In April last year "Highspirit" magazine featured an article by Gary. In it he revealed that before his eighteenth birthday he "was working one on one with kids in schools that were being classed with all the current child behavioural problems".
"In Young, Psychic And Possessed, film-maker Emeka Onono follows Gary as he tries to prove that he really does have the power to heal."
Gary Mannion has already been shown to be a fraud and a liar and has been completely exposed on this site, check out our "Story so far" links on the left of the page
Yes, both Gary and his former associate in the Unity of UK Psychic Surgeons have had their knuckles rapped.
Last year Gary appeared at a Mind/Body/Spirit fair at London's Olympia. The publicity material he used to promote this New Age baloneyfest still featured his thoroughly debunked claim to have "worked with leading medical professionals" - you may remember that Gary named them as Dr Gowri Motha (who didn't want to be associated with him), the imaginary "Manesh Naidoo" and that strangely elusive doctor of homeopathy "Glen Davies".
I sent Trading Standards all the info I've collected about this nonsensical claim and five months later I finally received a reply!
The founder members of the UUKPS: Gary Mannion, Andy Porter and Nina Knowland
Update 24/3/09: Gary left the UUKPS for "personal reasons" soon after it was founded.
Looking for an authentic, ethical psychic surgeon? A new organisation rejoicing in the name of the Unity of UK Psychic Surgeons may be able to help you. But a closer look at the UUKPS reveals some familiar faces...
Gary is currently appearing in a YouTube video which is in effect an advert for the book Soul Companions, a compendium of crackpottery fresh from the foam-flecked lips of assorted "wisdom keepers" (aka "New Age numpties").
Sit up straight, stop fidgeting at the back and pay attention to a brief chemistry lesson from Professor Mannion!
Readers of Dr Ben Goldacre's "Bad Science" column will already be familiar with BrainGym, an extremely silly programme of exercises described by Dr Goldacre as "nonsense dressed up as neuro-science...Brain Gym is a set of perfectly good fun exercise break ideas for kids, which costs a packet and comes attached to a bizarre and entirely bogus pseudoscientific explanatory framework". Yes, it's the same BrainGym that advises people to keep their brains well hydrated by holding water in their mouths. It's just the sort of thing Gary Mannion might believe in, so we weren't surprised to find him using BrainGym in a workshop last year...
Remember Andy Porter, who with Gary Mannion and Nina Knowland was one of the three co-founders of the Unity of UK Psychic Surgeons? If you were in any doubt that the terms "New Age" and "Dark Age" are interchangeable, here's a claim so obscene in its wilful ignorance you'll be left wondering why he hasn't been sent for a psychiatric evaluation himself:
Quote:
Psychic surgery is able to treat all conditions because the healing is performed by spirit, not the individual doing the work, and as many of today's ailments exist due to an un-balance in the spiritual body they are almost exclusively un-treatable in the western way through medicine. This can be highlighted with Schizophrenia, this condition in my experience is normally due to spirit possession and can be resolved within 1 hour but the western approach is to condemn those afflicted to mental institutions as the existence of spirit is not widely accepted.
Yes, you read that correctly: in the first decade of the 21st century we're being asked to believe that severe mental illness is caused by spirit possession.
More “Energy” Pseudo-Science: or, “Dr Harry Oldfield Will Give You the PIP”
The following snippet of information about Gary Mannion recently appeared in Psychic News:
Quote:
Gary is also taking part in research with Dr Harry Oldfield, which involves various tests including work on brain functions.
"When I worked with him, my brain produced multiple waves which is evidence of spirit," he [Gary] claimed...”
Oldfield’s name rang a bell but I couldn’t quite place it at first. Then I remembered – our own Tom Roberts, in his UK-Skeptics persona of “bindeweede”, recently quoted a New Age website which linked Oldfield’s name with Gary’s. With the help of microbiologist Tom Irving I did a bit of research into Dr Oldfield’s work, and it soon became abundantly clear why he was so eager to be impressed by Gary’s multiple brain waves...
Even as I type this Gary and other woo-merchants are in the midst of the Soul Companions Event being held at the Stackpole Centre, a National Trust property near Pembroke in Wales. Who are the Soul Companions? Well, they claim to be "contemporary wisdom-keepers", which is Newage-speak for "sellers of feelgood fantasy to people who can't be bothered to educate themselves about the real world". You name it, there's a Soul Companion flogging it in workshops and books - angels, aliens, alchemy, Atlantis...and that's just the stuff beginning with A!
It's sad to see this sort of claptrap being aided and abetted by the National Trust, but anyone who's noticed the New Age books and trinkets on sale in NT shops will not be surprised. Personally I find this sort of thing as incongruous as seeing Jack Chick tracts or Creationist literature in the gift shops of Anglican cathedrals, but there you go.
Obviously the full complement of Soul Companions won't have invaded Wales en masse, but I thought you might like to know more about Gary's comrades in extreme New Age numptiness.
WARNING: I CANNOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR BRAIN DAMAGE, SOILED UNDERWEAR OR SUICIDAL DESPAIR CAUSED BY READING THIS ARTICLE.
This excellent article by Dr David H Gorski is taken from the Science-based Medicine blog - http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/. I reproduce it in full because it's too good to be tucked away as a link.
Last month Gary's brush with the sceptic community was the subject of a (very) brief article by Tara Brady in the Harrow Observer, which was later picked up by Psychic News.
Does the name Lynda Jakiro ring a bell? Yes, she was third from the left in this lineup of "healers" dispensing Abraham Body Energy. Aren't those matching t-shirts cute? But Lynda isn't merely a Mannion associate, she has a magic wand. And she's not afraid to use it! It's time for a closer look at "Lynda Jakiro NAET, EFT Adv. Allergy Therapist"
Many thanks to farsideofthemoon and bindeweede/tomroberts for bringing this to my attention over on UK Skeptics.
Gary now insists that he doesn't diagnose illness and always advises clients to seek conventional medical treatment. Some of the testimonials on his sites tell a very different story!
In which I finally receive a reply from Steve Nobel of Alternatives about Gary Mannion's "demonstration of psychic surgery" at St James' Church in February.
Rose Shapiro, author of Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All, has come up with eight helpful tips on "How to Spot a Quack". How does Gary score on her Quackometer?
The £50,000 prize has been withdrawn at Gary's request!
Gary has informed Professor Chris French that although he is still willing to take part in controlled tests - if a protocol acceptable to all parties can be worked out - he is not interested in the £50,000 and does not want the tests to be filmed for TV.
Every now and then sceptics come across a paranormal claim so ludicrous it's almost impossible to decide if it's the real thing, the product of mental illness, a parody or a straightforward hoax. In this article we'll take a look at "Carlos", the channeler who fooled many Australians in 1988 - until his act was revealed to be a hoax dreamed up by James Randi! Could it be possible that Gary is playing a similar game?
Visitors to www.garymannion.com will have noticed that a lengthy disclaimer has been added to the site. At first glance it looks like a step in the right direction, but a closer examination reveals that it's merely a long-winded claim that medical science and paranormal skills - such as "psychic surgery" - are two different but equal approaches to illness.
It's strange, but since I began investigating the Indigo Kid's claims I seem to have been transformed from a mild-mannered lady of mature years into a sort of James Bond supervillain(ess) - the Sceptical Madame Blofeld.
Exposing New Age charlatans can be a frustrating business. E-mails to newspaper editors, trading standards authorities, MPs, doctors and scientists tend to go unanswered for weeks or are ignored completely, as are phone messages left on answering machines. But perseverance DOES pay off, as BP has discovered this week.
You may remember that a testimonial from "Rodger Andrews", insinuating that his terminal cancer disappeared two days after being treated by Gary Mannion, recently appeared on two of Gary's sites. I reported what seemed to me to be a breach of the Cancer Act to Gary's local Trading Authority, Brent and Harrow. It took some time to get a reply but in the meantime Gary toned down the wording of Andrews' testimonial on garymannion.com. I suspected that someone from Trading Standards must have had a word in Gary's ear, and sure enough an e-mail from Winston Brooks of Brent and Harrow TS confirmed that this was the case - Gary had been given a verbal warning.
December 11th 2007, Prof' Chris French
issued a challenge to Gary Mannion to prove his claims, the challenge was accepted. This challenge was repeated on February 4th 2008, and was accepted again.
A member of the BadPsychics site has agreed to put up £50,000 of his own money if Gary can pass a test demonstrating his abilities.
Will Gary ever actually go through with the challenge? We will keep an eye on how long it takes for him to go through with it.
In April last year "Highspirit" magazine featured an article by Gary. In it he revealed that before his eighteenth birthday he "was working one on one with kids in schools that were being classed with all the current child behavioural problems".
Yes, both Gary and his former associate in the Unity of UK Psychic Surgeons have had their knuckles rapped.
Is there no end to Gary's talents? Apparently not, if the programme for his next workshop at Nash Manor is anything to go by.
In which the author examines the curious afterlife of an Old Testament patriarch and finally gets a chance to use the word "gallimaufry".
Exposing New Age charlatans can be a frustrating business. E-mails to newspaper editors, trading standards authorities, MPs, doctors and scientists tend to go unanswered for weeks or are ignored completely, as are phone messages left on answering machines. But perseverance DOES pay off, as BP has discovered this week.