#355: C. Norman Shealy

There are reasons to regret excluding non-American loons from this Encyclopedia, especially when it turns out that someone like Roger Shawyer, the guy behind EmDrive, is British as well.

Fortunately there is no dearth of American crazies, and C. Norman Shealy is certainly behind some serious dingbattery. Shealy is apparently a Harvard-schooled MD, neurosurgeon and alternative medicine practitioner (not through Harvard, one presumes), and quite an authority in this murky quagmire of a pseudofield. He was one of the founders of the American Holistic Medical Association, the paragon umbrella organization of all things quackery, and is associated with the unaccredited “Holos University” (he was a mentor for, among others, Dawson Church and Charles Bates).

“Endorsed by C. Norman Shealy” is actually a pretty standard stamp of approval for woo-peddlers and should, to those who think claims medical should at least tangentially be related to reality, equal “endorsed by Joe Mercola.” For instance, Shealy (with Daniel Redwood) wrote that T. Colin & Thomas Campbell’s “The China Study” is different from most other popular nutrition books by offering strong evidence-based explanations for its claims (it isn’t). He also endorsed Michael Ledwith & Klaus Heinemann’s “The Orb Project” by pointing out that “Orbs may be to the atmosphere what crop circles are to the earth. Having seen orbs and had them photographed while I am speaking, it is great to know that we are receiving cosmic energetic communication.” He may be right that orbs may be to the atmosphere what crop circles are to the earth, but not in the way he would like. And he endorsed Stephen Co & Eric Robins’s “Your hands can heal you” (“eighty-five percent of illnesses are not optimally treatable with drugs or surgery. For those individuals, ‘Your Hands Can Heal You’ offers one of the best self-healing approaches I have seen”). And of course he endorsed Quantum Touch (“Quantum-Touch appears to be the first technique that may truly allow us all to become healers,” though it’s certainly not the first or last time that claim has been made).

Shealy is, apparently, a prolific speaker and author of bullcrap such as “Aids: Passageway to Transformation,” and “The Creation of Health: The Emotional, Psychological, and Spiritual Responses that Promote Health and Healing”, both coauthored with none other than Caroline Myss, and he is a leading authority in, yes, the “Quantum Healing Paradigm”. His most famous books, however, are probably “Life beyond 100 - Secrets of the Fountain of Youth”, using success formula such as “if you didn’t succeed you didn’t want it hard enough” and … “Your hands can heal you”.

Diagnosis: Remarkably versatile, prolific and respected crackpot, madman and woo-meister. Shealy wields a lot of power to ruin people’s lives and does not hesitate to use them. Extremely dangerous.