From Abracadabra to Zombies
What's the harm?
archive
These links and comments illustrate the harm done by occult, paranormal, pseudoscientific, and supernatural beliefs. The harm may be tangible and easily documented: physical, financial, or interpersonal.
2008
May 12. "Honor" killings of women by men in Iraq.
April 7. Thousands of women die each year from unsafe abortions.
April 7. Ugandan herbalists arrested in ancestral magic scam.
April 4. Italian priest accused of duping believers in demons of $6.5 million.
March 29. Diabetic girl dies while parents pray.
March 18. Tarot card reader bilks clients with the old cleansing-the-curse scam.
March 16. Religious group dupes mentally unstable women into Bible studies and exorcisms to rid them of the snares of Satan.
March 14. A man posing as a priest cons an elderly woman with mental problems out of 40,000 euros. He tells her he needs the money for an exorcism against "obscure presences."
March 12. A Australian man was sent to prison for 19 years for strangling a woman he had told "he had psychic powers and could remove her evil spirits by having sex with her."
February 24. South Africa's health minister Manto Tshabalala-Msimang says that medicines used by traditional healers should not be subject to clinical trials. California legislator Mervyn Dymally says insurance companies should pay for acupuncture treatments.
February 22. The number of measles cases in England and Wales jumps more than 30% due to parental fear that the MMR vaccine causes autism.
February 17. There have been eleven confirmed cases of measles in San Diego county, most because ignorant parents feared inoculation would give their children autism.
February 14 Saudi Arabia's religious police force an illiterate woman to fingerprint a confession that she used witchcraft to make a man impotent
January 24 Lead found in folk remedies and Ayurvedic tonics
January 20 Priest in Mexico abuses children and his congregation in the name of religious tradition
January 17 Priest in Sweden rapes daughter to drive out Satan.
January 16 Gary Null's natural way to kill a cirrhosis patient.
January 14 Ponzi schemes in China.
January 8 "phony" psychic sentenced in cleansing scam.
2007
December 7-18 Fr. Andrzej Trojanowski's exorcisms in Poland; Charles Sibley, depraved psychic.
October 8-November 26 William Nelson and energy medicine machines; Lola Miller's cleansing scam; Cláudia Simião da Silva dies waiting for sign from God; deadly herbal wine in Vietnam; deadly exorcism in New Zealand; deadly exorcism in Algeria; unregulated designer herbs in the U.K.; psychic Lorraine Warren sued for part in exorcism.
September 26 Oprah Winfrey provides a bully pulpit for Jenny McCarthy and Holly Robinson Peete, mothers of autistic children who blame vaccines.
August 4-September 19 Australian naturopath charged with manslaughter; faith-based engineering in India; faith-based aviation in Nepal; deadly exorcism in Tunisia; deadly exorcism in Phoenix.
June 4 dietary supplements from China.
April 7-June 5 deadly New Age purification ritual in Australia; miracle or wrong diagnosis?; witch murdered in Guyana; arsenic in herbal kelp.
February 23 Nicolai Levashov, Russian psychic healer, blind faith, and Isabelle Pritchard.
2006
January 5-September 18 psychic burns victim with candle scam; psychic removes cash instead of curse; anti-vaccination movement and new measles deaths in England; deadly ozone treatment in Thailand; a psychic cleansing scam in Florida; Dutch actress and comedienne Sylvia Millecam dies of treatable breast cancer; Consegrity co-founder dies of untreated diabetes while she and her partner apply their patented brand of energy healing; mass marketing scams in the U.K.; Coretta Scott King dies in a Donsbach clinic in Tiajuana; psychic cleansing scam in Maryland; Taliban kill Malim Abdul Habib for educating girls.
2005
January 31-October 31 pastor electrocuted during baptism; Dr. Roy Kerry treats 5-year-old boy with chelation for autism and boy dies; psychic scams in Australia; Jennifer Nicole Evans sentenced for curse removal psychic scam; deadly exorcism in Romania; "natural health therapist" accused of suffocation death in Ireland; Ayurvedic herbs in Boston packed with heavy metals; naturopath + homeopath = cerebral palsy.
2004
February 11-November 23 naturopath David Eugene Pontius of British Columbia charged with three counts of unlawful and unprofessional conduct for advising a woman with breast cancer not to seek chemotherapy; Christian couple arrested for planning to sacrifice three children in Jesus's name; Princeton psychic, Christine Evans, arrested in curse removal scam; phony miracle worker dupes greedy folks in Ethiopia; Dorothy Prier arrested in Wisconsin for psychic cleansing scam; Florida psychic robs old men; Amanda Roxann Williams and her mother arrested in West Palm Beach for psychic protection scam; Rev. Dwayne Long takes lethal bite from a rattlesnake he handled during an Easter service at a church in Virginia; Doug Perkins, local administrator for the federal Transportation Security Administration director, orders a bomb search of American Airlines Flight 1304 at Southwest Florida International Airport because of a tip from a psychic; several northern Nigerian states announce they will not participate in a campaign to wipe out polio because Muslim clerics believe the vaccine is a western plot to sterilize their women; psychic's prophecy blamed in starvation death of child in Massachusetts; HIV-positive men having sex with children in Africa to cure themselves; HIV misinformation inspired by David R. Hawkins.
2003
April 25-December 29 $300K taken in Nigerian scam; lawyer's bad logic costs him $74K; dead Nigerian shaman finds that anti-bullet charm doesn't work; deadly exorcism in Milwaukee; Brazilian cult leader goes on trial for kidnapping, torture, and murder; prayer-killing; Australian naturopath Reginald Fenn convicted of manslaughter; Dr. Roy Meadows and the Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy witch hunt; psychic scams.
2002
April 4-June 18 New Zealand Adventists Roby and Deborah Moorhead sentenced for the manslaughter of their six-month-old son, Caleb, who died of complications from a vitamin B12 deficiency; Japanese exorcist Sachiko Eto sentenced to death by hanging; 14-year old virgin girl strangled to death by sorcerer and his apprentice in Cambodia.
2001
April 7 Colorado therapists Connell Watkins and Julie Ponder suffocate 10-year-old Candace Newmaker in a "rebirthing" session.
1999
March 20 Pat Davis, TV news anchorwoman, dies at age 39 after 2 1/2 years of Gerson therapy for breast cancer.
1997
March 28 Thirty-nine members of a UFO cult known as "Heaven's Gate commit suicide as they wait for a space ship to take them to a higher level.
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