Philippine Psychic Surgery

[Blueskied]

A scene i saw on TV:
A so called psychic doctor opens the patient's body with his bare hands through the belly,neck and back - no anesthesia. He removes dark clumps of flesh, blood comes out.
After the operations no wounds or scars are visible.
Now how does this work? How can the doctor pull out flesh without leaving an opening in the body?
Is he making tiny holes with his fingernails and squeezes the stuff out? Or is it like some magic card trick, so that the clumps and blood don't really come out of the body but out of the doctor's hand?

[Erin Pavlina]

It's a charlatan's trick. He has a fake thumb on his finger with blood inside. As he squishes around in there, all this blood comes out of the fake finger. He pulls the fake, rubbery, fleshy finger off as he's digging in there and it looks like a piece of the patient's innards. Various other methods like this are used. It's not real.

[Jerigan]

I've seen this exposed somewhere as a fake. The 'doctor' already has the 'blood' and stuff prepared. Then uses pressure with his fingers and the patient's expectations of what to feel to make the patient believe the 'doctor' is actually removing flesh from the body.

After he is done 'removing' stuff, the 'doctor' wipes off the fake blood and tells the patient he is better. Apparently this does help some people (placebo effect) but it isn't really a cure for anything.

Edit: Geez Erin you beat me by like 15 seconds.

[elainevdw]

Supposedly, there is such a thing as psychic surgery, but it's on the auric level, not the physical. So you're pulling energy gunk out of a person's energy field, not physical junk out of their physical body.

[JVR]

Has anyone heard of the Brazilian Jose Arigo? He was a psychic surgeon and is researched by scientists. Amongst others he did surgery on a senator and the daughter of a Brazilian president. I´m a sceptic, but there seems to be a lot of evidence that he was the real deal. See for example this link Psychic Surgeon and Healer - Jose Arigo

What do you think?

Jeroen

[Markus74]

In my opinion these healers, and their claims, should be thoroughly analyzed. And if these healers are genuine then they don't have to fear anything from science. And science shouldn't fear them. The important thing is: DOES IT WORK? Do people get healed by it even though we/Science doesn't understand yet how or why? Then it should be studied so that more people can use it, either actively or passively. There are some sporadic instances or methods that seem to work right now but that science can't explain. So what? Use them to heal anyway. That's what counts. An explanation can always be found later on.

But frauds (and there are plenty) should get exposed.