Category: Quackery

A jury has found self-help gury James Arthur Ray guilty of negligent homicide on Wednesday in the deaths of three of his followers during a botched sweat lodge ceremony near Sedona in October 2009.

By finding Ray guilty of negligent homicide, the jury in effect decided that while Ray’s conduct caused the deaths, he wasn’t aware of or didn’t recognize the risk of death caused by his conduct – in this case, the manner in which he ran the sweat lodge.

The Church of Scientology has been blitzing Melbourne with its so-called ‘Oxford Capacity Analysis’ — a ‘personality test’ used by the cult as a recruitment tool.

Professionals note that the test has no standing in the professional community of psychology practitioners and researchers.

A life-saving blood transfusion was administered to a critically ill baby under a court order secured by a Dublin hospital at a late-night hearing in a High Court judge’s home.

The child’s parents, members of the Jehovah Witness faith objected on religious grounds to the procedure.

The Church of Scientology has been offering alcohol-dependent Aborigines a drug bomb therapy, which it has been told could kill people with kidney problems.

The Scientologists this week responded to a warning by the Northern Territory Health Department and stopped distributing literature which promotes a dangerous drug detoxification therapy.

The government is urging councils across the country to stop giving hundreds of thousands of pounds in tax breaks to the Church of Scientology.

The communities secretary, Eric Pickles, said a majority of the public did not want the “controversial organisation” to be given the kind of favourable treatment usually reserved for charities and questioned this use of public money.

Concerns have been raised about a partnership between the Australian Federal Government and a drug awareness group run by members of the controversial Church of Scientology.

The quackery-promoting cult, which also is behind a hate campaign against psychiatry, uses front groups to train and gain influence and respectability.

Scientology’s quackery is highlighted once again, this time by renowned mental health expert Pat McGorry who has joined psychiatry boss Louise Newman and the Brain and Mind Institute’s Ian Hickie in urging senators to vote for an inquiry.

“They are the deniers of the realities of mental illness, which I find incredibly irresponsible and dangerous,” he told ABC Radio on Wednesday.