CultNews began reporting this summer about how a Scientology-related clinic in Manhattan called Downtown Medical was supposedly purging pollutants and poisons from Ground Zero rescue workers and using NY fireman to promote its program.
Firemen could get their treatment for free and Tom Cruise provided funding.
Walk-ins without sponsorship are typically charged $5,200.00 for the program.
The New York Uniformed Firefighters Association (UFA) initially endorsed the alleged cure that includes sweating in saunas, taking questionable doses of niacin and ingesting polyunsaturated oils, more commonly used for frying food.
However, the UFA has effectively dumped Downtown Medical by withdrawing its endorsement reports the New York Daily News.
Complaints from families, firemen and NY Fire Department officials seems to have led to this decision, not to mention bad press.
The NY Times even ran a story.
Chief medical officer for FDNY Dr. Kerry Kelly said, “The essence of their program is you stay in it until you suddenly wake up and say, ‘I feel great.’ It’s hard to have faith in a program like that.”
The doctor concluded that there is no “objective evidence” to support Downtown Medical’s claims.
Never mind.
Scientologist and director of Downtown Medical Jim Woodworth argued that it is unfair to deny treatments until the research is done.
Right.
But research has been offered in the past that the “purification rundown,” which is a religious ritual within Scientology and the basis for the program, is sorely lacking in scientific substance.
Woodworth dismissed this and said the detox program helped him to stop smoking marijuana. Likewise, actress Kirstie Alley offers a similar testimonial and supports another Scientology-related project that uses essentially the same process called Narconon.
In fact half the staff of Downtown Medical are Scientologists, according to Woodworth.
Without union support it seems unlikely that NYC firemen will keep coming to Downtown Medical. And it’s doubtful that any peer-reviewed scientific research will ever be published to support Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s rather bizarre theories.
As Dr. Kerry points out, the alleged cure the program offers appears to be subjective and based upon faith rather than fact.
But then Hubbard was a science fiction writer before he became a kind of faith healer. Maybe the detox program he proscribed for his devoted followers was one part religion and the other fiction?
no comment untill now