Speaking of crackpots ...

New Zealand has 'em, too: faith healers have opened a faith-healing clinic in (the very appropriately-named city of) Christchurch, and now basically act as a drive-through service for sick people of all types and variations:

A Christian faith-healing clinic has opened in Christchurch offering to cure cancer, broken bones and mental illness through prayer.

The New Zealand Healing Rooms clinic in Worcester St, Linwood, is set up like a doctor's surgery, with a waiting room leading to treatment rooms, where two pastors and divine-healing technicians pray for patients.

Pastor Marie Rea said they used "aggressive" prayer techniques based on the teachings of Canadian evangelist John Lake.

"It's a place where Jesus is the healer," she said.

Patients were not charged and were counselled to not stop regular medical treatment.

So, let me see if I get this straight: patients with anything from exploded eyeballs to sore nuts pass through the faith-"healing" clinic, spend all of 20 minutes there, don't pay a cent, and are specifically told not to stop using conventional medicine to treat their woes?

Seems like one heck of an exercise in futility to me.

But then, you just can't fight against this sort of track record:

Rea said patients with problems as diverse as stroke paralysis, cancer or dyslexia were cured, usually within one 20-minute session.

... Unless you're the (former) dean of medicine in New Zealand with a taste for actual medicine:

GP and former New Zealand Medical Council chairwoman Pippa MacKay said the claims about curing cancer were "mischievous".

"To imply that that kind of quackery is as good or better than medical science is dangerous. How can they claim that? How many controlled trials have they done?"

McKay said the group would give people "the wrong kind of hope".

The false kind, I presume.

(via Pharyngula)