TRUE OR FALSE:
PSYCHIC SURGERY
Is it real??
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Do People Really Believe In This Today?
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Toronto — He calls himself one of the world's "top psychic surgeons" and was even included in actor Shirley MacLaine's self-help book on inner transformation.
Yesterday, Toronto police called Alex Orbito, 65, "a fake" and announced he has been charged with fraud over $5,000 and possession of the proceeds of crime. "Our concern is that he is a fake and he is taking money away from people who are suffering from serious illnesses like cancer," Detective Doug Dunstan said.
According to police, Mr. Orbito set up in a room at a Best Western Hotel in east-end Toronto on Saturday and charged his "patients" $135 a pop for one of his two-minute spiritual healing sessions.
During the sessions, Mr. Orbito appeared to open patients' abdomens and pull out
diseased tumors and "negativities" in the form of blood clots. After these "psychic surgeries," patients found only a few drops of blood on an unscarred body.
Mr. Orbito also held magnetic-healing sessions in which he would have the patients lie down on the floor and offer healing touches to afflicted parts of the body.
In three days, 600 people underwent "treatment" -- allegedly raising more than $80,000, police say.
Police say the bloody tissue he is said to have pulled from desperate patients' abdomens were chicken parts. "Liver and similar type parts," Det. Dunstan said.
The "psychic surgeon" became famous among the metaphysical set during the late 1980s when New Age author Ms. MacLaine included him in her book Going Within: A Guide for Inner Transformation.
In March 1987, Brother Jose “Joe” Bugarin who operated in Sacramento, California, was arrested for cancer quackery and the illegal practice of medicine. He was sentenced to nine months in jail. The arresting officer who frisked him found several red-colored cotton balls in his left rear pocket. These “bullets” are used by healers to create the illusion of surgery and produce “blood” at the appropriate time.
One of Brother Joe’s victims, Mary Armstrong had earlier visited the healer hoping he would cure her of cancer of the larynx. After pulling out diseased tissue from her throat, Bugarin assured her she was healed - the cancer was gone. Wait six weeks and see your doctor afterwards, he told her.
“Armstrong finally did see her doctor, confident she’d find a miracle. Instead the disease had spread, and when it came time for a biopsy, she had a heart attack under the anesthetic. She had to wait for two more months before the surgeons would finally operate. When they did, complications ensued. Today, she speaks only with the aid of an electronic device, and problems following surgery have left her weak and chronically ill,”
In 1968, Antonio “Tony” Agpaoa, considered one of the greatest Filipino healers, was collared in Detroit for his illegal activities. Rather than face charges, Agpaoa skipped his $25,000 bail and fled to the Philippines.
Surprisingly, the man who supposedly cured thousands with his healing touch couldn’t cure himself. When he was sick, Agpaoa consulted doctors in Baguio. He even had his appendix removed in San Francisco in a real hospital.
When his son fell ill, Agpaoa brought the boy to the United States for treatment. But he died later and Tony couldn’t do anything about it. In the end, Agpaoa died from a stroke in 1982. In spite of his reputation as a famous healer, Tony couldn’t stop his own death nor was he saved by the other psychic healers whom he trained.
But the prevalence of psychic surgery can be explained in more simple terms: it’s a good way of making money. Although it’s commonly believed that psychic surgeons
don’t charge anything for their services, the facts say otherwise as the lifestyles of several healers clearly show.
Take Agpaoa, for instance. Although he was uneducated, Agpaoa attracted a lot of foreign patients who came in chartered flights from different parts of the world. With the help of foreigners, he even established a healing center which doubled as a resort in Barrio Lucnab in Baguio. These people sincerely believed that Agpaoa had special powers and they were willing to pay anything to witness a miracle.
In Search Of A Miracle:
One of the earliest to expose this money-making racket was Dr. William A. Nolen, a Minnesota surgeon who spent two years searching for a true healer. Nolen heard of psychic surgery from friends and decided to personally investigate the matter after learning that the American Medical Association (AMA) wasn’t interested in the phenomenon. But the task wasn’t easy as he recalled in his book Healing: A Doctor in Search of A Miracle.
“I have to confess that I undertook the assignment with fear and trepidation. I knew that by looking into and writing about psychic surgery I ran a serious risk of being labeled a ‘kook’, a label that might destroy my reputation as a legitimate medical writer. I didn’t want that to happen.
“On the other hand, I didn’t agree with the AMA’s policy. It seemed to me that ignoring the lunatic fringe, hoping they would just go away, was unrealistic. Remaining silent while quacks went out and sold their ideas, unopposed, just wouldn’t work, particularly when patients were, justifiably, demanding more and more information from those of us who were providing health care. I felt that organized medicine’s silent treatment just wasn’t good enough,”
Nolen said. Braving ridicule from his colleagues, Nolen visited the Philippines in June 1973 at the time the healers were drawing a lot of publicity (and patients) from different parts of the world. In his desire to find a miracle worker, Nolen spent the next two weeks shuttling back and forth from Manila, Pangasinan, and Baguio, talking with doctors who had looked into psychic surgery and studying several local healers, including Palitayan, Josephine Sison, Juan Flores, and Jose Mercado.
Nolen also underwent psychic surgery twice at the hands of Mercado and Palitayan and tracked down 53 patients in the United States whom the local psychics had supposedly cured. By doing so, he hoped he could find a genuine healer to whom he could refer his incurable patients and perhaps learn their techniques as well.
“I was making a very sincere effort not to prejudge the merits of the psychic surgeons whom I was about to investigate. If I had already been persuaded they were charlatans, I would never have undertaken the assignment,” he said.
What Nolen Saw:
In Nolen’s case, his training as a surgeon enabled him to see the various tricks that were perpetrated by the healers: An “appendix” which Sison removed from a patient turned out to be a wad of cotton; a “hysterectomy” made by Mercado consisted of chicken intestines which were passed off as the uterus; a “tumor” Mercado removed from Nolen was clumps of fat soaked in a reddish liquid that was said to be blood.
In one instance where Flores supposedly removed the eye of Joaquin Cunanan, a retired businessman who promoted psychic surgery, Nolen said this was accomplished by means of a dog’s eye which the healer produced at the right moment.
Other psychics did even worse.
Nolen said a female patient who saw Agpaoa remove several screws from her fractured hip that were causing her pain, got the shock of her life when x-rays showed the screws were still there. A “kidney stone” Agpaoa took from another patient was nothing more than a lump of sugar. These examples prove that psychic surgeons are nothing more than magicians - and not even good ones at that!
“Watching the psychic surgeons in the Philippines, I had one big advantage over all the others who were watching: I was a surgeon. I’ve done about 6,000 operations. I’ve taken out lungs, gallbladders, appendices, uteruses and various other organs.
I’ve operated on the head, the neck, the chest, the abdomen and the extremities. I’ve had my hand inside all the cavities of the body. I know quite a lot about surgery, and when I watch someone operate, I’m able to evaluate what he is doing.
This is the background that most others lack who have observed and been treated by psychic surgeons. And as I learned over and over again during my two weeks in the Philippines, it’s almost essential to have experience as a surgeon to appraise the psychic surgeons with accuracy. If you haven’t done or watched many operations - if you haven’t seen a lot of blood - you can easily be fooled,” Nolen said.
A Magician’s View:
Another star witness for the FTC was Andre Kole, a magician and investigator of unusual phenomena who went to the Philippines in 1973 to observe several local healers. Since 1968, Kole visited 74 countries and witnessed nearly 300 operations of psychic surgeons in Asia and Latin America.
On his trip here, he was accompanied by David Aikman, a foreign correspondent of Time magazine. The two observed seven different healers, five of whom were the most popular and frequently mentioned in the press. They watched more than 50 operations, including those made by Agpaoa. But like Nolen, they were disappointed.
“Strictly from a magician’s point of view, apart from the moral and ethical issues, watching these healers was fascinating. They performed their fake operations using some of the most clever sleight of hand that I have ever seen,” Kole and Al Janssen said in their book Miracles or Magic?
“Most of the time, the (psychic surgeon) did not actually cut the patient, yet his fingers appeared to reach through the skin and into the body, usually the stomach area. As I looked carefully, I saw there was no opening in the skin - just a depressed area where the surgeon pushed, forming a small cup. By bending his fingers, he appeared to push them in much deeper than he actually did,” they reported.
Although Kole was impressed with these tricks, he was sad too because majority of the healers’ patients were sick and needed expert medical help which the psychic surgeons couldn’t provide.
“After viewing the operations, I interviewed a number of patients, asking them if they were helped. Many answered ‘I think so.’ Yet, as I went down the line of people waiting to see the healer, I saw many returning with the same problems they had brought in previous weeks. Some had the same operation performed on them week after week.
It’s All In The Mind:
Most of the time, the people who respond to psychic surgery are those suffering from psychosomatic illnesses - disorders that are caused or aggravated by prolonged stress. This does not mean that the patient’s problem is psychological. On the contrary, psychosomatic disorders can produce physical symptoms like acne, eczema, arthritis, headache, backache, asthma, sinusitis, hypertension, angina, constipation, impotence, and infertility among others.
In chronic pain disorders, for instance, the person has episodes of chronic pain that may last for months yet no underlying cause is found. As with other psychosomatic ailments, these symptoms are the result of stress and is the patient’s way of getting the attention and sympathy of others. As soon as the stress is gone - as soon as the person’s anxiety is relieved - these symptoms disappear. This is known as the "Placebo Effect."
When psychic surgeons attempt to heal those with psychosomatic disorders, they are often successful since most of these cases are self-limiting and they will clear up regardless of the treatment offered. As Brenneman explained:
“Developed in ancient or prehistoric times and used by primitive cultures, (psychic surgery) was a means to cope with sickness and death. The shaman would palm bits of one thing or another and pretend to pull them from the patient’s body. But the idea was that the ‘miracle’ was a focus for relieving anxiety - that of the patient and those close to him or her.”
From Healer To Killer:
But the placebo effect doesn’t always work, especially if the person’s condition is not the result of emotional problems. Not all diseases are emotional in origin and a doctor’s medical background is often necessary to rule this out. When a patient goes to a faith healer or psychic surgeon without really knowing what the problem is, that person runs a tremendous risk of delaying effective medical treatment that could save his or her life. In this case, the healer no longer helps the patient but becomes a killer.
“Symptoms - pain, nausea, dizziness - may be purely psychological, but they may also be the warning signals of dangerous, potentially life-threatening, organic (as opposed to functional) diseases. To eliminate a symptom without getting at the cause of that symptom can cause delay in treatment which may be serious or even fatal,” Nolen warned.
“There are diseases that healers, even the most charismatic, cannot cure. When they attempt to do so - and they all fall into this trap, since they know and care nothing of the difference between functional and organic diseases - they tread on very dangerous ground. When healers treat serious organic diseases they are responsible for untold anguish and unhappiness; this happens because they keep patients away from possibly effective and life-saving help,” he concluded.
Harrow 'psychic' under investigation:
March 25 2009
By David Baker:
Trading standards are investigating a 'psychic surgeon' from Harrow following a BBC documentary on his work.
Gary Mannion, from South Harrow, was the subject of 'Gary: Young, Psychic and Possessed', a BBC Three program aired on Tuesday night, in which he claims a spirit called Abraham helps him tend to people's ailments.
And now, in light of the show, Harrow and Brent trading standards officers will be looking into his practices - a year after he was ordered to take down a testimonial on his website that claimed he cured cancer.
During the one hour show the 20-year-old is seen treating clients with Alzheimer's, gall stones, and brain tumors using a form of psychic healing, which according to the program can earn him up to £2,000 a week.
On his website he says that despite having no medical knowledge, except "basic first aid", he has a spirit called Abraham who "uses my hands to perform psychic surgery" and enables him to "see inside people's bodies".
Before each treatment Mr. Mannion is required by law to preface his work with a disclaimer that informs clients that he has no medical knowledge and he is not offering a cure.
But in the documentary he said: "I make it very clear that I can't guarantee a cure.
"I'm not claiming anything. I'm passionate about what I do and I like it when clients come and say they're better.
"I'm confident with it..... [so] people [might] not listen to the disclaimer."
Speaking the day after the airing of the program Bill Bilon the director of trading standards, said: "The documentary is being reviewed by trading standards regarding Mr. Mannion's business and potential claims made.
"No complaints have been received by Harrow Council since the broadcast, though we can confirm trading standards officers visited Mr. Mannion in February 2008 to provide guidance and advice.
"Mr. Mannion was reminded to be compliant with the Cancer Act, which states it is illegal to claim to be able to cure the disease.
Do You Know Of Anyone Who went to these people??
Let see if we can find anyone and what happened to them.
Andy Kaufman (comedian)
Died
May 16, 1984
Age: 35
Los Angeles, California
Kaufman was diagnosed as having lung cancer and was told that his days were numbered. In desperation, he turned to psychic surgery.
Believing he would be cured, Kaufman went to Labo for a series of treatments which cost $25 each. His girl friend saw Labo pull out bloody tissue from the actor’s chest.
The young actor attended healing sessions twice a day for several days. On each occasion, Labo went through a certain amount of laying on of hands, ‘balancing of magnetic forces’, and massaging with divinely sanctioned oils, while awaiting spiritual guidance. Then, upon receiving what was said to be divine intervention, Labo appeared to pull open Kaufman’s diseased chest, staunch a great quantity of blood, and then remove the offending material. A few days later, the actor returned to Los Angeles convinced that the cancer had been eradicated; but in only two months, Kaufman was dead. Hospital x-rays indicated that no surgery had ever been performed and that the cancer had proceeded unchecked along its deadly course.
Peter Sellers (actor)
Died (untreated heart condition)
July 24, 1980
Age: 54
Dorchester, England
A heart attack in 1964 had permanently damaged his heart. His doctors were advising bypass surgery, but he delayed it and instead saw psychic surgeons twice a year. He died of a massive heart attack. Peter Sellers the famous comedic actor, died because he entrusted his health to psychic surgeons.
Susan Strasberg (actress)
Died (untreated cancer)
January 21, 1999
Age: 60
New York, New York
February 23, 2007. Michael Shermer of Skeptic magazine posted a commentary on Nicolai Levashov, a Russian who claims to have used his psychic healing powers to cure actress Susan Strasberg of breast cancer a few years before she died of the disease. Strasberg said that she was 57 when she first felt a tiny lump in her breast and had a biopsy that "confirmed my worst fears." Her mother had died of cancer at 58 after a double mastectomy and Strasberg said that she was not going to go the same way. (She might have considered that there could have been some improvements in the treatment since her mother's day.) She refused surgery and says she was told she had terminal cancer. Strasberg claimed that for nearly ten months she was treated by Levashov every day for 15 minutes. When she went to Europe, he did treatments over the telephone twice a week.
Then on January 21, 1999, just 3 years after she was told she had cancer, she died from the very same cancer that she was told she was cured of by Levashov.
Sylvia Millecam (actress)
Died (untreated cancer)
August 19, 2001
Age: 45
Boxmeer, Netherlands
600 Canadian patients
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Defrauded
June 15, 2005
He came to Canada from the Philippines, and patients came to him in a hotel room for healing. He was using psychic surgery (actually a slight of hand trick) to take $135 from each of them. Police arrested him and charged him with fraud.
'Psychic surgeon' a heel, not a healer, police say.’
Once touted by Shirley MacLaine, man now accused of fraud in Toronto.
Diane Ladd, Shelly Winters, Laura Dern, Glenn Ford, Kathryn Grayson, Jill St. John, Will Geer, Jack Albertson, Ann Miller, Ann Sothern, Gig Young, Charlie Weaver, Elke Sommer and Harry Guardino are a few movietown luminaries who have sought out psychic consultation, healing or both over the years.
Conclusion:
Psychic surgery is a fake and a hoax and has done nothing but give people false hope and delayed treatment. As a result many have died or been killed by these so called healers and have taken a lot of money from people who didn't have it to give. There has never been any proof that what they are doing is real and all of the people that they treat go without medical help and die. They just keep making money hand over fist and no one will stop them. Our countries AMA has banned any of these fakes from doing there con work in this country.
Matt. 24:5,11, 23:25;
5 For many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ,' and will deceive many.
11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people.
23 At that time if anyone says to you, 'Look, here is the Christ!' or, 'There he is!' do not believe it. 24 For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and miracles to deceive even the elect--if that were possible. 25 See, I have told you ahead of time.
The following is a copy of my notes that I used as research material.
Class #3
PSYCHIC SURGERY
Andy Kaufman (comedian) |
Died |
Diagnosed with inoperable cancer, he sought out alternative therapies. He even flew to the Philippines to receive psychic surgery for six weeks. These treatments wasted time he could have spent with his family before he died |
|
Andy Kaufman, the US actor who is famous for his role in the sitcom Taxi , is believed to be one of those gullible people. After being diagnosed with advanced lung cancer, Kaufman flew to a resort in Baguio City (just outside of Manila) where he underwent psychic surgery treatments. Within a few months after returning to the US, Kaufman was dead. Some critics believe that he would still be alive if he had sought treatment from a conventional Western practitioner.
Some still ignore the warnings and prove that psychic surgery doesn't work. These people are usually the ones that receive hope from no other source. The psychic surgery is their last effort in an attempt not just to cling to life, but to find a cure so the quality of life exists.
The late comedian Andy Kaufman was one of these people. In the final stages of incurable cancer, he and his girlfriend went to Baguio, a mountain resort town in Manila.
Twice daily he received psychic surgery treatments and seemed, after six weeks, to be getting better. He returned to Los Angeles and suddenly his health deteriorated and he passed quickly. His desire to get better drove him to the psychic surgeon and the belief in the surgery helped him improve his spirits but in the end, it did nothing for his health.
| Peter Sellers (actor) Age: 54 Dorchester, England |
Died (untreated heart condition) |
A heart attack in 1964 had permanently damaged his heart. His doctors were advising bypass surgery, but he delayed it and instead saw psychic surgeons twice a year. He died of a massive heart attack. |
|
Peter Sellers the famous comedic actor, died because he entrusted his health to psychic surgeons.
"[Peter] had to have a bypass operation and the doctors told him that he would not survive if he didn't have the surgery," says Randi. "And he told me in the studios just outside of London that he went twice a year [to see psychic surgeons] and he said he had seen clots be removed from his chest from around his heart with his own eyes. He was just a totally dedicated nut to pseudoscience and quackery."
Susan Strasberg (actress) |
Died (untreated cancer) |
|
Diagnosed with breast cancer, she sought out a psychic healer from Russia, who later claimed to have cured her. She died from cancer three years later. |
||
|
||
Sylvia Millecam (actress) |
Died (untreated cancer) |
|
popular television personality, she sought out alternative therapies for her breast cancer, including a new age psychic healer. Two of her physicians were later barred permanently from medical practice. |
||
600 Canadian patients |
Defrauded |
He came to Canada from the Philippines, and patients came to him in a hotel room for healing. He was using psychic surgery (actually a slight of hand trick) to take $135 from each of them. Police arrested him and charged him with fraud. |
|
'Psychic surgeon' a heel, not a healer, police say Once touted by Shirley MacLaine, man now accused of fraud in Toronto
By JEN GERSON
Thursday, June 16, 2005 Updated at 5:33 AM EDT
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Toronto — He calls himself one of the world's "top psychic surgeons" and was even included in actor Shirley MacLaine's self-help book on inner transformation.
Yesterday, Toronto police called Alex Orbito, 65, "a fake" and announced he has been charged with fraud over $5,000 and possession of the proceeds of crime.
"Our concern is that he is a fake and he is taking money away from people who are suffering from serious illnesses like cancer," Detective Doug Dunstan said.
According to police, Mr. Orbito set up in a room at a Best Western Hotel in east-end Toronto on Saturday and charged his "patients" $135 a pop for one of his two-minute spiritual healing sessions.
During the sessions, Mr. Orbito appeared to open patients' abdomens and pull out diseased tumours and "negativities" in the form of blood clots. After these "psychic surgeries," patients found only a few drops of blood on an unscarred body.
Mr. Orbito also held magnetic-healing sessions in which he would have the patients lie down on the floor and offer healing touches to afflicted parts of the body.
In three days, 600 people underwent "treatment" -- allegedly raising more than $80,000, police say.
Police say the bloody tissue he is said to have pulled from desperate patients' abdomens were chicken parts. "Liver and similar type parts," Det. Dunstan said.
The "psychic surgeon" became famous among the metaphysical set during the late 1980s when New Age author Ms. MacLaine included him in her book Going Within: A Guide for Inner Transformation.
In March 1987, Brother Jose “Joe” Bugarin who operated in Sacramento, California, was arrested for cancer quackery and the illegal practice of medicine. He was sentenced to nine months in jail. The arresting officer who frisked him found several red-colored cotton balls in his left rear pocket. These “bullets” are used by healers to create the illusion of surgery and produce “blood” at the appropriate time.
One of Brother Joe’s victims, Mary Armstrong had earlier visited the healer hoping he would cure her of cancer of the larynx. After pulling out diseased tissue from her throat, Bugarin assured her she was healed - the cancer was gone. Wait six weeks and see your doctor afterwards, he told her.
“Armstrong finally did see her doctor, confident she’d find a miracle. Instead the disease had spread, and when it came time for a biopsy, she had a heart attack under the anesthetic. She had to wait for two more months before the surgeons would finally operate. When they did, complications ensued. Today, she speaks only with the aid of an electronic device, and problems following surgery have left her weak and chronically ill,”
In 1968, Antonio “Tony” Agpaoa, considered one of the greatest Filipino healers, was collared in Detroit for his illegal activities. Rather than face charges, Agpaoa skipped his $25,000 bail and fled to the Philippines.
Surprisingly, the man who supposedly cured thousands with his healing touch couldn’t cure himself. When he was sick, Agpaoa consulted doctors in Baguio. He even had his appendix removed in San Francisco in a real hospital, according to world-renowned magician and psychic investigator James Randi in Flim Flam: Psychics, ESP, Unicorns, and Other Delusions.
“Tony had some problems with his health and one of the doctors here in Baguio was his family physician. I’m not at liberty to tell you which doctor, but he took care of Tony, his wife and his children. We laugh about it often; it’s either that or cry. People are so gullible,” recounted Dr. Raul Otillo in Healing: A Doctor in Search of A Miracle.
When his son fell ill, Agpaoa brought the boy to the United States for treatment. But he died later and Tony couldn’t do anything about it. In the end,
Agpaoa died from a stroke in 1982. In spite of his reputation as a famous healer, Tony couldn’t stop his own death nor was he saved by the other psychic healers whom he trained.
The Facts about Faith Healing and Psychic Surgery
By George Nava True II
I |