Detonation Range

Also submitted to the Young Australian Skeptics. Via AdelaideNow.

In brief: the South Australian Medical Board has officially condemned ‘bogus practitioners’ for taking advantage of vulnerable people, after a baby was crushed to death by a massage table at the clinic of an alternative therapist, referred to as an unregistered massage therapist, who allegedly claimed the ability to shrink cancerous tumors with massage therapy.

The article quotes Labor MLC Ian Hunter as saying:

“For too long we’ve allowed anyone to practice in unregulated areas of health care without any real proper checks and balances… No checks . . . no safety training, no checks on occupational health and safety competency… it grieves me and it actually makes me very upset to read today, on the AdelaideNow website, that a young baby has died at the clinic of Ms Elvira Brunt, one of the persons of interest in our report.”

The alternative therapist named in the report, Elvira Brunt, is also known to have encouraged her patients to discontinue conventional medical treatment and to have demanded cash payments and refused to give receipts. The latter facts seem suspiciously like a woman avoiding leaving a ‘paper trail’ (my opinion only) and the former fact, that Brunt has encouraged her patients to stop receiving conventional treatment, may very well indicate that this is not the first death for which she is in some way responsible.

“The committee understands that such practitioners are often skilled at exploiting people’s fears and creating a sense of hope based on deception, While some . . . practitioners may be delusional – convinced they are able to cure serious medical conditions – the evidence presented to the committee suggested that others are driven by greed and, in some cases, sexual gratification.”

It is always a tragedy when a person dies as a direct or indirect result of alternative medical claims or practices. However, the contents of this report are a sobering and frank confirmation of the suspicions of many skeptics who, I’m sure, have not failed to notice the ludicrous and dangerous medical claims that alternative therapists are fraudulently making. One need only look to Dahli’s article or Richard’s article on the Mind, Body, Spirit festival to find such absurd and dangerous claims as “Helps with Cancer and AIDS!”

The untenable, galling fact is that children, babies are dying at the hands of alternative therapists. If adults must choose to become patrons of alternative medicine, so be it, I can’t and wouldn’t stop them. However, putting children at risk of death from preventable eczema or at risk of being crushed by a massage table in the clinic of a shady, unregistered massage therapist is absolutely irresponsible and wrong.

It is my hope that the Medical Board’s report precipitates much needed change in the medical regulatory field. Specifically, some prevention of making fraudulent, deceptive medical claims which have no basis in reality.

Read the rest of the newspaper article here. Lots more information.