions alone would need to go into researching EBV and its mutations. It would be catastrophic—class-action lawsuits would follow, dozens of multi-trillion-dollar funds would need to be established, and industries would pay the price for over one hundred and fifty years of cancer.

“If we were to make great strides in understanding cancer as a society, this is where medical research and science would focus.”

So instead of the truth coming out about how various cancers develop, we’re told that we create it with our DNA or even our thoughts. Medical research and science focus on genes being responsible for cancer and how to treat cancer once it’s already formed, and the process of how cancer actually starts stays in the dark.

Now you know the truth, though, and that truth involves toxins. So many variables affect how an EBV-caused (or any virus-caused) cancer forms and develops. Does someone have more dioxins in the body? More heavy metals, more pesticides, more pharmaceuticals? What kinds? What poisons were inherited through the family line? Then there’s the virus—what strain is it? How mutated? If someone has fewer toxins and a strain of the virus that’s less aggressive, their cancer may not be as pernicious, and if it’s otherwise, the cancer may develop much more quickly. And there’s the immune system to consider—is it compromised, or still going strong? If we were to make great strides in understanding cancer as a society, this is where medical research and science would focus.

A Formula for Healing

The virus-plus-toxins formula may sound frightening. Don’t let it worry you. It’s much less frightening than not knowing how or why cancer plagues us.

Say you learn about a ninety-year-old who smoked for seventy years and never developed lung cancer. While he might have had plenty of other negative health effects from smoking, cancer wasn’t one of them. Then you think about someone who did develop lung cancer and never smoked a day in his life, though was exposed to another type of toxic brew. What distinguished the two?

“That knowledge gives you control in your own life—a wildly better option than living in fear.”

Until now, you probably would have said that the answer was a mystery and most likely came down to genetics. In light of the information above, you can say that the one who didn’t get cancer was the one without a virus.

And that knowledge gives you control in your own life—a wildly better option than living in fear. Whether you’d like to prevent thyroid cancer or deal with thyroid cancer you already have, you now know the steps to take: (1) lower your viral load, and (2) eliminate toxins from your body. Thyroid Healing gives you the power to do both.

Adapted and reprinted with permission from Medical Medium Thyroid Healing: The Truth behind Hashimoto’s, Graves’, Insomnia, Hypothyroidism, Thyroid Nodules & Epstein-Barr. Copyright © 2017 by Anthony William. Published by Hay House; November 7, 2017.

For over twenty-five years, Anthony William has devoted his life to helping people overcome and prevent illness—and discover the lives they were meant to live. What he does is several decades ahead of scientific discovery. His compassionate approach has time and again given relief and results to those who seek him out. He is the host of the weekly radio show “Medical Medium” and the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Medical Medium Thyroid Healing: The Truth behind Hashimoto’s, Graves’, Insomnia, Hypothyroidism, Thyroid Nodules & Epstein Barr; Medical Medium Life-Changing Foods: Save Yourself and the Ones You Love with the Hidden Healing Powers of Fruits & Vegetables; and Medical Medium: Secrets Behind Chronic and Mystery Illness and How to Finally Heal.

The views expressed in this article intend to highlight alternative studies and induce conversation. They are the views of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of goop, and are for informational purposes only, even if and to the extent that this article features the advice of physicians and medical practitioners. This article is not, nor is it intended to be, a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and should never be relied upon for specific medical advice.