Keywords: scientology

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Quack scandal in Swedish Public Health Service

A psychologist employed by the Swedish Public Health Service has privately offered and sold healing treatments to patients who she was treating in the public clinic. The treatments have been following the teachings of “Access Consciousness”, a sect-like movement founded in the eighties by a former Scientology member called Gary Douglas.

The situation was revealed on 7 December by an investigative journalist in the TV program “SVT Dold” (SVT Hidden) at SVT, the Swedish public service broadcasting company.

The Swedish Skeptics Association (aka VoF) published a highly critical debate article on 8 December (http://www.svt.se/opinion/vof-om-sekter), explaining how important it is that the Swedish Health services take every step to not expose patients to quackery, and that they have to ensure that dangerous sects and other scams are kept out of public health care.

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Swedish schools spend money on “drug information” from scientologists

A non-profit organisation called Drogfritt (roughly translated to “no drugs”) is regularly hired by 65 (out of 290) Swedish communes, for lecturing about narcotics in Swedish public schools. Most of the employees of the organisation are Scientologists and their lectures are based on material from Narconon, a well known Scientological subsidiary. A representative from Drogfritt says he on average delivers “250-300 lectures per year” in Swedish public schools.

The target audience is children aged 14-15 years and many of the school officials seem unaware of the link between Drogfritt and Scientology.

The contents of the lectures are now criticized by internal school inspectors and an associate professor at the University of Malmö for being very misleading and factually incorrect.