The absence of pain in John's surgeries- paranormal?

Another miracle claimed by John is that his patients exhibit no signs of pain when their flesh is cut with a knife. While I've never seen this performed, except on video, I believe that this is due to a combination of adrenaline rush, the power of suggestion and trickery.

When people unaccustomed to it are subjected to sudden stress or shock, their bodies produce an adrenaline rush that makes them temporarily numb to pain. There are many accounts of wounded soldiers and victims of shootings or stabbings not feeling any physical pain upon being injured (or not realizing at first that they were shot or stabbed at all).

An adrenaline rush is only temporary and wears off after minutes, if not seconds, leaving the victim in often terrible pain. Since no further follow-ups are done on John's patients, the cameras might not capture them reacting to the pain (if adrenaline rush is indeed the case here).

Also, John rarely cuts sensitive areas of the body and seems to only cuts superficially. The people he performs "visible surgery" on are also told to close their eyes, which leads to little immediate show of reaction on their part.

It is also entirely possible that John treats the knife with a painkiller, as he might be doing with the instruments he touches to the eyes of his patients.

It's important to note that these are all simply suppositions. Does any of this "prove" (or disprove) anything? No, but it is a valid, full and prefectly satisfying explanation for John's alleged "miracles". At the very least, it's a reason to reconsider travelling to another continent and putting your health (and perhaps your life) into this man's hands.

It is impossible to know what the truth behind John's procedures are due to John's never having subjected himself to medical testing, save once. Although at least one physician has observed the surgeries that take place at the Casa, the doctor was not there to examine any of the patients, conduct any testing or partake in any medicial studies.

The one medical study that has been undertaken, which investigated the effects of 30 surgeries, proved inconclusive.

Here is the study, in the original Portugese:

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0104-42302000000300002&lng=en&nrm=iso

To quote from the summary: "The surgerical procedures are real but we couldn't evaluate the efficacy. It didn't appear to have any specific effect. Our findings are undoubtedly more of an exploratory kind than conclusive ones. Further studies are clearly necessary to cast light on this unorthodox treatment."

There is an organization that tests claims of the paranormal, an organization by the name of the James Randi Educational Foundation. If John should ever desire to prove his alleged abilities, nothing would be simpler than taking the JREF's test. A million US dollars are offered for any demonstration of any paranormal feat, something that John should have no difficulty doing, as he claims to perform it every day and for a good deal of money.

Why doesn't John take this test or offer any other proof of his abilities? A million dollars could be his for the taking, to use in any way he desires and all of his critics would be silenced once and for all.

An explanation of the "Eyeball Scraping" trick

Another one of John's tricks is to appear to run a knife over a patient's eye. How this is intended to cure one of AIDS, cancer, back pain, Parkinson's Disease or any other ailment is unclear but what's clear is that there is a perfectly possible way to accomplish this, besides having any psychic or mystical healing powers.

Magician and skeptical investigator James Randi had this to say about it:

"John of God will seat a subject for his "visible surgery" stunt and apparently scrape the eyeball of the patient with the edge of a knife. I believe that this is a variation of the usual trick — illustrated on page 177 of my book, "Flim-Flam!" — in which a knife-blade is inserted under the eyelid of a subject with little or no resulting discomfort. With the Brazilian faker, the "scraping" motion gives it a much more fearsome aspect, but for several good reasons I doubt that any contact takes place with the cornea.

The sclera — the white section of the eye — is relatively insensitive to touch. Try touching that area with a finger or any clean object, and you'll see this is true. The cornea, however, is very sensitive — among the most sensitive areas of the body. Incidentally, it's also the fastest-healing organ, which accords very well with Darwinian standards; being able to see is one of our very best sensory means of defense.

Most persons — and I'm one of them — have a difficult time watching the eye being touched. We tend to empathize with the situation, and I'm sure that some readers are at this moment involuntarily squinting in distaste as they read these words; we're that reactive to eyeball-touching. Few persons will resist looking away when John of God seems to scrape an eyeball, and I note that he's furtively watching the position of the camera as he performs this stunt, blocking the view with his body when a close-up is sought.

There's also the distinct possiblity here that John of God introduces a temporary local anaesthetic — benzocaine would work — onto the eye surface, which would allow contact with the cornea. We don't know, though we could have found out....

In any case, unless an anaesthetic has been introduced, it is impossible for this man to be touching the cornea of a human eye as he appears to do, without causing immediate involuntary flinching from the patient. The JREF will stake its million-dollar prize on that statement. "

www.randi.org/jr/021805a.html

Magician Criss Angel demonstrates psychic surgery

Some things to consider about psychic surgery:

If there could be a painless, non-invasive and very inexpensive cure for cancer that took only minutes to perform, why has there been so little notice of it in the world outside rural Phillipines and parts of South America? Why isn't it heralded as the discovery of the ages?

Why haven't the American Medical Association, the American Cancer Society, the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, the Lance Armstrong Foundation and the millions of people working towards a cure for cancer endorsed it?

Psychic surgery has existed for at least the past one hundred years and, most likely, much longer than that. With hundreds of practitioners in the world, why would anyone ever have died of cancer in the past a hundred years? Wouldn't a cure such as this have made the entire field of oncology obsolete?

Finally, what does it tell you if a stage magician admittedly performing a magic trick can replicate psychic surgery? Can you even tell the difference between the magician and the psychic surgeon?

João Teixeira de Faria, known as "John of God", is a dangerous fraud, a man who preys on the suffering and the needy in the most reprehensible way imaginable and exploits their illnesses for his own personal gain.

He draws the ill from all corners of the world through word of mouth and through his own self-aggrandizing, does nothing to help them (besides the effects of the placebo effect), wastes their time, money and resources and puts their health and life in even greater jeopardy.

While Brazil has many alleged faith healers and psychic surgeons, many of the ill who seek out his "help" are Western tourists drawn to him through word of mouth and his advertising of himself on the Internet. This blog is aimed at them, in the hopes of dissuading them from wasting precious time and money on a pilgrimage to Brazil.

My name is Agatha and I'm an American skeptic and researcher.

I am a research assistant on the website StopSylvia.com, devoted to examining the claims of psychic Sylvia Browne, and was inspired by those efforts to start my own skeptical blog.

I first heard of John of God about three years ago, when a family friend travelled to Brazil with her mother and a friend to be cured by him.

She had a condition that could have been easily corrected through surgery but instead chose to see "faith healers". Although she long claimed that John of God had healed her illness, it later proved to had actually rapidly spread due to her delay of proper treatment.

A few months after returning from Brazil and after seeing other faith healers and pursuing other methods of "alternative medicine", my family friend had to have surgery for her condition, which was successful.

Thankfully, she ended up only losing the cost of travelling to Brazil and is doing perfectly fine today. Others, I suspect, were not so lucky.

This incident, however, angered me very much and made me wish it was possible to warn people like my family friend, enspecially when I learned that yet another of my acquaintances had journeyed to see John of God with his wife.

I read as much as I could about John and found an alarming paucity of skeptical information about him, besides James Randi's thorough debunking of his methods. What few articles I found about John in the mainstream American, British and Australian press were mostly favorable- or at least failed to trully investigate his claims.

Months and years passed by and I was involved in several other long-term skeptical projects but never forgot what had happened and John always remained in the back of my mind. I flirted with the idea of starting a blog or a website several times but never went through with my plans. I failed to take initiative in any serious way, like many people with a desire to do something but no visible channel for their energy often do.

Finally, I decided I had to spread the word and inform the public about this charlatan the same way I and many others had helped debunk Sylvia Browne and the time for that was now.

My warmest thanks to my inspiration, the wonderful Mr. Robert Lancaster of StopSylvia.com.

Thank you for showing me the way.