Future Medicine: Ethical Dilemmas, Regulatory Challenges, and Therapeutic Pathways to Health Care and Healing in Human Transformation

6. Fraud, Ego, and Abuse of Spiritual Power

6 Fraud, Ego, and Abuse of Spiritual Power Case 6A Fraud: The Unlicensed Healer from Nazareth In health care ethics based on Christianity, the figure of Jesus is regarded as a model, as he “healed before he preached, and he went out to the lepers, the most neglected members of the community.”1 But the purpose of this memorandum is to suggest how, from a limited perspective of fraud control, a religious healer could be perceived as a dangerous and subversive agent of darkness . To: Chief Prosecutor From: Assistant Counsel Date: Somewhere in Time You have asked me to investigate allegations of unlicensed medical practice regarding a particularly controversial individual. He came from Nazareth and moved around small towns. He called himself Yeshu—“the one who saves”; Maschiach—”The Anointed One.” This previously unknown individual—whose only professional training was as a carpenter—performed “miracle cures” and engaged in the unlicensed practice of several professions: medicine, psychology, massage. He claimed to heal the lame, the blind, and the sick; he claimed that “greater things than these” would be performed by his devotees. Once he walked through the marketplace, felt a woman touch his robe, and said the “energy” was drained out of him; at other times he was said to walk on water, resurrect the dead, and claim a direct channel to God. In this way he defrauded millions. Among other state laws Yeshu allegedly violated was a 213 prohibition against necromancy, originally instituted by the prophet Samuel and later codified under state law as a prohibition against “fortune-telling.”2 In one incident, Yeshu took Peter and James, in collusion with John his brother, to a local mountain and fraudulently created a light show (according to the testimony at trial, he was “transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was as white as the light”).3 There he purported to converse with Moses and Elijah, thus channeling in violation of the statutory proscription. To cover up his fraudulent acts, he swore his disciples to secrecy until after a promised resurrection. Yeshu not only claimed to cure disease—a felony in most states— but also reportedly empowered his disciples to do the same. Drawing on Jewish messianic fervor and revolutionary Marxist undercurrents within his social group; openly defying convention, orthodoxy, and social, legal, and medical authority; and freely mixing contemporary rabbinic Judaism, spiritualism, Kantian philosophy, existentialism, the prophetic tradition, Sufi mysticism, and the teachings of Helen Blavatsky, he also purported to transmit to loyalists the “power against unclean spirits, to cast them out,” and—blatantly violating medical licensing laws—to “heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease” (not excluding such serious conditions as diabetes, cancer, leprosy, and AIDS).4 Included in the carpenter’s retinue of “healers” were a former fisherman and a tax collector. Undercover investigators, employed by a consortium of state professional boards (known as the “Sanhedrin”), repeatedly confronted him regarding the origins of his therapeutic techniques and his identity. “Are you a healer?” they asked. “Do you claim to represent God?” “What do you mean by the statement, ‘I and the Father are One’? “Have you studied witchcraft, sorcery, or necromancy?” And finally, “Do you believe in homeopathy?” To all questions he remained silent, except to reply, “So say you.” On the stand he took the Fifth, refusing to answer any questions. He died in prison—his body disappeared. Some say he reappeared three days later; others say he was a Tibetan master, adept at the art of dissolving into the “rainbow body” at death. Some say he was a charlatan; others, a Self-realized being. Some say he was an avatar; others, one aspect of a triune God.5 According to the allegations in another lawsuit, Yeshu claimed to heal a young man in the marketplace suffering from multiple 214 • Future Medicine personality disorder. Yeshu, who had no licensure in psychology and no training from any accredited institution in counseling or any other form of mental health care, and who lacked certification as a rabbi or priest from any recognized religious educational institution (and therefore was not entitled to any religious exemption under a state medical practice act), put his palm on the forehead of this young man (whose name was Legion) and told him to “sin no more.” Following the “healing” by Yeshu, Legion went out and stabbed a young woman. According to...