Commentary on Senate Hearings of Practitioners in Non-Conventional Therapies

Commentary on Senate Hearings of Practitioners in Non-Conventional Therapies

By the CICNS (April 2013) - hearings conducted within the framework of the Senate commission of inquiry on cults and health

We observe that the position of certain non-conventional therapists faced with the senators tends to remain defensive and protective, sometimes going as far as submission by aligning themselves with the authorities’ anti-cult language in the hope of shielding themselves from it. While each seems to have faith in what he offers, few nevertheless show any knowledge of the context of this commission or any awareness of its consequences for the overall future of alternative medicine and, more generally still, of fundamental freedoms in our country. When therapists end up accusing one another of being dérapeutes, on the basis of the same rumours and allegations used against them, may one not see in this defence mechanism a triumph of the enterprise of division that is at work?

Quotations in italics, CICNS commentary in normal text (to read the full hearing and the context of the quotations, click on the link in the heading of the extracts).

Extracts from the hearing of M. Daniel KIEFFER, director of the Collège européen de naturopathie traditionnelle holistique (Cenatho) (Tuesday 26 February 2013)

« M. Daniel Kieffer. - Some doctors are quite often troubled when they give the appearance of illegal practice. Naturopaths almost never incur this reproach. We have not had that concern for practically ten years. I learned that someone who called himself a naturopath, but who was self-taught, two years ago, in Brittany, had refused care to his child: such people are the shame of the profession. That does not exist among us. (…)

M. Jacques Mézard, rapporteur. (…) On the subject of breast cancer screening, it is written on the site (of the Alliance pour la santé): “Despite these methods of very strong incitement, even of coercion, the scientific evidence supporting this screening is more and more contested. The benefit in terms of mortality is constantly revised downwards, and both overdiagnosis and overtreatment have harmful consequences that are better and better known and considerable. Before taking the decision to undergo this screening, it is better to have had access to information on these points”. I doubt that these remarks are reasonable. In the original version of this article, breast cancer screening is considered to be “the most useless and most dangerous of screenings”. It would carry numerous risks according to the author of the article.

M. Daniel Kieffer. - Without any hesitation, I endorse your indignation. These remarks, which I am discovering along with you, are intolerable on our association’s site and I undertake to have them removed by tomorrow. I am scandalised. »

To understand better how this position of M. Kieffer’s testifies to a lack of knowledge of its consequences for everyone, we invite our readers to listen to the interview with Philippe Dargère, former president of the Fédération Internationale de Naturopathie, made in 2008 by the CICNS, two years before his death. In it Philippe Dargère shares his perception of the climate of fear institutionalised by the hunt for “cults”, which now affects the whole range of alternative health practices, and invites everyone to “lower the shield of fear” and “to unite in order to become a force in our society”.

M. Jacques Mézard, rapporteur. (…) A host of wave-neutralising devices are on the market; they flood the well-being fairs and others (…), one sees there an incredible collection of charlatan objects. Now, none has proved itself and financially the stake is heavy. I cannot agree with you.

M. Daniel Kieffer. - I follow you on charlatan products. It is frightening sometimes. We have chosen the most serious devices at European level.

M. Jacques Mézard, rapporteur. - Do you not fear that your clients may cut themselves off little by little from traditional medicine? That by dint of eating such and such vegetables or fruits, people may tell themselves that antibiotics are no longer of any use? Have you observed any abuses? How is one to combat them?

M. Daniel Kieffer. - In France, it is rare. The abuses exist more in psychology, with certain techniques, notably hypnosis, rebirthing. Abuses in naturopathy have occurred in Quebec. It is perhaps a question of culture: in that country, mental manipulations seem more frequent. (…) We are neither caricatural nor fanatical. But of course, we are not safe from a self-taught naturopath who might do just anything… That is why we are calling for an institutional framework.

This positioning, which consists in denouncing the (possible) abuses of others by using a concept as fallacious as that of “mental manipulation”, is one of the principal causes of the “success” of French anti-cult policy and of its consequences for our freedoms.

Extracts from the hearing of M. Thierry WAYMEL, president of the Fédération française des kinésiologues spécialisés, and M. Bernard OPHOVEN, president of the Syndicat francophone des kinésiologues spécialisés (Wednesday 20 February 2013)

M. Thierry Waymel. - (…) We are also in contact with M. Didier Pachoud, president of the Groupe d’étude des mouvements de pensée en vue de la protection de l’individu (Gemppi). (…) According to our Federation, there are no dérives sectaires in kinesiology. However, we make sure that any departures are penalised by our ethics committee. This year, we thus refused the membership of two schools and two people who did not meet our codes, associating with kinesiology other techniques which did not suit us at all on the deontological level (…) Kinesiologists in no way apply their belief system and do not impose their way of thinking. The Gemppi charter is displayed in the consulting room of those who have signed it.

Mme Muguette Dini . - What do you think of the appeal by M. Jean-Claude Guyard, founder of the Ecole de kinésiologie et méthode associées (Ekma), in favour of the constitution of a confederation of the professional associations of shiatsu, reiki, kinesiology, yoga, sophrology, qi gong, in order to face the attacks suffered by kinesiology, in particular during the famous trial you were mentioning?

M. Thierry Waymel . - He certainly has his motivations. M. Guyard was previously at the Fédération française de kinésiologie spécialisée and left it…

Mme Muguette Dini . - Why?

M. Thierry Waymel - One hears a lot of corridor gossip. I did not know him. (…) From what I have been able to understand, he is a person with firmly fixed ideas about kinesiology, who has also done a great deal for this discipline. Today, M. Guyard has a school to keep going. We have very little contact with this person…

M. Bernard Ophoven. - There are problems of power and I think M. Guyard is in that register. That is one of the reasons why he left the Federation… I was not aware of this proposal. Personally, I am against it. We want in fact to make kinesiology a specific activity, with professional kinesiologist cards, to the exclusion of other techniques. Our objective is progressively to create a profession, avoiding any conflation.

M. Thierry Waymel – (…) I admit that abuses exist, several people using techniques which surely need to be regulated. Within our board of directors, it is a permanent debate to know how to remedy this situation! We have even proposed a single kinesiologist card…

What is to be said of these replies with their scent of internal intrigue? If therapists wish to defend their method, they ought to avoid giving the impression of being in a commercial war or of playing the “anti-cult” game of division.

Extracts from the hearing of M. Gérard ATHIAS, of the Collège international Gérard Athias (Tuesday 12 March 2013)

M. Gérard Athias. - I went to see Doctor Claude Sabbagh eighteen years ago when I was ill, but my techniques are different from his. I followed his seminars and am, on many levels, not in agreement with him. I therefore do not wish to be in any way, except as a patient, assimilated to total biology.

M. Gérard Athias. - (…) Doctor Sabbagh has been able to write that metastases did not exist, whereas in my books I confirm that they do exist. It is night and day!

M. Jacques Mézard, rapporteur. - Understood, but to say that one draws nourishment from the teachings of someone who writes that kind of thing all the same poses a problem.

M. Gérard Athias . - I will withdraw this sentence as soon as I have been able to contact my webmaster . If that is what bothers you, it will be done within a fortnight!

M. Jacques Mézard, rapporteur. - What bothers us most is that people who follow your seminar end up advising sick people to stop all treatment.

M. Gérard Athias. - Give me names!

M. Jacques Mézard, rapporteur. - You know them perfectly well!

M. Gérard Athias . - No, Sir. Am I the only one swearing here? Tell me who is concerned: I have nothing to reproach myself with! I have written books and I am telling you what I do. I ask you to give me names and you do not wish to do so. In that case, it is they whom you ought to summon and not me! (…) Let the doctors take charge of patients more, and I would be happy to be able to withdraw and there will no longer be any problems of abuses with certain of my students.

M. Yannick Vaugrenard - Since you anticipated being struck off, do you not think that indicating, in the framework of your activities, that you are a doctor of medicine amounts to a form of misleading advertising?

M. Gérard Athias . - Not at all!

M. Gérard Athias. - I am a doctor: it is a university title! Some are so in law, others in letters… I in medicine. There is nothing extraordinary about stating one’s diplomas. (…)

M. Alain Milon , president . - At the first difficulty, you give up your profession; it is a pity. Moreover, using the title of doctor is a form of deception. You say you have been cured of an incurable disease. Now you are intelligent, you know very well that psoriasis is among the incurable diseases from a medical point of view but not for the population as a whole, which would rather place cancers or heart attacks in that category. That is a second deception.

M. Gérard Athias. - In that case, I will remove it as quickly as possible. I will close my site’s forum if necessary. (…) I say it again: I do not wish to deceive anyone. Point out to me what is wrong, and I will put myself in order.

M. Gérard Athias. – (…) I will contact my webmaster to remove from my site what does not please you.

Gérard Athias’s replies need no commentary.

Extracts from the hearing of M. Jean-Marie BATAILLE, director of the Institut français d’application pour le corps et l’esprit (Iface) (Tuesday 26 February 2013)

M. Jacques Mézard , rapporteur . - Do you think that people can remove cysts from ovaries without special knowledge? I am finishing. I quote your advertising. You address yourself to “certain humanists who would like to go off to the Third World to help destitute patients, thanks to the salutary and providential means of our bare-handed medicine which costs nothing”. Do you think it is right to support such theses?

M. Jean-Marie Bataille . - Perfectly right. I would be ashamed not to have written it.

M. Jacques Mézard , rapporteur . - Is it reasonable to make our fellow citizens believe that you can change their vertebrae without touching them?

M. Jean-Marie Bataille . - Why “make believe”? My course participants live it themselves! I can only invite you to come and see how it is. Georges Fenech never came.

M. Alain Milon , president . - It is said in your brochure that the nurses who follow your teaching can learn “a really instantaneous technique which makes it possible to stop a heart attack in the instant, without touching the person, who comes back to herself immediately without any suffering or after-effects, with a normal pulse, good breathing, saying she feels quite relieved”.

M. Jean-Marie Bataille . - That is the reality. I myself practised this technique one New Year’s Eve and the whole village can bear witness to it: an elderly man fainted - heart attack - and, after my intervention, he came back to himself and started to dance.

M. Alain Milon , president . - It was a vagal malaise, not a heart attack.

M. Jean-Marie Bataille . - You know nothing at all about it. You were not there.

M. Alain Milon , president . - So that evening, you made a diagnosis?

M. Jean-Marie Bataille . - There was no diagnosis to be made. Everyone was at a loss. It is very easy. Everyone ought to learn it, this technique.

M. Jacques Mézard , rapporteur . - From the photos I see, you operate in a white coat. What is the use of operating in a white coat when these are immaterial operations? You do not touch the patient. You give the impression that it resembles medicine.

M. Jean-Marie Bataille . - Our coats are not white, but yellow. Besides, doctors make a mistake with their white coats, which constitute a barrier to energy. Yellow absorbs energies. I am speaking of the energies of the sun.

Mme Catherine Deroche . - How did you learn the technique of ondobiology?

M. Jean-Marie Bataille . - I did not learn it, I invented it.

Mme Hélène Lipietz . - On your site, a click on immaterial biosurgery gives access to a photo where you appear in a white coat, beside a lady in a yellow coat. You will have to think about changing the colour of your coat!

M. Jean-Marie Bataille . - That coat is beige. You have a problem with chromatics. That can be treated too.

M. Alain Milon , president . - How do you feel after this hearing?

M. Jean-Marie Bataille . - I feel liberated. I thank you for it. I felt no aggressiveness on your part, despite a few smiles: that is normal, you do not know me! But I invite you to come…

M. Bataille is manifestly more courageous and his enthusiasm rather refreshing in such a context.

Beyond the validity of the propositions of one and another, which we could not evaluate (and neither could the senators), the CICNS, with its ten years of experience and study of the policy of the public authorities faced with the development of spiritual minorities as well as of non-conventional therapeutic or educational methods, observes that the defensive attitude of the therapists, complaisant towards the methods of division of anti-cultism brings grist to the mill of a repression from which no one will emerge unscathed. Faced with this relentless struggle, everyone ought to make the choice of going beyond the cleavages, the divisions, in order to unite around the defence of everyone’s right to choose the spiritual, educational or therapeutic approach that suits them and to live according to their own conscience in respect for the law and for the well-being of all.