#1281: Jin Young, Niki Han Schwarz & Charles Schwarz

At Daengki Spa in Koreatown, LA, you can get a 45-minute V-Herbal Therapy for $20 per, well, squat. The steam includes a mixture of herbs imported from Korea by spa manager Jin Young, and according to the spa’s website the treatment will “rid the body of toxins” and help women with menstrual cramps, bladder infections, kidney problems and fertility issues. “It is a traditional Korean health remedy,” according to their website, which may be true, but the toxins it is supposed to purge don’t exist, and the treatment has no health benefits whatsoever.

So what, precisely, is V-Herbal Therapy? V-Herbal Therapies, or chai-yok, are vaginal steam baths, and according to the shit that falls out of the mouths of Young and his associates it will reduce stress, fight infections, clear hemorrhoids, regulate menstrual cycles and aid infertility, among many other health benefits. It is magic woo, and it is supported by all the appeals to ancient Eastern wisdom you can imagine.

It’s not the only place in Southern California where you can experience this particular kind of woo. The Tikkun Holistic Spa in Santa Monica, run by Niki Han Schwarz and her husband Charles, offers a 30-minute V-Steam treatment for $50 – and they offer an identical treatment for men. According entirely to Niki herself, the treatment worked for her.

It has received the endorsed for instance of Tae-Cheong Choo, who teaches at Samra University of Oriental Medicine in LA. Samra University is, needless to say, not a learning institution. According to Choo, the treatment is effective for gynecological problems and infertility. Choo cites no evidence to back up that claim.

Diagnosis: It is hard to believe that these people are acting in good faith, and the treatment they endorse is based on delusions and bullshit, through and through. And no, it isn’t just innocent stupidity. The people in question are part of a large horde of shitheads who make a living out of preying on the stupid, gullible or desperate. Shame.

#1280: D. Gary Young

Donald Gary Young is a self-styled naturopath known in particular for his promotion of essential oils (also here) and his Raindrop Therapy. These are promoted for instance through his multi-level marketing company Young Living Essential Oils, and formerly his Young Life Research Clinic Institute of Natural Medicine. We have been unable to verify any background Young may have in anything having to do with medicine (he claims an MA from Bernadean University, a notorious diploma mill, and once claimed to be a graduate of “The American Institute of Physioregenerology,” which was denied by the Institute), but he has been in trouble several times for practicing without a license, and the claims he makes about medicine are, shall we say, unsubstantiated by anything but nebulous anecdotes. In fact, even some of the anecdotes are questionable – Young claims to have cured himself of paralysis with fasting and essential oils, though a brochure from 1987 attributed his recovery to “Oscillation Frequency Stimulation Infusion (O.F.S.I.)” Still woo, but not essential oils.

Young’s background in the field of altmed is a sordid affair, and is described in detail here (yes, Young is a mainstay at Quackwatch). In particular, Young used to run the Rosarita Beach Clinic in Mexico in the 1980s, with a sister clinic in California, where he offered treatment of cancer and other serious diseases, offering “the most comprehensive treatment program in alternative medicine,” including chelation, lymphatic massage, acupuncture, color and magnetic therapies, “bioelectrical medicine,” homeopathic remedies, and a vegetarian nutrition program. The clinic also offered iridology, live cell analysis, and “blood crystallization,” which he claimed could detect degenerative diseases five to eight years before they caused symptoms. Of course, those pesky skeptics and the police soon discovered that the tests always detected variations on the same kinds of ailments, and were always followed with recommendations for expensive treatments coincidentally offered by Young. Indeed, the diagnoses and recommendations were the same regardless of whether they submitted their own blood, healthy cat’s blood or chicken blood – given the difference between human blood cells and chicken blood cells it is doubtful that Young even looked at the blood, and if he did, that he had any idea what he should be looking for. Suffice to say, his advertising ended up causing him further legal trouble. And that was just the beginning. The story of Young’s unsupported claims and problems with the law is a long one.

His Young Living Essential Oils was started with his third wife (Mary Billeter Young) in Utah in 1992, with the Quack Miranda prominently displayed (the FDA seems to keep an eye on him). Ridiculous claims nevertheless abound, and despite the lack of evidence for essential oils as a healing remedy, Young tries – in addition to offering testimonials – to suggest that the supposed Egyptian and biblical use of essential oils is somehow evidence of their medicinal effectiveness. (Some of the ridiculous claims are summed up in his book Aromatherapy: The Essential Beginning.)

You can read the story of his Young Life Research Clinic Institute of Natural Medicine here. The medical staff at the clinic did in fact include board certified physicians (one Roger Belden Lewis), but also people like Sherman Johnson, who is described here. At the clinic Young offered the same range of bullshit he had earlier offered in Mexico, though the clinic disappeared in 2005 following several legal complaints. The company’s website described the clinic as moving to Ecuador, since that country’s “constitution promotes and supports natural and traditional medicine.” Right.

Still, Young is perhaps most famous for his raindrop therapy, a technique he invented (he claims to have received instructions from a Lakota medicine man, but since the person in question has denied any involvement we’ll keep his name out of it) and which involves dropping essential oils, some undiluted, along the spine and feet and massaging gently to “bring structural and electrical alignment.” He could as well has called it “balancing prana”, for that’s precisely what it is (no, “electrical alignment” makes no sense; indeed, Young seems to use “electrical field” and “etheric field” rather interchangeably). And according to Young, however, has claimed that RDT could effectively treat scoliosis by affecting toxins and viruses, which according to Young (falsely) is what causes scoliosis. Young’s own essential oils are a potential cause of toxic effects, however.

Diagnosis: Either Young has great powers in the department of self-delusion, or he is aware that the claims made on behalf of his products are, shall we say, flimsy. In any case, Young is something of a threat to human flourishing and well-being, and should be avoided. 

#1279: David Yerushalmi

David Yerushalmi is a lawyer and a political activist, and a driving force behind the anti-sharia movement in the United States – which already means that you have to be pretty thoroughly delusional. He is co-founder and Senior Counsel of the American Freedom Law Center (with Robert Muise), touted as “the first truly authentic Judeo-Christian public interest law firm” whose mission is “to fight for faith and freedom by advancing and defending America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and moral foundation through litigation, education, and public policy program,” and General Counsel to the Center for Security Policy, a think tank founded by Frank Gaffney. He is also the principal drafter of the American Laws for American Courts model legislation, an effort to prevent courts from taking foreign or international law into account; the legislation is in particular aimed at banning sharia, and has indeed been enacted into law in several states including Louisiana, Tennessee, Arizona, Kansas, and Oklahoma. As the American Bar Association, who generally opposes such measures, puts it, such legislation is “duplicative of safeguards that are already enshrined in federal and state law,” and rather obviously aimed at “stigmatiz[ing] an entire religious community.” Of course, some orthodox Jewish groups have been worried about such measures, since it would also outlaw halachah. According to Yerushalmi, however, that’s different, apparently primarily since shariah is Muslim and halachah is not.

More insidiously, Yerushalmi is the founder of SANE, the Society of Americans for National Existence, which has suggested, among other things, that:

- It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Islam.

- The Congress of the United States of America shall declare the US at war with the Muslim Nation or Umma.

- The President of the United States of America shall immediately declare that all non-US citizen Muslims are Alien Enemies under Chapter 3 of Title 50 of the US Code and shall be subject to immediate deportation.

- No Muslim shall be granted an entry visa into the United States of America.

So, according to Yerushalmi the “War on Terror” should be a war on Islam “and all Muslim faithful,” and the measures just mentioned would outlaw Islam and deporting Muslims and other “non-Western, non-Christian” people with the goal of protecting the United States’ “national character.” Given his own Jewish background I suppose he might have heard a thing or two about the efficacy of introducing such measures.

Yerushalmi is also very much opposed to a politically correct culture that prevents him from questioning why “the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote.” Indeed, “There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote. You might not agree or like the idea but this country’s founders, otherwise held in the highest esteem for their understanding of human nature and its affect on political society, certainly took it seriously. Why is that? Were they so flawed in their political reckonings that they manhandled the most important aspect of a free society – the vote? If the vote counts for so much in a free and liberal democracy as we ‘know’ it today, why did they limit the vote so dramatically?” Indeed. He has also called black people “the most murderous of peoples.”

But Yerushalmi is also your standard wingnut across the board, and has not been exclusively occupied with his paranoid anti-Islam delusions and racism. In 2010, Yerushalmi and Muise filed the first federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, complaining about the “government’s takeover of the healthcare industry.” When they lost they, predictably subscribing to the rightwing myth of “activist judges,” described the judges as having made “a political decision.”

Diagnosis: Pretty close to being a standard white supremacist. A lot of people seem nevertheless more than willing to listen to him. A scary fellow.

#1278: Paul Yanick

Paul Yanick Jr. is the president of the American Academy of Quantum Medicine (AAQM), which is said to “promote the study of the bioelectrical and bioresonance systems and subsystems in the human body with the purpose of correlating appropriate therapeutic protocols that promote the human body’s own self-healing and self regeneration capacities.” In other words, no. No address is registered for the AAQM, except that it’s a “Nevada, tax exempt organization”. The organization is discussed here.

Another website presents Yanick as “an expert in the emerging [i.e. imaginary] field of Quantum Medicine, with over thirty years of extensive clinical experience.” He is also “a board-certified naturopath,” and a “CNC”, which stands for “Certified Nutritional Consultant,” a worthless crackpot certification issued by the American Association of Nutrition Consultants (described in some detail here). Indeed, he is also a “C.Q.M.,” which seems to mean “certified in quantum medicine,” and is probably issued by himself.

So what is quantum medicine supposed to be? According to Yanick’s book, Quantum Medicine, he “has brought together multidisciplinary research with the insights of quantum physics [i.e. mixed quantum physics, of which he shows no evidence of having the faintest understanding, with woo and quasi-theological musings] to show that the human body is controlled and regulated by the human energy system,” i.e. chi. According to naturopath Stephen Linsteadt, “[t]he quantum level possesses the highest level of coherence within the human organism [try to explain what that could possibly mean]. Sick individuals with weak immune systems or cancer have poor and chaotic coherence [ditto] with disturbed biophoton cellular communication. Therefore, disease can be seen as the result of disturbances on the cellular level that act to distort the cell’s quantum perspective [a metaphor; do you wanna bet whether it’s cashed out?]. This causes electrons to become misplaced [unexplained] in protein molecules and metabolic processes become derailed [not further explained] as a result.” Accordingly, the “quantum naturopath recognizes that quantum coherence provides the fundamental resonance communication system of the body,” though as the claim is not even close to being meaningful it is unclear what they are said to recognize. Nevertheless, all “quantum naturopathic therapies must, therefore, be aimed at re-establishing cellular resonance. Quantum naturopaths are experts in bio-energetic nutrition with an emphasis on providing adequate defenses for free radical damage and re-establishing the body’s bio-electric communication system by detoxifying the connective tissue matrix.” And that is probably among the most densely concentrated bullshit we have ever read. But the upshot is that “quantum medicine” practitioners have invented a nonexistent “energy system” to peddle products and procedures to their clients.

Among such products are Quantum Energy Foods, which are said to “provide the body with a synergistic array of thousands of known and unknown antioxidants, nutrients and powerful nutraceutical compounds that keep the body healthy against the ill effects of today’s high levels of pollution and stress” and the products of NutraSpectrum, a dietary supplement manufacturer (not, apparently, the current owner of that website) whose “quantum nutrition products” allegedly “integrate Oriental medicine, Ayurveda, homeopathy, European and native American herbology, naturopathic medicine, and the latest advances of quantum physics and nutritional biochemistry.”

Diagnosis: Hard to believe Yanick’s just a loon, but there is some reason to think he actually believes most of the hogwash he peddles. His claims on behalf of his products and services are at least characterizied by their low count of claims that counts even as being meaningful – words borrowed from science are strung together in apparently arbitrary order.

#1277: Mary Nell Wyatt, Betty Rhodes et al.

Mary Nell Wyatt (I think). Couldn't
find a picture of Rhodes (we doubt that
she is related to the late actress).

But of course. Combining “Biblical history” with “alternative” New Age pseudo-egyptology must have been just irresistible to people of a certain mindset, and the present entry concerns pseudo-archaelogy fans who try to argue that the Joseph of the Old Testament (whose stay in Egypt or even existence has of course not been even remotely suggested by any other source than the Old Testament) was Imhotep, the Vizier of the 3rd Dynasty Pharao. The kinds of hoops these pseudo-scholars have to jump through to back up their claims, and the kinds of inconsistencies they have to try to overlook, are as stunning as anything in New Age pseudo-history. The claims are extensively discussed here, and include Betty Rhodes’s meaningless and misguided musings about etymology and Mary Nell Wyatt’s attempt to reinterpret the significance of aerial photos of ancient Egyptian constructions. At least Wyatt tries, feebly enough, to make the chronology add up, which it doesn’t.

Mary Nell Wyatt is, apparently, the widow of legendary fundamentalist and Indiana Jones wannabe Ron Wyatt, and has written extensively in defense of the insane claims made by her late husband as well as continuing Ron’s quixotic quest to identify (mostly by pareidolia, motivated reasoning and outright lies) archaeological evidence for the literal truth of the Bible (as discussed e.g. here). Some of her “discoveries” are published in her book The Boat-Shaped Object

on Doomsday Mountain, which indeed concerns the Noah’s Ark that her husband discovered. Her Joseph/Imhotep claims are here (ArkDiscovery is a gloriously insane website run by Wyatt fan Kevin Fisher).

Betty Rhodes seems, apart from the penchant for ridiculous pseudo-archaeology, to share little else with Mary Wyatt. Rhodes seems – though information is a bit hard to locate – to be coming to pseudoarchaeology from, shall we say, an “astrological point of view.” Her “research” articles can be found here.

Diagnosis: Whatever motivates them these people are as unattached to any feature of reality as it is possible to be while having any reasonable chance of surviving everyday life. They are probably rather harmless to most people other than themselves – Ron Wyatt still has some fans, I suppose, but he’ll hardly recruit any who weren’t irretrievably lost to reality or reason already.