Magnetic health expert visits

- 1 August 1989

Daily News, 23 November 1988.

An alternative approach to health is being expounded in New Plymouth by an Australian visitor, Mr Nick Singer.

Yesterday Mr Singer said he was the originator of the Melbourne-based Australian Magnetic Health Centre, which already had 23 teachers of his method in New Zealand — but none in Taranaki.

Mr Singer said he was in New Plymouth to conduct seminars for people who wanted to become teachers of the method, which involved the use of magnets and of a “biometer” which measured acupuncture points.

Magnetic health taught people “‘how to correct their own spine, how to breathe properly, how to relieve pain… basically how to handle their own health themselves,” he said.

Mr Singer said he had had many serious health problems in his youth. He looked to natural therapies and found a lot of answers there; he, became a professional naturopath and also studied Himalayan and Chinese medicine.

As he applied magnetic health techniques to his health his singing voice improved greatly, he said.

The editor of the Daily News refused to print this letter on the grounds that it was libellous:

The Editor, The Daily News

Dear Sir,

Your issue of today contains an extraordinary photograph of Mr Nick Stringer holding a Biometer, a device which it is claimed makes it possible to locate the acupuncture points. A moment’s thought will show this to be impossible. The Galvanic Skin Response is very sensitive to the tiniest changes in probe pressure and its detection requires an extremely sophisticated probe. Clearly the crude device shown in the photograph is hopeless for its supposed task: What happens is that Mr Stringer, knowing where the supposed acupuncture points are, consciously or otherwise, changes the pressure and so gets a change of reading on his meter. If anyone doubts this, | would be glad to put the machine to the test; with of course Mr Stringer’s approval (which I am sure he would be only too happy to give). There is another reason why the Biometer can not possibly work and that is that the acupuncture points are a myth, they do not exist. Hundreds of trials have shown that it does not matter where you stick the pins, the results are the same. This again is easy enough to put to the test and I am sure that Mr Stringer would cooperate in this, supposing that it can be proved that the pins do not carry the Aids viruses.

You report that Mr Stringer is an expert on Chinese and Himalayan medicine. He will know then that they do not work. Under the ancient regimes, standards of health care in those countries were appalling and that it is only with the advent of Western scientific medicine that there has been any improvement in this regard. As for magnetic healing, that was shown conclusively to be a fraud a hundred years ago. That it has resurfaced is a tribute to human gullibility. To put the method to the test, I would be happy to let Mr Stringer handle some identical looking metal bars. All he has to do is to tell me, unaided, which are magnets.

yours faithfully

Keith Lockett