L Ron Hubbard Purification an Illustrated Guide Book Cover Art
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Narconon's New Life Detoxification Program is the subject of 2 related books given, or rather sold, to clients as part of the Narconon package. These are the volume Clear Body Clear Mind and an accompanying illustrated guide, called only Narconon New Life Detoxification Programme, with a tag stating "Based on the book CLEAR BODY Articulate MIND - The Effective Purification® Program". (The guide appears in the Library of Congress's database of copyright items as the "Narconon New Life Detoxification Programme (picture volume)", which appears to be its standard title inside Narconon). The discussion "Purification" appears with an ® mark adjacent to information technology, indicating that it is a registered trademark - in fact, it is a trademark of the Religious Technology Middle, the Church building of Scientology'southward most senior management system, which uses it for "course materials and manuals pertaining to religion and spiritual awareness and gain." [US Patents & Trademarks Office registration #1512643]
This is not the but connection between the Church of Scientology and the supposedly not-religious New Life Detoxification Program, which according to the Church's website is "a secularized adaptation of the Purification Rundown" used by Scientologists ["What is the Purification Rundown?" - <http://faq.scientology.org/page11c.htm>]. I of the books accompanying the Scientology purification plan is a title called Purification: An Illustrated Answer To Drugs. It is in fact virtually identical to the Narconon picture book, despite the fact that 1 is supposed to exist religious and the other secular; the text is almost the same, the pictures are the same and the pages are the same - even the pagination is the same. The only significant differences are that every mention of Scientology has been removed, and the name "Purification Rundown" has been replaced systematically with "New Life Detoxification Program".
Copyrights and disclaimers
The picture volume has no contents page but the publication data page has some intriguing disclaimers and copyright statements. Both the film book and Clear Trunk Clear Mind are copyrighted past the L. Ron Hubbard Library, a business allonym of the Church of Spiritual Technology. (See, for example, document number V3439 P886 in the Library of Congress'southward database of copyright items at http://world wide web.copyright.gov/records/cohd.html; the record refers to "Church of Spiritual Engineering science, conducting its affairs nether the proper noun 50. Ron Hubbard Library".) The involvement of the Church of Spiritual Applied science is non explained by Narconon, nor even referred to in its literature. Nor, curiously, does the Church of Scientology explain information technology either; the organisation is merely mentioned once in passing in the whole of the official Scientology website and is not referred to at all in the website's description of the Church's organisational structure (at http://www.scientology.org/world/worldeng/corp/index.htm). This is despite the fact that the CST owns and governs the use of all of L. Ron Hubbard's works, fiction and non-fiction alike - the Church of Scientology website includes an obligatory "grateful acknowledgement to L. Ron Hubbard Library" but never actually explains what that body is. Nor, information technology seems, do whatsoever of the Church building's dozens of other websites.
There are no less than three disclaimers in the flick book, at to the lowest degree 2 of which announced to contradict each other. The commencement states that
This book ... is presented to the reader every bit function of the record of [L. Ron Hubbard'due south] personal inquiry into life, and the application of same by others, and should exist construed simply equally a written report of such research and not equally a statement of claims made by the author or organization. Any verbal representations fabricated to the opposite are non authorized.
while the second reads:
The New Life Detoxification Programme cannot be construed as a recommendation of medical handling or medication and it is not professed equally a physical handling for bodies nor is whatsoever claim made to that effect. There are no medical recommendations or claims for the New Life Detoxification Programme or for any of the vitamin or mineral regimens described in this book.
Compare this to the disclaimer for the Purification Rundown, given on the official Clear Body Clear Listen website at http://www.clearbodyclearmind.com/disclaim.htm:
The Purification® program cannot be construed equally a recommendation of medical treatment or medication. It is not professed to be physical or medical treatment nor is any such merits made. There are no medical recommendations or claims for the Purification program or for any of the vitamin or mineral regimens described in this book.
This seems to be a bizarre thing to say considering that both detoxification courses are supposed to rid the torso of drug residues and other toxins - surely a "concrete handling" if ever there was one. The reason is that during the 1950s and 1960s, the Church of Scientology ran into a lot of problems with Federal and state authorities in the United States for practicing medicine without a licence, leading to court cases, confiscations and convictions. It was, for case, non very prudent for Hubbard to promote Scientology every bit a cure for polio, cancer and radiation poisoning, which not surprisingly led the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to have legal action confronting the Church. Since so, the Church has been careful to claim that physical benefits are merely an accidental but fortunate possible side-effect from Scientology courses. Officially, the Purification Rundown is supposed to be virtually spiritual benefit, or as Hubbard puts it, "to meet a growing threat to mental and spiritual advancement and well-being". However, this policy breaks down fundamentally when applied to Narconon. Co-ordinate to the official Narconon website, the program deals "with the concrete and mental bug brought about past drug employ" - italics added for emphasis ["New Life Without Drugs", <http://www.narconon.org/narconon_rehabprogram.htm>]. "Spiritual" is inappreciably appropriate for a secular rehabilitation plan. Still the disclaimer nevertheless rejects the possibility that the program has a concrete aim - then what is the point of doing information technology if it doesn't have one?
On a related issue, the get-go disclaimer attempts to weasel out of the obvious fact that, equally we shall see, supposed miracle cures are being advertised for everything from chemic toxins to drug residues and even to radiation exposure. In fact, when the text of the moving picture volume is examined advisedly, it becomes apparent that it has been carefully worded so as to announced to report claims rather than make them.
The volume is published by Bridge Publications, Inc. of Los Angeles. This happens to be the Church of Scientology's publishing house; as its website (at http://www.bridgepub.com) illustrates, it is the publisher of Fifty. Ron Hubbard'south Scientology and Dianetics works. His works of fiction are dealt with past a different corporation, Author Services Inc. (http://www.authorservicesinc.com). Everything they publish is, notwithstanding, formally endemic by the "50. Ron Hubbard Library", i.e. Church of Spiritual Technology.
Introductions
The reader'due south commencement encounter of Scientology doctrine comes on virtually the offset page of the picture volume (there is no contents page), with an "IMPORTANT NOTE" urging the reader "never [to] become past a word yous do non fully sympathise". This is L. Ron Hubbard's "study technology", the nearly of import premise of which is:
The but reason a person gives up a study or becomes confused or unable to acquire is considering he or she has gone past a word that was not understood.
[Hubbard, in Narconon New Life Detoxification Program picture book]
Annotation that this effectively sets the author upward as being infallible; the possibility that something might non make sense because information technology is inaccurate or untrue is non accounted to be a factor. Hence, when Hubbard claims afterwards in the picture book that the effects of past X-rays can be sweated out of the trunk, anyone having problem with this proposition is falling foul of a misunderstood give-and-take rather than the fact that the proposition itself is impossible.
A"Md's Evaluation" is provided on the next page. It comprises of an extract from an bookish paper, "Evaluation of a Detoxification Regimen for Fat Stored Xenobiotics" [come across <http://www.detoxacademy.org/pdfs/fatxeno.pdf>], published in a non-peer-reviewed periodical in 1982. The co-authors were Dr Gene Denk, Dr. Megan Shields, Stephen Brunton and D.w. Schnare (although for some reason the last is not credited in the moving picture book) and sponsored by the Foundation for Advancements in Scientific discipline and Education (although this is as well non mentioned). Denk is a Scientologist who was L. Ron Hubbard'southward personal md in the years immediately before Hubbard'south death. Shields is besides a Scientologist who is Narconon'due south medical inquiry managing director and one of the Hubbard programme's nearly prominent supporters. The Foundation for Advancements in Science and Educational activity was established in 1981 with the explicit purpose to "enquiry the efficacy of and promote the works of L. Ron Hubbard in the solving of social problems; and to scientifically research and provide public information and education concerning the efficacy of other programs", co-ordinate to its incorporation papers, although the mention of L. Ron Hubbard was later removed. These facts are, of class, not mentioned either in the movie book or in the original newspaper.
Denk'due south introduction finishes with a argument that "the theories presented in this book are gaining increasing credence among medical doctors and scientists". This is an exaggeration at the very least; in fact, merely a scattering of such individuals - often Scientologists or linked to Scientology-related groups - have publicly supported Hubbard'south detoxification programme. It is, at best, merely a fringe therapy and has piddling if whatsoever credibility in the medical and scientific community in general.
The pictures
The main office of the picture book, about 70 pages long, consists of a serial of fairly amateurishly drawn cartoons accompanied past brief text from L. Ron Hubbard, apparently excerpted from Clear Body Clear Mind. The get-go few pages evidence the grim effects of drugs merely assure the reader that "there is promise for changing this - on the New Life Detoxification Program." In the Scientology version of the book, Purification: An Illustrated Reply To Drugdue south, "New Life Detoxification Programme" is replaced by "Purification Rundown". This type of replacement occurs systematically throughout the book.
Alongside a cartoon of a man suffering an LSD flashback (right), Hubbard announces that he has made a startling discovery: that LSD flashbacks are caused by the drug becoming trapped in the body and spontaneously existence released at after times. In fact, LSD does not crystallise in the trunk. It is a water-soluble substance and is flushed out through the body'due south own natural processes in three days or less. This makes Hubbard'south explanation of LSD flashbacks physically incommunicable. The general opinion amid psychologists is that LSD flashbacks, also known as hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (HPPD), are a phenomenon akin to the mail-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In that instance, an intense emotional experience - such equally existence in a boxing or a disaster - tin can exist "relived" on subsequently occasions. At that place is evidence to suggest that both LSD and PTSD flashbacks have their roots in activity in the office of the encephalon known as the locus ceruleus and tin be treated with clonidine-based medications [see Lerner et al, "Clonidine Treatment for Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder", <http://world wide web.stormloader.com/hppd/clonidine.htm>].
Hubbard goes further and claims that a wide variety of "toxic substances", which include heroin, cocaine, marijuana, medicinal drugs, food preservatives, pesticides, chemical wastes and fifty-fifty radiation tin can be stored in the body and afterwards released (or "restimulated"), potentially with devastating effects. He does not provide any evidence for this claim, either in the picture book or its source, Clear Body Clear Mind. This is not entirely surprising, as and so many of his claims are fundamentally wrong. Some toxic substances, chemicals such as dioxins, are indeed notoriously decumbent to beingness retained in the body - however, this simply does not happen for the majority of abused drugs. Opiates such every bit heroin are flushed out of the body in betwixt 1 to 5 days; THC, the active element of marijuana, may take upwardly to iv weeks to be flushed out; alcohol takes simply 24 hours or less. Radiation cannot be stored in the body. Radioactive particles may well be absorbed (hence the employ of iodine tablets to foreclose radioactive iodine lodging in the thyroid gland) just radiation itself, which consists of emissions of particles or electromagnetic rays, does non and cannot: it is physically impossible. Crucially, Hubbard seems to have been totally unaware of the deviation betwixt radioactive substances and radiation itself. (Meet role 2 of this review for more on this topic.)
After around 20 pages of dire warnings about the effect of drugs, the moving picture volume turns to the New Life Detoxification Program itself. It describes the various stages of the program, starting with the medical tests. The diction is taken from Clear Body Clear Mind simply with some changes. Whereas Hubbard warns in that book that "Anyone with a weak heart or who is anemic or who suffers from certain kidney conditions should non exercise this plan", the Narconon moving picture book warns that information technology "should not be undertaken past anyone who has a weak heart or is anemic". Kidney problems are mentioned later, however; people with such issues would practice "a much lighter program ... worked out with a medical doctor". That doctor volition invariably be a Scientologist - a fact which in itself poses risks, given the demonstrable willingness of Scientologist doctors to put Hubbard's claims above their own medical grooming or, indeed, the whole of medical science.
Success Stories
There are other concealed connections between the Purification Rundown and the New Life Detoxification Program. Many of the pages in the motion-picture show volume have "success stories" at the pes of each folio. Although they are presented as if they originated from the New Life Detoxification Programme, several are in fact from the explicitly religious Purification Rundown just have been heavily edited to hibernate this fact - some have effectively been rewritten, with new words and even whole sentences added. Compare, for instance, the following "success stories" which appear in Clear Body Articulate Mind and the New Life Detoxification Programme picture book . The missing words have been highlighted in cerise:
| Clear Body Articulate Mind (Scientology) | New Life Detoxification Program Picture Book (Narconon) |
| Prior to starting the Purification program, I had a history of moderately heavy radiations exposure. This consisted of long periods of sun exposure through babyhood and college and frequent 10-ray exposure from working effectually X-ray machines with patients for some seven-odd years. I had no physical problems or complaints upon starting the Purification program. My drug history had been very low-cal. | Prior to starting the programme, I had a history of moderately heavy radiations exposure. This consisted of long periods of sunday exposure though childhood and higher and frequent Ten-ray exposure from working around X-ray machines with patients for some seven-odd years. |
| During the plan I had several episodes of extreme flush, splotchy rashes accompanied past nausea and a very solid, wooden feeling. At times, in that location was an electrical kind of discharge from the trunk especially to the arms and easily. Interesting enough, afterwards the plan I realized several low-grade somatics that I previously had ignored were gone. Pocket-size things, like occasionally unexplained nausea or balmy aches in the muscles and joints. Consequently some attention is freed from the trunk and the above somatics have non particularly reoccurred in the two years since finishing the program. From my viewpoint as a physician, this raises several questions on what furnishings low-grade radiation of dissimilar types over a lifetime can take on a being or his torso - probably more pregnant than is currently recognized. GD. | During the plan I had several episodes of extreme flush, splotchy rashes accompanied by nausea and a very solid, wooden feeling. From my viewpoint as a physician, this raises several questions on what effects low-grade radiation of different types over a lifetime tin can take on a beingness or on his body - probably more significant than is currently recognized. - M.D. |
| Prior to the Purification program something was incorrect. Objectively, I was acting analytically only from time to time subjectively I would experience psychosis and neurosis in specific areas of my life which tended to hamper me as a being. I am an ex-Marine who had fought in the Vietnam War from 1968 to 1969. | In the Vietnam State of war, |
| Likewise the abiding fighting, I also was exposed to deadly poisonous gases and toxins, especially Agent Orange and some sort of nerve gas, while in the service and in the Vietnam War. Through the Purification program these toxins were fully flushed out. They had actually prevented me from thinking straight and logically inhibited my perceptions and control of my body. Male child, was I ever in for a surprise during the programme and after completion! | I was exposed to mortiferous poisonous gases and toxins, particularly Agent Orangish and some sort of nerve gas. They inhibited my perceptions and command of my torso. |
| I literally erased an incident which had me stuck on "the track," dramatizing it in nowadays time, that I wasn't enlightened of. I had considered my environment dangerous - I hateful actually dangerous as information technology was in the jungles of Due south Vietnam. But would you believe that I was still "in" South Vietnam though I left it in 1969? I was fully brought out of information technology as well as oriented to my present environment by the Purification program. It really undercuts everything. I mean, these were such very simple actions to do only powerful insofar as the results and gains I had. Both objectively and subjectively, the Purification plan has changed my life, my physical well-being and my mental attitude towards a much amend being of survival. I no longer take to look over my shoulder for "the enemy" (which wasn't in that location) or walk carefully through any grassy areas (looking for country mines which don't exist) so that I tin five some other day. It has opened a door for me - a door through which I can experience life. My physical being is much better insofar as its coloration and pigment. Many other people accept commented on how good for you I look I experience healthy and I am enlightened that I am in command of my torso which had been hampered prior to the Purification plan past those toxins, especially Agent Orange. As a Vietnam vet, I can say that life is definitely worthwhile to experience and create. There is hope for those Vietnam vets who are still in the Vietnam State of war syndrome after being out of the war. WB. | From so on I considered my surroundings unsafe. On the program I was brought out of that. These toxins and gases were fully flushed out. I feel healthy and in control of my torso. Now life is definitely worthwhile to feel and create. I can say that there is hope for Vietnam Vets. - W.B. |
| This has been a truly fantastic program. I had many and diverse diseases, maladies, aches and pains and symptoms turn on and disappear, and I am grateful to feel physically sound and able to take intendance of a torso. Only I recollect the almost spectacular gains were not concrete. I feel brighter, more enthusiastic well-nigh life. My memory has improved. I don't feel confused or jumbled up. I'm sure I will exist able to study better, too. B.Yard | This has been a truly fantastic program. I had many and diverse maladies, pains, aches and symptoms plough on and then disappear. But the most spectacular gains were non physical. My memory has improved. I feel brighter, more enthusiastic about life. - B.G. |
The systematic nature of these changes is worth noting. In every case, there is no indication that the success stories actually chronicle to the Purification Rundown rather than the Narconon programme. The first success story (which, although this isn't declared anywhere, is actually from Dr. Gene Denk, who wrote the introduction to the picture volume) redacts whatsoever mention of the Purification programme, "electrical discharges" or "somatics" - the latter is a neologism coined by Hubbard which ways concrete symptoms.
The 2d success story similarly redacts mentions of the Purification program only also omits the explicitly Scientological details given in the original account. Its author mentions "the runway" - short for "time track", a fundamental concept in Scientology. As the Scientology website describes it, the "time rails" is a consecutive tape of "mental image pictures" from this and past lives, which "could be likened to a movement-picture motion picture, if that film were 3-dimensional, had 50-vii perceptions and could fully react upon the observer." ["A Clarification of Scientology: Survival and the Heed" - <http://www.whatisscientology.org/Html/part02/chp04/pg0145.html>] Information technology is a concept which is exclusive to Scientology and has no discernable scientific basis whatsoever.
The third success story doesn't mention the Purification program in either version, just the Narconon version makes a very meaning redaction - the writer's claim that "diseases" were "run out" is deleted, as are the claims that the programme has enabled him or her to "feel physically sound". This presumably is incompatible with the book's opening disclaimer that "it is not professed every bit a physical treatment for bodies nor is any claim made to that consequence".
A notable oddity is that the author of 1 success story declares that he has gained great benefits from doing the programme even though he was "without a drug history" and then "expected to proceeds little from the program". As Narconon is by definition - fifty-fifty downward to its very proper noun - a drug detoxification programme, why are people who are not drug abusers undergoing the programme?
Sweating out the toxins
Most of the 2nd half of the picture book is dedicated to the centrepiece of Hubbard'southward detoxification programme - the lengthy sauna sessions which are supposed to make deposits of toxic residues come out of the trunk in sweat. This, all the same, is a fundamentally unproven proposition (come across "Hubbard'southward Junk Scientific discipline - Flushing Out Toxins"). The sheer length of the sauna sessions - anything upwardly to 10 times longer than the recommended safe maximum - too poses serious risks. Hubbard advises those undergoing the course to take huge quantities of vitamins, which poses severe health risks including liver harm. (see "Dangerous Detoxification" for more on the risks posed by the sauna and vitamin overdoses.)
The motion-picture show book does not mention whatsoever of the associated risks, but it does include a rather worrying series of pictures (correct) of people suffering hurting and distress as a effect of taking niacin overdoses. Hubbard'southward text claims that these are "just the results of niacin interacting with niacin deficiencies which already exist in the cellular structure". This is totally wrong and amounts to little more than gibberish: niacin actually has the event of stimulating the release of histamine from skin cells, producing the same kind of reddening and itchiness equally seen in rashes and allergies. As the torso'due south supplies of histamine are wearied, the intensity of the reaction diminishes. There is no sign from Hubbard's writings that he knew about histamine release, even though it was a well-established medical fact when he came up with his theories on niacin and radiation.
This highlights another potential run a risk of Narconon's basis in Scientology. Those who administrate the therapy are invariably either Scientologists or ex-clients of Narconon (and often both), and are trained to have absolute faith in Hubbard'south claims. Indeed, the "integrity of Source" - as Hubbard is known by Scientologists - is a fundamental dogma of Scientology. When applied to the medical matters of which he so plain had petty understanding, it is a potentially disastrous dogma; if in that location is a clash betwixt medical science (which says that niacin overdoses and very long sauna sessions are dangerous) and Hubbard (who says they aren't), then "Source" will automatically win the argument - even if he is provably wrong.
Some other illustration of Hubbard's ignorance of biochemistry (and for that matter, anatomy) is provided on the post-obit folio. A rough diagram (left) shows niacin supposedly "breaking up and unleashing" drug and chemic deposits, including the non-existent LSD crystals, within the tissue in a subject area's arm. This, non for the start time, shows Hubbard's lack of knowledge of biochemistry. If one did want to stimulate the release of fatty into the bloodstream, niacin is useless for the task - every bit an antilipidemic agent, it actually blocks the release of fat. Moreover, the diagram shows the arm every bit existence effectively a homogenous tube of flesh. Of course, it isn't; like any limb, information technology is a complex arrangement of skin, veins, fatty tissue, muscle and bone, each element of which behaves in singled-out means biochemically. Some radioactive contaminants, for example, will bind themselves to muscles and bones; niacin, even if it could mobilise fat, would practise null to affect the other components of the arm.
Narconon clients are required to drinkable oil (actually a mixture of four oils - soy, walnut, peanut and safflower - which must sense of taste every bit foul as it sounds) in pursuit of another failed theory of Hubbard's. He states that "some oil is taken every day to encourage the body to surrender its bad, drug-laden fat in substitution for the expert oil", alongside a diagram of a blackened lump of fat being replaced in a prison cell by a clean white piece. In fact, oil is not required at all to make fat; information technology can be synthesised perfectly well from carbohydrates, and Hubbard'south theory has (according to Dr. Mark Palmer) "no documentation or basis in fact".
Over the next couple of pages, Hubbard recommends a gruesome batter dubbed "Cal-Mag", a mixture of vegetable oil, vinegar, calcium, and magnesium which he claims to have developed in 1973. Its aim is supposedly to "handle and prevent deficiencies", "aid rebuild cellular construction", "keep the nerved smoothed out" and "help prevent sore muscles". In fact, Cal-Mag was the invention in 1954 of Adelle Davis, in a book entitled Let's Eat Right To Go along Fit which has equitably caused a degree of notoriety for its numerous scientific errors (on average, about one per folio). Davis was a hugely successful "food faddist" who claimed to be able to stave off cancer by drinking big quantities of calcium-rich milk; fate showed its sense of morbid humor when she died of cancer in 1974. (See the first-class Quackwatch website for a summary of Davis' dubious legacy - <http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/davis.html>). Hubbard was certainly well aware of her - in HCO Bulletin of 7 March 1980, "Diets, Comments Upon", he declared that "The near useful published, popular compilations on the subject of diets and biochemistry to date were done by the late Adelle Davis in her four books: "Let's Get Well", "Let's Eat Correct To Keep Fit", "Allow'south Cook Information technology Right" and "Let's Have Salubrious Children"." Perhaps one should not be surprised to notice one pseudoscientist citing another.
The remaining dozen pages of the drawing section of the picture book are devoted to the supposed "miraculous cures" obtainable through the Narconon/Scientology detoxification programme. Information technology is worded in a near curious style, following the model used by Hubbard in Clear Body Clear Listen. The claims made are remarkable - that radiation, nuclear fallout and fifty-fifty Amanuensis Orange can be sweated out of the body. However, the claims are merely "reported" past Hubbard rather than stated outright. (This assumes that Hubbard did not simply make up the "reports".) Each "written report" is supported by a "success story" which describes the anonymous author'due south delight to accept overcome the effects of drug/radiation/toxin exposure. It is never really said that the plan will cure a specific problem (including drug addiction); every account is along the lines of "it has cured my problem". This careful use of tenses - statements of past efficacy rather than promises of hereafter cures - is no doubt prompted past Scientology'due south legal problems post-obit its promotion in the 1950s of cures for radiation poisoning, which brought downward the wrath of the U.S. Food and Drugs Administration. Whether the current approach would stand upwardly to determined legal scrutiny is anyone'south approximate; in that location may be no explicit promise of a miracle cure, simply Narconon/Scientology pushes implication to the limits - there certainly is not much ambivalence about what is being offered.
Role 2 - "Proofing the torso" >
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Source: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Narconon/detoxbookpt1.htm
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