"Quackery" during tragic California fires provide "nothing" to desperate victims, says doctor

A News Summary 2007
By Rick Ross

Fires in California during 2003 drew some strange support to help victims, including one group called the "Gentle Wind Project" (GWP) that handed out so-called "healing instruments" and claimed that somehow laminated plastic cards were capable of easing stress, reducing trauma and providing "emotional strength," reported the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Supposedly free GWP actually has a "suggested donation" list for its products ranging from $250 to $350 for the cards, to $560 for a "healing puck" and as much as $8,600 for something called a "healing bar."

GWP founders claim that their "instruments" are made through "telepathic impressions in the form of engineering blueprints" from "a place outside of this Earth and its astral system."

One GWP distributor Nathan Kaufman, a 70-year-old alcoholic, told the San Diego Union-Tribune the instruments have helped him.

Kaufman offered an anecdotal testimonial about how the cards changed his life and helped him to give up drinking.

Kaufman admitted that there was no noticeable effect holding the cards, but said something supposedly happened the next day.

Another GWP fan Don Loshenkohl actually managed to get space at a resource center, where he encouraged fire victims to hold the plastic cards for five minutes.

After being asked to leave the center Kaufman and Loshenkohl, who are referred to as GWP "instrument keepers" took their show on the road, making stops at other locations where they could influence fire victims to use GWP products.

However, health experts dismissed GWP claims as nothing more than "quackery" and said the group was exploiting people.

"I think this is how most quackery happens," said Dr. Robert Baratz, president of the National Council Against Health Fraud.

"They find people who are desperate and ingratiate themselves to these people and then take advantage of them," he said.

GWP began in Kittery, Maine around 1983 and Mary Miller, is its co-director. Miller claimed that her group has 12,000 "instrument keepers" in the US, including hundreds in California.

But Miller could offer no meaningful explanation to the newspaper about how her "instruments" work.

"The way they work is extremely complex and cannot be understood by anyone in humanity at this time," says GWP's Web site.

"Remember," the site goes on, "most people have no idea where their electricity comes from, how their radios, televisions, or satellite GPS systems work, let alone the complexity of high-frequency temporal shifting matrixed with millions of pre-defined etheric modifications operating in a vertically and horizontally oriented polarization."

"Gobbledygook," is how Baratz interpreted this apparent apology for a lack of any meaningful scientific evidence.

"It's classic nonsense. High-sounding phrases that mean nothing," the doctor added.

Baratz also questioned how the group's grandiose claims about its products could be tested.

He concluded, "If no one can understand how it works, how can it be tested"?

Note: This news summary is based upon an article originally published by the San Diego Union-Tribune titled "Healing cards offered to victims" by Elizabeth Fitzsimons December 11, 2003