USING the “power of touch”, “ministers” from the Church of Scientology say they are “reconnecting” Haitians injured in the recent earthquake “with their nervous systems”.
A Scientology volunteer in action
Clad in yellow T-shirts emblazoned with the logo of the controversial US-based group, smiling Hubbardites, according to this report, fan out among the injured lying under makeshift shelters in the courtyard of Port-au-Prince’s General Hospital to dispense their own brand of quackery.
A wealthy private donor provided his airplane to fly in 80 volunteers from Los Angeles, along with 50 Haitian-American-doctors, in a gesture worth 400,000 dollars, said a Parisian volunteer who gave her name as Sylvie. She explained their technique thus:
We’re trained as volunteer ministers, we use a process called ‘assist’ to follow the nervous system to reconnect the main points, to bring back communication. When you get a sudden shock to a part of your body the energy gets stuck, so we re-establish communication within the body by touching people through their clothes, and asking people to feel the touch.
One of the Scientologists’ “successes” is 22-year-old student Oscar Elweels, whose father rescued him from the basement of his school where he lay with a pillar on his leg for a day after the deadly January 12 quake.
His right leg was amputated below the knee and his left leg was severely bruised and swollen.
Said Sylvie:
One hour ago he had no sensation in his left leg, so I explained the method to him, I touched him and after a while he said ‘now I feel everything’. Otherwise they might have had to amputate his other leg.
Asked about the method being used on him, a smiling Elweels described it as:
A sort of harmony between the nerves, a kind of exercise. I couldn’t feel at all, but then I could.
Sylvie added:
All the patients are happy with the technique. But some doctors don’t like the yellow T-shirts. It’s a colour thing.
Some doctors at the hospital are skeptical. One US doctor, who asked not to be named, snorted:
I didn’t know touching could heal gangrene.
When asked what the Scientologists are doing here, another doctor said:
I don’t know.
Does she care?
Not really.
Hat tip: Alan H
The Freethinker was founded in 1881 by GW Foote, an outspoken critic of religion. After the publication of 
January 24th, 2010 at 10:52 am
“When you get a sudden shock to a part of your body the energy gets stuck, so we re-establish communication within the body by touching people through their clothes, and asking people to feel the touch.”
What the fuck does that mean? Seriously?
It’s like that Mitchell & Webb sketch: “Nurse, get me some of that electric that makes you better if you’re ill, but if you’re not ill can make you really rather poorly.“
January 24th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
Nothing like peddling bullshit to the desperate.
January 24th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
These scientologists sound like the worst kind sick freaks.
When more convenient to take advantage of someone than when their entire worlds has been razed to the ground, they are bereft and amputated and lying, half starved in a makeshift hell hole surrounded by thousands of corpses, and they are begging for help off ANYONE!
Then some smart, well dressed american gives your leg a rub and smiles knowingly.
It’s just horrible. Horrible.
Is this not a crime?
January 24th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Kick them out.
January 24th, 2010 at 2:52 pm
On a similar theme – on Friday’s Channel 4 news John Snow reported that a Medicins sans Frontieres plane had been turned away three times at the airport by the US military controlling it, but the Scientologists flew straight in without questions.
Fecks sake – is there any hope for poor sods who’ve already been screwed over enough by a faith-fecked legacy like the cosy deals between Mother Theresa and Baby Doc?
January 24th, 2010 at 2:56 pm
This is nothing new. Catholic Fathers have been dressing in brightly-coloured vestments and touching children for years!
January 24th, 2010 at 4:34 pm
If god could father Jesus without ever touching Mary, why couldn’t gangrene be cured by the touch of an yellow jacket?
January 24th, 2010 at 4:55 pm
i wounder why they are there, there’s no money in Haiti. Mother Teresa had all the spare cash and gave it to the Vatican so it’s too late.
January 24th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
“If god could father Jesus without ever touching Mary, why couldn’t gangrene be cured by the touch of an yellow jacket?”
Yep and if Santas sleigh can fly with just the power of a few reindeer, then why can’t my car?
January 24th, 2010 at 6:52 pm
There is one word to describe these Hubbardites: parasites, and we all know what we should do with parasites.
January 24th, 2010 at 8:46 pm
Correction Terry: MT did not give all the cash to the Vatican. The thieving old bitch pocketed most of the dosh she received from the poor and the rich.
January 24th, 2010 at 8:53 pm
Well Barry, she didn’t JUST pocket it – she built MORE houses of the dying, so she could watch more real-life suffering and trained more nuns like her, to give no medical aid whatsoever, but to raise more funds – so the horrific perversity could continue in some kind of insane cycle.
January 24th, 2010 at 9:20 pm
I worked for a while in Poole in Dorset, 20 yrs ago, where they had a particularly aggressive branch of scientologists. Nasty people, but, if memory serves me well, the local population eventually drove them out.
January 24th, 2010 at 9:59 pm
Fifty years in the hypnotism racket has convinced me beyond a shadow of doubt that hypnotism does not exist and brainwashing in the Manchurian Candidate sense does not exist. But I am forced to acknowledge that I cannot come up with an alternative explanation when I see a prize sucker like Tom Cruise become a shill for the confidence swindle that is fleecing him. Is there an intelligence level lower than stupid, stupid, stupid?
January 24th, 2010 at 10:11 pm
William,
There is an intelligence level lower than stupid. It’s called believer.
January 24th, 2010 at 10:17 pm
Harwood! You haven’t apologised for being a thick cunt yet… Can’t you stomach humble pie?
January 24th, 2010 at 10:49 pm
To the dirty little yellow coward who hides behind the pseudonym “MrMonist” so that readers of this site will not know who the fatuous liar really is: Fuck off and don’t come back, jackass.
A person who can read Hebrew who nonetheless refers to “The LORD”, a character found only in English language mistranslations as an intentional falsification of the proper name YHWH, is uneducated, to put it politely.
If “MrMonist” is a literary illusion, it is one with which a person with three graduate degrees is unfamiliar.
This DLYC’s lie was totally trivial and unfunny. It was neither satire nor parody, and made absolutely no point. Does he really think that expressing an opinion he does not believe, and having readers take him seriously, shows how clever he is?
This site is not for trolls, and it is not for turds of tapeworm shit. You are trespassing.
Dr William Harwood, historian specializing in religious origins , and author of 43 books, including God, Jesus and the Bible: The Origin and Evolution of Religion.
January 25th, 2010 at 2:07 am
I suppose if you feel the overwhelming desire to smile at and touch folk, the shellshocked are your best bet.
January 25th, 2010 at 3:13 am
Some watchers are concerned about Scientology’s use of the US’s Nonminister Religious Worker visa policy. Scientology has skirted labor laws quite deftly. They have had outreach in Haiti for years now.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/270307
Scientology is currently being sued over human trafficking.
http://www.rickross.com/refere.....en602.html
January 25th, 2010 at 9:02 am
I suppose this is pretty much how the early Christian cultists operated, though. Find the sickest and most miserable people, lay hands upon them, mutter prayers, and if the poor sods didn’t die it was a miracle. Scientology is despicable, but it’s just another religion in its embryonic stages.
January 25th, 2010 at 10:26 am
Crivens. I’m never going to cross Dr Harwood.
Then again – I’d presumably not have any cause to!
January 25th, 2010 at 12:16 pm
In a somewhat related topic, I link to youtube audios of a senior scientologist who wants out and his money back in an interview with senior scientologists concerned about the results of him opting out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v.....re=related
@ William Harwood above, I don’t think it wise to underestimate the effects of suggestibilty, wish fulfilment and positive reinforcement, as they are the only non-supernatural ways I can come up with of explaining the rather powerful experiences I had which led me into, and sustained me in for some years, a quasi Hindu cult led by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
David
January 26th, 2010 at 12:21 pm
To that end
http://derrenbrown.co.uk/blog/.....les-scams/
January 26th, 2010 at 8:17 pm
@William Harwood, yeah I don’t believe in that “get up and squawk like a chicken” hypnotism stuf but people end up finding ways to control each other in all kinds of weird ways, like David B says above. I used to be a raving fundamentalist until I got smarter and got out. I don’t think it’s a matter of stupidity, just control.
oh and by the way…I agree with you in that trolls suck…