Society may take Healer to Court

Claims that energy from quartz crystals can treat diseases may be illegal, says the New Zealand Skeptics Society. The newly formed society is considering its first legal action as a result of claims by touring healer, Mr Edmond Harold.

Mr Harold, the president of the Spiritual Venturers' Association, is travelling the country promoting his book, "Focus on Crystals.”

However the Skeptics (the committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal Incorporated) has taken issue with Mr Harold's assertions.

Members of the society say Mr Harold may have broken the law by publicly claiming to have alleviated leukaemia with the aid of crystals.

“We suspect that to make this sort of claim is against the law," said one Skeptic, Professor Bernard Howard.

However, until they have had the Medicines Act 1981 thoroughly examined, the society is reluctant to commit itself

Mr Harold has said that energy released crystals can help cure people of serious health problems, stress, tiredness and depression.

“It's completely incredible that anyone could talk such nonsense," Mr Howard, a retired Lincoln College bio-chemist, said today.

"There's a smattering of scientific information in what he says, but most of it is quite inconsistent.

He advocated controlled tests on the healer's methods

If the Medicines Act supported the Skeptics' fears that the leukaemia claim was illegal, the society would seek advice from the Health Department.

The society's chairman. Dr Denis Dutton, said the Act listed a whole range of diseases which could not be named in claims of the ability to cure.

These included cancer and leukaemia.

The leukaemia claim has been described as borderline by the Health Department's deputy medical officer of health, Dr Mel Brieseman.

The law prohibited treatments being advertised, he said.

For someone to claim they had once cured a person of leukaemia was probably not illegal, but to encourage sufferers to come forward for treatment was definitely against the law, he said.