Medical claims in Scientology doctrine
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In Church of Scientology doctrine, there have been a number of controversial medical claims made, usually centered around their auditing process, which claims to analyze and treat a person's so-called "Reactive mind" and "Body Thetans".
These claims began with the 1950 publication of founder L. Ron Hubbard's book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health (DMSMH). Chapter 5 of DMSMH, Psychosomatic Illness, asserted "The problem of psychosomatic illness is entirely embraced by Dianetics, and by Dianetic technique such illness has been eradicated entirely in every case. About 70 percent of the physician's current roster of diseases fall in the category of psychosomatic illness." Hubbard added, "That all illnesses are psychosomatic is, of course, absurd, for there exist, after all, life forms called germs which have survival as their goals." [emphasis in the original.] Later in the chapter Hubbard asserted, "Bizarre aches and pains in various portions of the body are generally psychosomatic. Migraine headaches are psychosomatic and, with the others, are uniformly cured by Dianetic therapy. (And the word cured is used in its fullest sense." [emphasis in the original.] Such claims have often brought the Church to the attention of law enforcement and regulatory agencies.
September 1, 1962, Hubbard issued a Policy Letter entitled Healing Promotion. In it he asserted, "We have resolved healing.... This program has the following thought major:
- "MAYBE YOU'RE NOT SICK
- "MAYBE YOU'RE JUST SUPPRESSED
- "SEE US AND FIND OUT" [EMPHASIS in the original]
"Legally, this permits us to heal without engaging in healing as, in actual fact, we address no illnesses and indeed, DENY people are ill--they are only suppressed. Sickness occurs, we say, where suppression has been too great.... The legal argument is simple; we don't believe in sickness, we do not address illness, we do not diagnose, we believe that freeing the human spirit also incidentally prevents sickness.... We do send acutely ill people to doctors. We advertise to cure no diseases! That last is legally important." [emphasis in the original.]
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[edit] Scientology and mainstream medicine
In public statements, especially to newcomers, the Church claims that it has no problem with Scientologists taking drugs prescribed by a physician. The official Church website says it is okay to take antibiotics or other medical drugs prescribed by a medical doctor. "Any other drug use, such as the use of street drugs or psychiatric mind-altering drugs, is forbidden." [1] Exactly what the Church considers to be "psychiatric" or "mind-altering" drugs may be quite different from what the mainstream considers to be in this category; aspirin, for example, is claimed to "inhibit the ability of the thetan to create mental image pictures" and render the thetan as a result "stupid, blank, forgetful, delusive and irresponsible. He gets into a 'wooden' sort of state, unfeeling, insensitive, unable and definitely not trustworthy, a menace to his fellows actually" (emphasis in original) [1]. And Students are not permitted on course if they have taken aspirin within the past 24 hours.
However, the Church has a long history of opposition to drugs and medical treatments of any kind but their own. In their Narconon materials, they explicitly state that all drugs are poisonous and remain in the body permanently. Several former members of Scientology have reported being ordered to stop taking their prescription medications, and being warned that they would suffer negative consequences if they continued to do so. [2]
In 1965, Hubbard wrote that Scientologists taking courses were barred from visiting a doctor without express permission from the Church, except in cases of severe emergency. (HCOPL 26 July 1965, "Release Declaration Restrictions, Healing Amendments").
Official Scientology websites respond to the question of "Do Scientologists use medical doctors?" with the claim that "The Church of Scientology has always had the firm policy of not diagnosing or treating the sick" (emphasis added) and "A Scientologist with a physical condition is always advised to seek and obtain the needed examination and treatment of a qualified medical professional ... There are also many medical doctors who are Scientologists themselves."[3] However, given that the Church of Scientology even today still publishes claims by Hubbard that the reactive mind "is the only thing in the human being which can produce ... arthritis, bursitis, asthma, allergies, sinusitis, coronary trouble, high blood pressure, and so on, down the whole catalog of psychosomatic ills" (emphasis added)[2] it is difficult to see how the different statements could be reconciled.
[edit] Tory Christman
After being a member of the Church of Scientology for three decades and rising through the ranks to reach their OT VII level, Tory Christman broke away from them and went public with her experiences. She had been ordered to stop taking her epilepsy medication, and when her health subsequently worsened, her Scientologist superiors told her it was because she needed to work harder to remove invisible alien "Body Thetans" that were clinging to her. [4]
[edit] Charlotte Kates
Charlotte Kates is a former Scientologist who came out against the Church in support of Keith Henson's appeal of RTC v. Henson, in which Scientology's Religious Technology Center sued Henson for revealing secret Church documents regarding fraudulent medical claims. In her statement, Kates tells of a fellow Scientologist whose life she observed being ruined after she was diagnosed with Lyme disease :
A medical doctor did confirm her symptoms as being a recurrence of Lyme disease; however, before beginning medical treatment, she sought the advice of Scientologist chiropractors, nutritionists and other alternative medical practitioners. Scientologists deeply distrust traditional medicine, a viewpoint promoted by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard since the time of Dianetics, and commonly refrain from medical treatment at all costs......After spending approximately one hundred thousand dollars on Scientology's cures, she had "learned" in her auditing sessions that billions of years ago, in a past life, she had been forced to "zap" her mother with a ray gun by an evil space government, yet she was still afflicted with Lyme disease. She had maxed out all of her credit cards, taken out loans, and otherwise expended all of her resources--and given all of her money to Scientology in return for a much-promised, never-materialized cure for her Lyme disease." [5]
[edit] Lisa McPherson
In 1995, a young Scientologist named Lisa McPherson, after a minor car accident, stripped naked and walked down Belleview Boulevard in Clearwater, Florida until apprehended by paramedics. She told them in a monotone voice that she was an Operating Thetan and didn't need a body to live. Soon after being taken to the hospital, a group of Scientologists arrived and insisted she leave immediately to be under their own care, not the doctor's.
Against the hospital's wishes, McPherson left with the Scientologists, who took her to their "Flag Base" at the Fort Harrison Hotel. 17 days later, she was dead and in an emaciated condition, dehydrated, bruised, and covered in insect bites.
According to the Washington Post, the Scientologists who tended to McPherson at the Flag Base included an unlicensed anesthesiologist, a dentist, and various office staffers with no medical training. One was only seventeen. [6]
[edit] Jesse Prince
Jesse Prince, a former top-level Scientology official, indicated that Scientology routinely uses auditing as a substitute for medical care:
Ted Cormier, a personal friend of mine. He had Parkinson's disease. He was ordered to leave Gilman Hot Springs and go directly to Flag for NOTS 34 auditing to cure his cancer. When this failed, Ray Mithoff sent him orders in his Pre-Clear folder for him to "end cycle." He died.
The NOTs (New Era Dianetics for Operating Thetans) routine 34 deals with treatment of physical ailments. The term "end cycle" means to cause or allow oneself to die. [7]
[edit] Mental health
Scientology has long claimed that their own system is the only way to mental health, and that psychology and psychiatry are not only ineffective, but evil. In their book What Is Scientology?, they state that psychology "provides no means of producing actual improvement" and that psychiatry has "no tools at all for dealing with the mentally ill". Scientology celebrity activist Tom Cruise has made many public claims on behalf of the Church, claiming Scientology's superior ability to treat mental illness over psychiatry's. [8] [9] [10]
In 1995, Scientology's David Miscavige set a goal for Scientologists to literally destroy psychiatry within five years:
"There are a lot of opinions out there as to what is wrong with Earth, 1995. But if you really want to eliminate those problems all you have to do is work for the objectives that we, as members of the IAS, have set for the year 2000: Objective One - place Scientology at the absolute forefront of Society. Objective Two - eliminate psychiatry in all its forms. Let's get rid of psychiatry, and let's bring Scientology to every man, woman and child on this planet." (International Scientology News #38, 1995)
Hubbard, in his HCO Technical Bulletins Volume 2, states "We know more about psychiatry than psychiatrists", and then goes on to add: "We can brainwash faster than the Russians". (pages 473-474)
[edit] The FDA lawsuit
In 1963 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducted a surprise raid on the Church in Washington, DC and confiscated all E-meters on the premises. The FDA filed suit against the Church of Scientology for fraudulent medical claims and called the E-meter a fraudulant healing device. After almost a decade of court battles, the Church finally settled with the FDA. The court ruled that the Church was to abide by certain conditions:
"The device should bear a prominent, clearly visible notice warning that any person using it for auditing or counseling of any kind is forbidden by law to represent that there is any medical or scientific basis for believing or asserting that the device is useful in the diagnosis, treatment, or prevention of any disease. It should be noted in the warning that the device has been condemned by a United States District court for misrepresentation and misbranding under the Food and Drug laws, that use is permitted only as part of religious activity, and that the E-meter is not medically or scientifically capable of improving the health or bodily functions of anyone.......each user, purchaser, and distributee of the E-meter shall sign a written statement that he has read such a warning and understands its contents and such statements shall be preserved" (United States of America, Libelant, v. An Article or Device... "Hubbard Electrometer" or "Hubbard E-Meter" etc., Founding Church of Scientology et al., Claimants, No. D.C. 1-63, United States District Court, District of Columbia, July 30, 1971 (333 F. Supp. 357).
In response The Church of Scientology now includes such a disclaimer on each e-meter [11]
[edit] Medical claims
[edit] A History of Man
In the foreword to Hubbard's book A History of Man (in which a pseudoscientific timeline of Human Evolution is laid out), Hubbard promises miraculous cures:
"This is useful knowledge. With it the blind again see, the lame walk, the ill recover, the insane become sane and the sane become saner. By its use the thousand abilities Man has sought to recover become his once more." [12]
Elsewhere in the book, numerous medical cures are claimed:
- "Today, Eleanor has arthritis. She is audited... tonight she doesn't have arthritis" (pg.7)
- "Paralysis, anxiety stomachs, arthritis and many ills and aberrations have been relieved by auditing them." (pg.14)
- "Cancer has been eradicated by auditing out conception and mitosis." (pg.20)
[edit] Dianetics
Originally published in 1950, this book (full title: Dianetics: the Modern Science of Mental Health) has undergone many slight changes and alterations over the years, so one edition may vary from another. Among its claims:
- "arthritis vanishes, myopia gets better, heart illness decreases, asthma disappears, stomachs function properly and the whole catalogue of illnesses goes away and stays away." (pg.72, 1987 edition)
- "All our facts are functional and these facts are scientific facts, supported wholly and completely by laboratory evidence." (pg.96, 1987 edition)
- "Clears do not get colds." (pg.121, 1992 edition)
[edit] Dianetics Today
In the 1975 edition of Hubbard's Dianetics Today, it is claimed:
- "A broken limb will heal (by X-ray evidence) in two instead of six weeks." (pg.110)
- "I've seen a goiter the size of a baseball visibly shrink and disappear in the space of one-half hour right after an engram was run." (pg. 280)
- "A girl crippled by polio was able to throw away her crutches after my first session." (pg.353)
- "ONLY processing by Dianetics and Scientology can handle the effects of drugs fully." (pg.481)
[edit] Scientology 8-8008
In Hubbard's book Scientology 8-8008, which is heavy on Scientology Space Opera concepts and serves as an introduction to the Operating Thetan levels to novice Scientologists, it is repeated throughout as a fundamental tenet that achieving full Operating Thetan status results in the ability to completely control matter, energy, space and time (MEST). He also speaks of something called "Facsimile One":
"Facsimile One: the first proven-up, whole-track incident which, when audited out of a long series of people, was found to eradicate such things as asthma, sinus trouble, chronic chills and a host of other ills. It was originally laid down in this galaxy about one million years ago." (pg. 172, 1990 edition)
[edit] Notes
- ^ Painkillers; Drugs and their Effect on the Mind. Church of Scientology International. Retrieved on 2006-05-20.
- ^ Hubbard, L. Ron. "What is the Reactive Mind?". Retrieved May 15, 2006.
