Placebo effect beats God, Prozac

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

This is the story of three drugs. Except one is not really a drug at all and is merely an illusion, a nifty construct, an intense belief that it might be a drug, even though, as mentioned, it is very much not. We just think it is. Isn’t that strange? Wonderful? Both?

The three drugs — which, sorry, are not so much drugs as they are modes of comprehending our own weird little minds, needs and inherent psychoses — are presented here by way of two recent studies that essentially reinforce what similar studies have been declaring for years and decades and, in the second case, since the ancient mystics suckled wild plants in the forest, licked God, found the source of the soul, and said, you know, holy f–.

Let’s lay it out: According to a major new overview study, all of America’s beloved wonderdrug antidepressants — all the Prozacs, Paxils, Effexors, Zolofts of the world — are essentially useless and don’t really work worth a damn.

Wait, that’s not quite right. They can sort of work just fine, help millions of people and have enjoyed tremendous success. But there’s a huge caveat: Statistically speaking, all these drugs work no better — and often are far worse for you — than sugar pills, fake pills, placebos that patients only think are powerful, mind-altering compounds, but which in fact are no more chemically miraculous than a peppermint Altoid.

Have you heard this before? Of course you have. The placebo effect has been known for years. Decades. Forever. It’s one of those hotly controversial, yet irrefutable medical/psychological wonders that we don’t have the slightest clue how to unravel, much less leverage. And hence, it just freaks us the hell out.

Nevertheless, the recent findings, the result of one of the most comprehensive studies in recent years, are still nothing short of astounding. A sugar pill works as well as a hit of Prozac, if the patient believes she’s getting the latter? It’s just all sorts of confounding, in how it reveals how the power of the mind is still, to this day, barely understood, untapped, wildly feral, far more brightly powerful than we know what to do with.

It also reveals just how deeply invested massive drug companies are in convincing everyone they can “cure” depression with powerful, often dangerous chemical alternatives, how fearful doctors are of refuting this, how reluctant patients are to understand the difference, and how, above all else, nothing is as it seems.

Problem is, it ain’t just the pills. The placebo effect — hereby defined as the sheer force of will and belief, of the mind’s (and heart’s) ability to heal and nurture itself sans external assistance — applies to all sorts of constructs in our tortured modern world.

Organized religion? Hell yes. Is your life flawed and painful? Are you guilt-ridden and terrified of the world’s swarm of demons and daggers? Of course you are, sinner. Here, have a giant, unknowable deity. Give to it all your faith, hope, belief, money, angst, sexual shame. Believe in it wholly and without doubt, to the point where you lose a sense of yourself and your true divine source, forever and ever, amen.

There now. Feel better? Are miracles starting to happen in your life? Do you feel uplifted and joyful? Are you healed? It’s the power of Jesus! It’s God in your life! It’s because you have blind faith! No no no, it’s not you, silly. Even though, in fact, it totally is. Shhh.

Of course, what we call the power of faith is just the power of the mind, soul, the Self, rather harshly rerouted through some external conduit that relieves us from having to figure s–t out for ourselves. After all, it’s just much easier to give it all over to the god, the pill, the product, than it is to delve deep into one’s own dark and inscrutable psyche. Same as it ever was.

But whatever works, right? If expensive pills genuinely help millions, who’s to argue? If devout belief gives you stability and a sense of place, what’s wrong with that? It’s all well and good… until you factor in the cost.

The organized religion racket rakes in hundreds of billions a year, and requires a massive toll in guilt, shame, dogma, homophobia, war, pedophilia and sexual hysteria. The antidepressant market runs $10 billion a year and makes millions into casual addicts, convincing many they are powerless to get better without chemical assistance.

The placebo market is, at last check, absolutely free. Man, they just hate that.

Behold, study number two. This research reveals another time-honored truth that science is only now beginning to barely get a grip on, albeit nervously, suspiciously. Few want to claim it or ponder what it might mean to how we define illness, consciousness, God, the sanctity of the DSM-IV.

This research reveals, once again for the millionth time, that various psychedelics like MDMA, LSD and psilocybin really do, in fact, have a rather stunningly helpful — and often permanent — effect on the health and well-being of numerous patients, almost universally and without fail.

(Did you hear that? That’s the sound of a million mystics and healers, teachers and gurus throughout history, sighing and rolling their eyes).

Of these drugs’ power to dance and frolic with the brain’s synapses, there is absolutely no doubt. This is no placebo effect. This is no sheer force of will. Psilocybin, for one, is an E-ticket to a shifting dimension, a dance on the blurrier edges of definitive reality. Ecstasy is a widening out, a warming up, an opening into the cold, cold heart of the human species.

Patients who get to dabble with these fine plants and chemicals are reporting astonishingly positive, almost impossibly curative reactions. Lives are forever altered. Ideas of the soul, heart, human connection forever reset and restored. Possibilities expand, PTSD contracts, hearts open, fear and inhibition dissolve. Love expands. And man, the PTB hate that, too.

Do you know why? Two reasons: One: No one holds the patent to these drugs. No one company stands to rake in billions if, say, MDMA is somehow decriminalized. Two: Science loves reliable data, anchor points, the flawed sturdiness of the scientific method. But when it comes to hallucinogens and psychotropics, it’s all just a delightful, slippery mess. The swim and swirl of consciousness, it would appear, just refuses to be pinned down.

The grand upshot: We are but infants. We hammer and prod at the brain, the self, inundate it with chemicals and blast it with terminology to try and get it to behave and respond in somewhat predictable ways. And yet, the ancient plants, the mystical connections they offer to that original source seem to prove one irrefutable point: We still have a long, long way to go to get back to where we started.

Pope condemns child abuse by priests

Ritual Abuse: Lawsuit Against Convicted Satanic Catholic Priest Dismissed because ‘Survivor Doe’ Filing is too Late, Judge Rules

A lawsuit alleging sexual abuse by Gerald Robinson, left, and others was dismissed by Common Pleas Judge Ruth Ann Franks.

By DAVID YONKE
TOLEDO BLADE | January 15, 2010

A lawsuit against Toledo priest Gerald Robinson, who was convicted in 2006 of murdering a nun, has been thrown out for being filed too late.

Judge Ruth Ann Franks of Lucas County Common Pleas Court said a Toledo woman’s civil suit, alleging that she was abused by Robinson and others in satanic rituals when she was a child, was not filed within Ohio’s statute of limitations, which in most cases is 12 years after the person turns 18.

The woman, now in her mid-40s, filed anonymously in 2005 as Survivor Doe along with her husband Spouse Doe, claiming that she could not have sued Robinson earlier because she did not know his identity until she saw him on television after his 2004 arrest for murder.

Mark Davis, the woman’s attorney, said he plans to appeal the ruling.

Judge Franks said in her 27-page decision, dated Tuesday, that while Survivor Doe did not know Robinson’s identity, she knew at least four people involved in the abuse and therefore could have attempted to learn the other abusers’ identities before the time limitations expired.

Judge Franks said child abuse may be the most “vile and vicious act that can be inflicted by a human” and that it stirs “very profound emotions,” but “the law does not allow the court to operate on emotion.”

She said Survivor Doe “could have sought assistance from law enforcement, and she could have attempted to act through other trusted individuals such as her husband” before the statute ex-pired.

Also named in the now-dismissed lawsuit were Gerald Mazuchowski, a Toledo lay Catholic; the Toledo Catholic Diocese, and St. Adalbert Parish and school, where some abuses allegedly occurred.

Survivor Doe claimed in the suit that she was sexually abused by the satanic cult between 1968 and 1975, and that her abusers included a hooded man “with evil eyes” and a hooded “fat” man who told other cult members what to do.

Judge Franks cited Survivor Doe as saying that she witnessed “her mother’s participation in the ritual-type murder of a child during the satanic rituals and of her brother sexually assaulting her with a snake at someone’s direction, also related to the satanic ritual abuse.”

The judge said the Toledo woman began to remember the satanic rituals in 1994, kept detailed journals she calls her “life’s work,” and sought assistance from an attorney in 1994 about possibly suing her uncle for child abuse in a separate matter.

Mr. Davis, Survivor Doe’s attorney, said he is convinced that “our case is even stronger this time … because the evidence is overwhelming that what she described is what actually happened.”

He said he believes an appeals court will side with Survivor Doe’s contention that the statute of limitations countdown should not have begun ticking until she recognized her alleged perpetrators.

Robinson’s attorney, John Donahue, said yesterday that he was “very pleased” with Judge Franks’ decision, calling it “sensitive to the concerns of child abuse victims” while also upholding the law – “that justice delayed is justice denied.”

Robinson, 71, is serving a 15-years-to-life sentence at Hocking Correctional Facility in southern Ohio for the 1980 murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl. He was barred from ministry and has retired from the diocese but remains a priest because he has not been laicized by the Vatican.

Sister Margaret Ann’s body was found, choked and stabbed 32 times, on the morning of April 5, 1980 – Holy Saturday – in the sacristy of the former Mercy Hospital.

Robinson was arrested by cold-case detectives in April, 2004, and found guilty of murder in Lucas County Common Pleas Court in May, 2006.

His legal appeals have been rejected by the Ohio 6th District Court of Appeals, the Ohio Supreme Court, and the U.S. Supreme Court. A petition for postconviction relief is pending before Judge Gene Zmuda in Lucas County Common Pleas Court, with a hearing scheduled for Jan. 22.

Source: http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100115/NEWS02/1150375

Israeli cult leader Goel Ratzon arrested for allegedly keeping harem of women and fathering dozens

BY Diane Moy Schaefer
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

Israeli police arrested a suspected cult leader in Tel Aviv believed to have kept a harem of  women and fathered dozens of children with them.

Goel Ratzon, 59, is being held on suspicion of rape, slavery and incest. Police believe the self-styled healer, who had flowing white hair and a beard, brainwashed the women into staying with him in squalid, overcrowded apartments.

Following a seven-month undercover investigation, police raided three apartments where they found 17 women and 39 children, according to the London Daily Telegraph.

The women in the group were not allowed to be with men, eat meat, smoke, drink alcohol or dress immodestly, according to a rulebook found in one of the living quarters. They would be fined if they argued, gossiped or asked Ratzon where he was going. The children, who all bear Ratzon’s first name, which means “savior” in Hebrew, were expected to kiss his feet when he visited, according to the Telegraph.

His emotional hold on his women was reported to be firm. Police have kept him away from TV cameras for fear that he might send secret messages, ordering the women to hurt themselves. Two women were arrested along with Ratzon on suspicion they cooperated with him or witnessed his alleged crimes.

The other 15 women were taken to homes for abused women, along with all their children.

Ratzon made no secret of his unusual living arrangements, and was featured in a documentary broadcast last year, where he claimed to have fathered 89 children by more than 30 women.

In the documentary, the women were seen to be wearing tattoos of Ratzon’s name and face. When asked why young, attractive women would be part of his group, he replied, “I am perfect. I have all the characteristics that a woman wants.”

A police spokesman told the Telegraph that detectives were trying to piece together the nature of the family relationships, and were determining whether or not the children were subjected to sexual abuse.

Germany reels at abuse in top Jesuit school

The now familiar narrative of systematic abuse of children by priests has scandalised Germans, but campaigners fear the church’s perceived lack of will to change will deny victims justice, writes DEREK SCALLY in Berlin

IT IS 23 YEARS since Adam threw himself in front of a train. His family never knew why. Nor did they know until this week that, months before his death, the 24-year-old had tracked down Fr Peter, a former teacher who had abused him at Berlin’s elite Canisius College.

Adam found the Jesuit priest in the western city of Hildesheim in 1986, confronted him with a knife and stabbed him several times in the chest before fleeing. The priest was seriously injured and was rushed to hospital for treatment, but never pressed charges.

“It seems like others knew earlier what went on in Canisius College, but only now does it seem to concern us,” said Adam’s mother this week to German television. “Abuse seems to be everywhere.”

After years of watching Ireland’s unfolding clerical abuse drama, Germany now has its own home-grown scandal. What started at Berlin’s top Catholic school has, within a week, exploded into a familiar, depressing narrative. Physical violence against children; the sickening abuse of trust by priests; and the cowardly decision to move the abusers on to new pastures and new victims rather than dealing with the problem.

Germany’s Catholic church has not been immune to abuse allegations over the years but, until now, abusing priests were portrayed as isolated black sheep.

But that has changed with revelations of systematic abuse at Canisius College, founded in 1925 and still one of Berlin’s most exclusive schools.

Last month the principal, Fr Klaus Mertes, wrote, in an open letter to former pupils, of his shock and shame at the abuse allegations he had heard after being approached by former pupils. Worse, he said, was how an internal investigation revealed its systematic nature, encouraged by the school’s “culture of looking the other way”.

The Canisius allegations concern three Jesuit priests now in their 60s, all of whom are no longer in the order.

The first, Fr Wolfgang Stab, taught German, religion and physical education at the Berlin school from 1975 to 1979, and later at schools in Hamburg and in the Black Forest. Today, former pupils at all three schools tell of “excessive physical punishment rituals”.

“If we got bad grades, we were forced to lie naked across his lap for a spanking,” said one former student.

The priest moved to Chile in 1985 and left the order in 1992. He has admitted abuse and, last week, asked his victims for forgiveness.

More serious claims surround Fr Peter Riedel – the priest stabbed by a former pupil – who taught at Canisius College from 1971 to 1981.

“He would ask us if we had thought about girls and, if we admitted masturbating, had to show him how. We had to let ourselves be touched,” recalled another victim.

Fr Peter continued to work as a priest after leaving the Jesuits in 1995. In every posting – in Göttingen, Hanover and even Mexico – he faced allegations of sexual abuse of young girls. Letters of complaint were found this week in his file – unanswered.

Colleagues who asked why the priest was moved around so frequently were told a vague story about “financial irregularities” in his previous parish. Fr Peter lives in an upmarket neighbourhood of Berlin and denies all charges.

A third abusing priest who worked as a religion teacher in Canisius College in 1970-71 has since been identified as Bernhard Ehlert, head of a leading Catholic Third World charity. He resigned on Wednesday after he admitted abusing boys early in his career at the school.

Cardinal Georg Sterzinski, archbishop of Berlin, has weighed into the scandal, calling an emergency meeting on Tuesday of all Catholic school heads in the archdiocese. Already Fr Mertes of Canisius College is convinced he has gone public with just “the tip of the iceberg”.

“What has become visible with us happened at other schools,” he told Berlin’s Tagesspiegel newspaper. “But it is a disaster for the Jesuits because the heart of our order is the teacher-pupil relationship. What has happened here is the worst possible betrayal of our spirituality.” Former victims have few legal options: most child abuse offences in Germany can no longer be prosecuted after the victim turns 18; other abuse crimes fall outside the statute of limitations after five years.

Seasoned child welfare campaigners are doubtful that the Canisius College revelations will have a long-term effect.

“This scandal will end with the usual empty phrases and the church will sit it out until the next time,” says Johannes Heibel, founder of Germany’s Initiative Against Child Abuse.

“The church has to show from its side that is anxious to clear this up, to admit that this is not about individual cases, but I don’t see any indication of that willingness yet and we don’t have the means in Germany to exert real pressure.”

Source: http://christianchildabuse.blogspot.com/2010/02/germany-reels-at-abuse-in-top-jesuit.html