MEDICAL AFFAIR ON SCIENTOLOGY BASES

 Article en français (ici)

 

Tribune de Genève,

April 1998, Jean Noël CUENOD

 

The practician admits having followed some courses taught by the cult but denies his membership and contests all the accusations done against him

 

A Geneve's MD has been incriminated last tuesday for homicide by neglect and exposition to risk by the Juge d'Instruction Claude Wenger. The judge confirms this information and does not want to comment it.

This incrimination comes from a complaint deposed by the two daughters of a patient dead of cancer on Déc 17, 1995. The GFPI, the Group for the Protection of Family and Individual, managed by François Lavergnat had further denounced the facts to the General Prosecutor who therefore opened a criminal inquiry.

 

This patient was a member of the Church of Scientology having followed courses in the same cult/sect. For the first period, from mid-94 to December 94, the patient had received ambulatory cure from the MD, for abdominal aches, between others. On January 2, 1995, she was sent urgently to the Canton's Hospital where an ovary's cancer was diagnozed. She gets a chemotherapeutic, goes better, then refuses to continue her cure and leaves the hospital in June, 1995. She comes back a bit later to her MD who prescribes her, between else, an alternate cure base on homeopathy.

 

AN EXPERTISE ACCUSES THE MD

 

On 1st Dec, 1995, the patient is gotten back urgently to the cantonal Hospital, her cancer expanding extremely fast. She dies there seventeen days later.

 

The Judge ordered a medical expertise, whose conclusions accuse the MD without doubt. The Expert  observes  between else that his collegue lacked of professional consciousness for the first part of the treatment since he did not ordered the necessary tests. But worse, the medical expert is thinking that  the MD has profited of his Scientology membership  to influence his  patient to inhibit her to continue the anti-cancer cure prescribed in the hospital.

 

The MD's attorney, facing those serious accusations, speaks of  "witch's suit": "My client denies totally his inculpation. First he's not a scientologist. He certainly followed some courses proposed by that church but he refused some others. He therefore ceased to get them. On a medical plan, the patient was a medical nurse and was therefore conscious of her state. It was she who insisted not to receive a chemo cure. The MD only obeyed the clearly exposed wills of his patient."

 

Counsellor for the litigants, Attorney Robert Assaël describes the pain of the two daughters of the patient: "They are abated by this MD's attitude whose many indicators show he was really a scientology member during the cure. It's dismaying to observe that he did not order the capital tests who could have allowed the correct cancer's diagnoze and would have helped to cure the patient. Further, the medical expertise exposed the fact that his treatments were fantastically unfit, with - between else - cloves, extracts of absinth, and black nuts skins !"

 

SCIENTOLOGY IS NOT A CHURCH

 

The Instruction judge has ordered searches. Some pieces related to scientology have been seized. The cult protested against that, speaking of "ecclesiastical secret". The magistrate refused, underlining that scien- tology had not the church's characters according to the usual sense. No recourse have been undertaken against that decision.

 

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Genève : affaire médicale sur fond de scientologie (french article)

 

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