Adrian Pengelly, Psychic Healer, and English Libel Laws
It cannot be a good week for Adrian Pengelly. He has been subject to quite a damning BBC Watchdog investigation about his business activities. Adrian claims to be a “Visionary Healer, Energy Worker, Teacher and Psychic” and declares that he is well known for his “work with terminal illnesses and cancer”.
If a so called ‘Psychic Healer’ is giving some sort of emotional or spiritual support to ill people then we might leave people to get on with their lives. However, Watchdog showed Adrian Pengelly claiming to be able to diagnose and treat horses, cure cancers and even deal with haunted houses. I understand that at least the former two are illegal. When filmed secretly, Pengelly claimed to be able to cure sixty five per cent of terminal cancers. When an actor* woman secretly filming asked him about his success rate he not only made such claims but also, shockingly, said that his success rate would be higher if the person was not taking chemotherapy.
Giving people false hope is bad enough, suggested they decline what might be their only hope is truly terrible. Adrian charges £30 and claims to see up to 120 customers per week.
When confronted by an interviewer, Pengelly appeared to change course and claim that he never promised to cure people. He made excuses about his failure to diagnose a horse despite claiming a 99/100 success rate. He also managed to assemble quite a crowd of people claiming to support his activities.
It would be very easy to dismiss Pengelly as a charlatan and fraudster. Indeed, the usual ‘stars’ on BBC Watchdog can be described as nothing other, being cowboy builders, rogue holiday companies and identity thieves. Indeed, the BBC list Pengelly under their list of scams. However, in my opinion, this simplistic description of Pengelly’s actions is almost certainly wrong.
Adrian Pengelly would appear to believe passionately in what he does. Merely being shocked by what he does and exposing it on television will not change his beliefs. Of course, it would look as if he does make himself vulnerable to a few pieces of legislation if someone wanted to prosecute. But again, he may well continue whilst ensuring what he says does not fall foul of the law.
Of course, if there were critical articles on the web then people could evaluate his claims with a bit more balance, but the web appears to be rather devoid of mentions. One clue is in a rather credulous Daily Mail interview that suggests Adrian will be taking legal action against the BBC. I can understand this action. If Pengelly really does believe he is a Psychic Cancer Healer then he may very well feel aggrieved and want to take any action possible to remedy the perceived wrong.
I also understand that it would not be the first time that Pengelly has resorted to legal action against criticism. The web site Bad Psychics have written a number of articles about Pengelly. One of their writers let me know about one of their article last April. It is no longer available on the site. In total four articles were on the site. All gone. I am told that Pengelly’s lawyers have been on to the site and I have been warned that if I write about him, they may well be on to me too.
This is dreadful. Adrian, if you are reading I would like to say a few things to you,
Adrian,
From what I can see you genuinely believe that you can help people with cancer. The people that meet you may well gain the impression that you can help where their doctors cannot. They may well even go away believing that their rather unpleasant chemotherapy will interfere with your ‘gifts’.
This is serious stuff. People’s lives are on the line here. As you might gather, other people seriously doubt you can have any effect on the course of cancerous illnesses. If you are wrong then you will be doing a great harm – a very big harm. Relying on your own personal experience without engaging with other opinions is a recipe for delusional disaster in any walk of life.
This potential for harm applies to all medical beliefs. In attempting to do good, you may well end up doing harm. Medicine is full of terrible mistakes, false promises and dashed hopes. The way we can tell good medicine from bad is by open discussion of the available evidence and science behind what you do. This applies as much to you as it does to any surgeon or doctor. Using libel laws to remove criticism about you does your customers no good. It puts them at risk. You might well be wrong.
Your critics may be wrong too. I do not believe so. But they should have the right to be able to voice their concerns about your work and you should be obliged to answer them as best you can. People can then judge what you say in that light. You may feel that people are lying about you or spreading misinformation. The answer is to correct them with your version of what is going on, not to threaten them with England’s terribly unjust libel laws. The lives of your customers are far more important than your reputation. By using libel laws, you protect the latter and put at risk the former.
By using the libel laws you look as if you are not willing to discuss what you are doing. If your success rate is as high as you claimed on camera, it should be fairly simple to demonstrate your powers.
There is of course another danger of using libel laws – that of unintended consequences. The British Chiropractic Association are currently suing writer Simon Singh following an article in the Guardian. There followed, what the legal blogger Jack of Kent described as a ‘Quacklash’. The claims of the BCA have come under massive scrutiny across the web and now hundreds of their members are under investigation by the General Chiropractic Council as a result of people’s outrage at the use of libel laws to silence debate.
There is a now a very large campaign to reform English libel laws. I would hope that it was something that all reasonable people could support. Perhaps you, Adrian, could do your bit by withdrawing from any legal actions you may be engaged in, allowing people to publish their criticism and you responding to it without legal threats, and allowing people to engage in a proper discussion about what it is you do.
Could you use your powers to do that? It would be a sensible place to start.
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Correction
*The woman in the film was not an actor but genuinely had cancer.
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