Reason to be skeptic!

[danofmayz]

Not being a believer in tosh pseudoscience and alternative medicines and healing, I normally take no notice of what is happening in that world of non-sense. This caught my attention though and is shocking. This charlatan should be subjected to the same torture! (Originally posted on randi.org)

Here's a safety tip from your friendly skeptical doctor (Dr. Steven Novella) - don't wrap yourself in mud and then stay in a sweat lodge for hours. You may or may not remember from your grade school health class that the body needs to regulate its own temperature to keep it within a fairly narrow healthy range.  

There are several mechanisms for regulating body temperature, but the most important is simply behavior. When you feel hot you take actions to get cool, like remove clothing or drink cold water. When you are cold you bundle up, seek out a warm location, and maybe drink some hot tea. There are also many automatic mechanisms of thermoregulation, such as adjusting metabolic rate, sweating, and shivering.  

You can, however, overwhelm the body's automatic thermoregulation with behavior. Stand outside in below freezing temperature with few clothes on (or just swim in very cold water) and you will quickly get hypothermia. Or cover yourself in some material that will reduce the radiation of heat from your skin and the removal of heat from evaporating sweat and stay in a very hot environment - you will quickly suffer from hyperthermia (also called heat stroke).  

This happens accidentally to people just from sitting in the hot sun during a long event without proper hydration. Once they become dehydrated their sweating is significantly reduced to conserve water, but then they cannot adequately cool down and they become overheated.  

This is the kind of basic health information everyone should know. It's mostly common sense and common experience. You can never underestimate, however, the power of belief to trump common sense and scientific knowledge, even when self-preservation is on the line.  

The latest such victim of pseudoscience to have their personal tragedy splashed across the headlines is Chantale Lavigne, a Quebec woman who recently died from pseudoscience. This is, of course, a sad story made worse by the fact that it has been made so public - but concerns of privacy are trumped by the need for such stories to serve as cautionary tales.  

Lavigne was apparently a member of a self-help cult, and had "completed 85 sessions and paid more than $18,900." According to reports:  

"Lavigne died in hospital after she and eight others in a personal-development seminar called Dying in Consciousness were covered with mud, wrapped in plastic, put under blankets and immobilized with their heads in cardboard boxes for about nine hours, under instructions to hyperventilate.  

"Lavigne was removed, unconscious and with a body temperature of 40.5 C, from the Ferme Reine de la Paix in the Drummondville, Que., area after a 911 call that Radio-Canada said had been made by Gabrielle Frechette, a self-styled therapist who was the seminar's operator."  

Frechette, who claims that she channels Melchisedech, a Biblical figure, is denying that she has any culpability in Lavigne's death.  

In my opinion, Frechette is completely responsible for Lavigne's death (if the reported details are accurate). She was running the group, she positioned herself as an authority figure, and even used bogus channeling to enhance her authority. Then she instructed those under her tutelage to do something that was blatantly dangerous, and in fact appears to have directly resulted in the death of Lavigne.  

Generally we hold professionals liable for their own competence and ethics, and in some professions hold them to established quality standards. But alternative medicine gurus and self-help cranks seem to exist in a gray zone. They are not held to any standard, because they exist outside of science and reason - so what standard can there be. Yet they are often given the imprimatur of authority. In some cases they are even licensed by states or other governments. They are given professional authority without the professional standards that should accompany it.  

In such cases the last line of defense is a prosecuting attorney, who can hold such grey-zone professionals accountable after they have caused harm. It's hard to think of a more clear cut case than the death of this woman. Prosecutors have yet to review the case and decide if they will press charges.  

Imagine if Frechette gets away off without being held to any responsibility. The last line of defense will have failed. It will be springtime for charlatans.

[Gman]

Sad, but I do think that anyone that thinks that being "covered with mud, wrapped in plastic, put under blankets and immobilized with your head in a cardboard boxes for about nine hours, under instructions to hyperventilate" is probably a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

That said, I think that there should be accountability on the part of the 'leaders' of this sort of thing...if there was, they'd perhaps think twice about what they were putting people through.

[danofmayz]

Oh, no doubt. You could use the classic 'if I told you jump off a bridge' statement but these 'healers' prey on broken people and it's wrong.

She spent $18,900! The victim was obviously completely sold to the idea and would do anything she was told to do.

[Mikey]

Perhaps he went for the wrong Hyperventilate

[Gman]

I have a healthy interest in this sort of stuff, I find it fascinating but I'm also able to view things with a decent dollop of sensibility and scepticism.

I did do a Reiki course in London once, it cost over £400 and was the most cringeworthy, Americanised group hug fest I've ever had the displeasure of enduring. Fortunately I was there with my gf so we pretty much ignored the whole "go and hug someone" thing and just hugged each other. The end was mega cringeable, we were told to sit opposite someone (it was supposed to be a stranger), hold their hands, look them in the eye and sing along to 'you are so beautiful' by Joe Cocker. I could barely contain myself, it was sooo chuffing awful but people were literally crying buckets there.

I think in that room I realised how many people there are that have 'issues'. So it really comes as no suprise that people go from one daft thing, onwards to progressively dafter things, in a search for some sort of life meaning.

That's quite deep, I think I'll meditate on that one whilst dowsing myself in virgin yak wee.

[danofmayz]

I think in that room I realised how many people there are that have 'issues'. So it really comes as no suprise that people go from one daft thing, onwards to progressively dafter things, in a search for some sort of life meaning.

That's the problem and it's so easily exploitable.