Background > The unbelievable healer "Historic French TV Show"
VIDEO No. 1: Translation
TRANSLATION OF TF1 FRENCH TELEVISION SHOW:
"If We Said Everything." December 28, 1990. TV Show Host: Patrick Sabatier
Host: Oh, how is it, Jerome? Everybody is doing fine? Yes?
Public: this man has something to say... and we are here to prove it.
Host: You're saying that this person has something to say, and that you are here to prove it? Come then, come all of you.
[Insert] GWEZH, THE UNBELIEVABLE HEALER
Host: Ok, make yourselves comfortable. Please come, Madam, with your child. Here, you can sit down there.... So, this man is a healer, an unbelievable healer. And you might say, rubbish, that's a lot of bull. So, what's your name, Madam?
Witness 1: Denise Le Poupon.
Host: What did he heal you from?
Witness 1: From depression
Host: You were having a depression, and he cured you?
Witness 1: I had been suffering from depression for ten years, with a medical treatment, and I was getting worse and worse, and I saw...
Host: You are stating this, you are not in collusion with this gentleman.
Witness 1: Oh, no, absolutely not!
Host: Your name, Madam?
Witness 2: Gouzien, Marguerite.
Host: May I ask you, don't take it the wrong way, may I ask you your age?
Witness 2: Sixty-eight and a half.
Host: You were sick. What did you have?
Witness 2: Yes, a mammary cancer.
Host: That is to say a cancerous tumor in the breast.
Witness 2: In the breast, yes.
Host: And you had seen some physicians?
Witness 2: Yes, that is why I knew what I had.
Host: So you had undergone regular medical treatments, radiation...
Witness 2: No, no, I refused.
Host: You went to see that gentleman?
Witness 2: Yes, I got his address from a colleague at work.
Host: And, no cancer anymore?
Witness 2: No more!
Host: What did he do to you?
Witness 2: He did a laying on of hands.
Host: He just touched you?
Witness 2: Yes.
Host: How many times?
Witness 2: Oh, four times in five months.
Host: Four sessions of handling in five months?
Witness 2: Yes.
Host: And no more cancer?
Witness 2: That's right.
Host: And the last sitting took place when?
Witness 2: That must have been in September.
Host: That is to say about three months ago.
Witness 2: Yes.
Host: Sir, will you take the microphone from this lady?... What is your name?
Witness 3: Robert Barbotin
Host: Yes. Do you know one another?
Witness 3: No, not at all. This is the first time that...
Host: Haven't you all agreed to conspire together?
Witness 3: No..., no, no!
Host: You have, yes or no?
Witness 3: No, I am an engineer.
Host: What did you have?
Witness 3: Well, I had the aftereffects of a road accident lingering on for the past fifteen years, and when my wife and my two daughters and an artist that I know and that I consider as a friend, when all those people were taken care of, I...
Host: But what did you have yourself?
Witness 3: Well, among the different problems, the most obvious was an obesity quite severe in...
Host: You weighted how much? Excuse me I have to go a little fast.
Witness 3: Just about 95 kilogrammes1 and some, to be modest.
Host: This is not being obese, 95 kilos. Were you in good health?
Witness 3: It wasn't you who had to carry that weight!
Host: No, that's true.... So he touched your stomach and it was lal right? A diet?
Witness 3: No, no, not at all. Mr. Gwezh thinks that it's probably better warding off the real cause, and not the symptoms...
Host: Sorry for being a little in a hurry, but what did he do, so that you would no longer have this obesity, what you call obesity, what did he do?
Witness 3: He laid his hands on my head.
Host: There we are. He laid his hands on your head.... Madam, what is your name?
Witness 4: My name is Valerie Aguerre.
Host: Valerie, the microphone. Thank you for Valerie.
Witness 4: My name is Valerie Aguerre. So I was six months pregnant with Antoine.
Host: With your child Antoine.
Witness 4: Physicians had diagnosed a cystic fibrosis.
Host: A Cystic fibrosis for the foetus, at the fetal level.
Witness 4: Yes, an intra-uterine cystic fibrosis, and I went to see Philippe Gwezh, and the child was born and you can see that he is well!
Host: Your child was born in good health?
Witness 4: She was born in good health, she...
Host: So, what did he do?
Witness 4: He laid his hands on my stomach. Once.
Host: Very well... Madam, what is your name?
Witness 5: Veronique Le Fur.
Host: Were you sick?
Witness 5: Not me, no, but someone very close to me, very, very close, had an advanced stage of cancer.
Host: And he went to see Philippe.
Witness 5: No, no!
Host: Wait a minute...
Witness 5: I brought him a photograph. I brought a photo of him to Philippe Gwezh.
Host: Wait a minute, are you saying that the person who was close to you, who had a cancer, was healed by sending a photograph to Philippe Gwezh?
Witness 5: Yes.
Host: He looked at the picture?
Witness 5: He worked on the picture.
Host: And you're telling me, you assure us here, there a millions of people looking at this show, you assure us that the person close to you does not have his cancer anymore?
Witness 5: For the time being, everything is all right. And I am going to request Philippe Gwezh to continue taking care of him.
Host: An incredible guy, to say the least.... Well, some may be skeptical or not....
P. Gwezh: That's advisable, it seems to me.
Host: Now I would like to know, when did you realize that you were having what can be called, because it is rather irrational, a gift?
P. Gwezh: Oh, probably several thousand years ago, that is to say, I cannot answer you about when I realized this because I was simply trained to be so; because I am a healer just as my mother is a healer, my grand-mother is a healer and she is 87 years old, and her mother was one as well, her grand-father, as well as.... I am merely a link in an old chain. But I was taught how to heal, in its own good time, from the time I was a very young boy, until I became an adult.... And my five children are trained by myself, my mother and my grand-mother every day, especially my mother and my grand-mother, I do not have much time myself; I have been trained myself by my mother, my grand-mother and my great-grand-mother, every day; when I was around seven or eight, I started curing my maid of some shingles, or a skin disease like anyone can have, and when I was around twenty-five, I set up my practice as a true healer.
Host: Does that mean, Philippe, that you can transmit your knowledge to another person, who would not necessarily belong to your family?
P. Gwezh: I believe so. I maintain that it is not really a gift. I think that we all have this sense at our disposal, but it has been fossilized or frozen in some people, whereas in me, it has been awakened. In the same way, if one does not learn how to see, feel and listen, this has been tried several times on a young animal with some appliances, when you remove the appliances, the brain has not learned to see, to listen and to hear, etc.... so you are deaf and blind. I was taught to heal, in its own good time, and another child, rather than mine, would have been in my family, I think I would have made a good healer out of him, in any case, we never tried to take in a stranger, therefore the question is still open, but I try, in the debate between what is innate and what is acquired, rather than to be considered as an E.T. and as an absolutely extraordinary kind of person, to be thought of as a human being completely normal in the first place, and who underwent a teaching coming from ages immemorial, and who is capable of inducing among his consultants, I prefer not to speak about patients, as in fact I am not a therapist, I am always backing up a physician and with [inaudible] a physician, I recognize I am not competent.
Host: Philippe, let us look at a documentary. [A documentary is shown]. Look. Is this where you live?
P. Gwezh: Nearby, yes.
Host: Nearby. What are you doing there?
P. Gwezh: Apparently, I am laying on my hands, on a place where a person was suffering, an old person suffering from non-inflammatory arthritis. That was the first time I saw myself, actually, in the process of healing.
Voice in film: What is happening, actually, at that time?
P. Gwezh: I do not know. To be quite honest with you. I do not know. The important thing is that I should heal.
Woman in Documentary:
[inaudible]... it is as you say. He is healing because he has the gift.
[End of documentary]
Host: So you have always had this gift.... And you founded the "Ordre des Guerisseurs" [National Healers Association]?
P. Gwezh: The Board of the National Healers Association, which is a provocation, of course, but not a provocation with regard to my physician friends and co-workers. I say it again to you, this is an office that I respect and with which I work daily, insofar as what they can do, I cannot do by definition, and vice versa. There is a sharing of our skills. Well, hm, I always work with the physician, but in a completely different area. I was taught how to heal, that is, I am going to explain to you very sincerely what it is. I think that we all are like self-cleaning ovens, we are all self-healing, but this has been forgotten. So, my role is to reawaken those self-regenerating processes, which may go very far. This is of course the same phenomenon as the well-known placebo effect, that everybody knows in medicine, that is to say the taking of a make-believe medication, like lactose, for instance, or honey....
Host: Wait a little, I believe you, but this could last for hours, so we are going to interrupt here. So when this woman, who is sixty-eight, is suffering from a breast cancer, any doctor who belongs to the Order is reliable. I do not say that you are not, since there are proofs, and they cannot be denied, so you can say, it is necessary to intervene, it is necessary to do this. You, you place four times, in your special way, your hands on this woman, and within five months, this woman no longer has her breast cancer.
P. Gwezh: Yes, but even then, this is not something so remarkable. Why Mrs. Aguerre is more interesting as a case, actually, is that a child has been healed beyond its consent, without any psycho-suggestion. What I wasn tis to do away with the well-known saying, "You have to believe it to make it work." So really this kid, just like the person with a very advanced cancer on behest of Mrs. Le Fur, neither this kid nor this person knew that I was taking care of them. And yet, they were healed. This kid not only did not get the disease of cystic fibrosis, but is not even a bearer of the 508 mutation. That is to say, that when tests are being done, whereas in Necker [Hospital] tests had been repeatedly taken on the woman, the father, the child by amniocentesis, when it was born, those tests show that there is no cystic fibrosis, that is to say that I have corrected the genetic inheritance, which seems to me to a first-time happening.
Host: So, we will interrupt here.... We are going to receive hundreds, thousands of letters. What do we do with them?
P. Gwezh: You can always send them on to me. The problem is that I am not dependent on this process. Unfortunately, I always have more demand than supply. I try to take people in reasonable good health, and not to confuse my activity with the after-sales service of Mr. Scharzenber [?] or of Lourdes. That is to say that one cannot do the impossible, that is I try to take animals, racehorses. A healthy man who comes to see me to get a little better off, this is much simpler than if people come to se me [inaudible] as a last resort.
Host: We will send you on the letters that we shall receive. Is that all right?
P. Gwezh: Of course.
Host: Because I suppose that tonight, for many people, at the close of this year 1990, for many people who are looking at us, you are also a hope.
P. Gwezh: This is a kind of Christmas present...
Host: But you must not be a quack.
P. Gwezh: This is the reason I founded the National Healers Board; it is to fight against quackery.
Host: So, he is not a quack? You can say so, right? Don't forget that we have a responsibility; we are on television, and people are watching. Can you say so?
Public: Yes, of course we can!
Host: You are committed and I hope with all my heart that what you are doing will be able to bring relief!
P. Gwezh: I think this is wonderful.
Host: And so do I. Now we can applaud, right?....
[Host turns to the audience and the tape end].
The above translation is certified by a court-appointed translator:
"I, Edith JONSSON-DEVILLERS, a duly appointed translator for the Superior Court of California, county of San Diego, CERTIFY that I have translated the attached document from a FRENCH video into ENGLISH and DO CERTIFY that it is correct to the best of my ability and judgment.
San Diego, 14, June 2000
[signature]
Dr. Edith Johnsson-Devillers, Ph.D.
5148 Enelra Place
San Diego, CA 92117-1416
VIDEO No. 2: Translation
Television Documentary on Philippe Sauvage (Gwezh)
Philip Gwezh, the Breton with his mysterious powers comes in the Temple of Lanleff to get new life force from the very source. This holy place is erected like a Druidic sanctuary, like a circle in the forest. In here, he communes with the secrets of Mother Nature and with Celtic tradition which represents the most ancient European magic. Now full of a new life force the Druid Healer can come back to his monastery to take care of his consultants. He heals all kinds of sicknesses from the most benign disease to the most severe cases of cancer, but he refuses to deal with the many superstitions that sill exist in Brittany, such as magic spells or witchcraft. Perhaps he has just another semantic to define them.
P. Gwezh: When someone tries to mention in front of me troubles allegedly related to magic practices, I endeavor to explain to them that it may well be only too much stress or some episode of paranoid delusion. It is always very tempting for people to put the blame on someone else or something else rather than take responsibility for whatever befalls them. It is a childish and dangerous attitude; this is just cheap superstition where one always finds a new scapegoat. The witch-hunts and the many innocent victims burning at the stake, my own clan has paid the highest price to know this was just all too real. Therefore, I will never myself endorse such psychoses.
Consultant 1: After my husband had undergone some heavy surgery, I could no longer sleep and that's how I have started to take some sleeping pills. But now I cannot get off the hook....
P. Gwezh: Of course, and now maybe you are getting to understand how it feels to be a drug addict. You are 80 years old and you are just as hooked on those drugs as a young junkie, right? Well, I know how bad it is and I am going to try to give you your natural sleep and to fix all that.... Ok, now stay put and just relax....
TREATMENT...
Journalist: We have just seen you doing some magic and laying on your hands. Can you tell us what is happening when you are so healing.
P. Gwezh: Honestly, I don't have any way to describe it to you. In fact, the only thing that should matter is that I heal for real. There is undoubtedly some system of transference from me to the consultant. Maybe it is some form of energy or something else. It's enough, though, for me to reawaken the self-healing ability of my consultants. They are the real healers in the whole operation. I am just the one in charge of the healing processes. But once again, I am incapable of explaining to you exactly what happens during the transference. I know for certain that it does not relate to the traditional field of the so-called spiritual healing. I do not work from a system of energies like the chi in acupuncture. Those energies are the outside of the person, while I am taking care of the very inner bio-essence of my consultant.
Journalist: Philip Gwezh's consultants get along very well with such mysterious explanations. They are totally convinced of his magic powers.
Journalist asks consultant:
You have just had a session with the Healer. What exactly did he do to you?
Consultant 2: He has been laying down his hands on my head and just about everywhere on my body. You have to understand that I am very old and pretty tired. To me there is no doubt that Philip Gwezh possesses real powers. I have felt his energy even deep into my head when he was laying down his hands on me.
Consultant 3: God can heal the sick or heal the blind, right?... In my opinion, I am sorry to say that he is just like a God.... A divine healing gift.
Journalist (asking the psychiatrist):
What do you think magic exists for?
Psychiatrist: First and foremost it is some form of psychotherapy. It is also the magic of the verb....
[video segment ends]
VIDEO No. 3: Translation
PUBLIC TV DEBATE BETWEEN PHILIPPE SAUVAGE AND DR. MEYER
Votes Cast: 83% for P. Sauvage(Gwezh); 17% for Dr. Meyer
Host: Now the special report on the healers, with our guest Philip Gwezh who is the founder of the National Healing Board. Then, Doctor Philip Meyer who is professor in the University of Pharmacology and member of the academy of Science. Marina De Beleine, who is a journalist who has recently inquired on the subject of the healer. We also have as guest Mrs. Valerie Aguerre whose baby has been apparently saved by a healer. I am saying "apparently" on purpose since this question is the very point of our whole discussion. Now, Valerie, what exactly is your own story?
Valerie Aguerre: My story is crystal clear: The doctors had diagnosed my fetus with Cystic Fibrosis. I decided to consult Philip Gwezh. And when my baby was born, the doctors made a new battery of tests that show that my baby wasn't having Cystic Fibrosis anymore.
Host: You mean that your baby is not sick at all?
V. Aguerre: That's right he is perfectly healthy.
Host: This means that you are a believer, right?
V. Aguerre: Absolutely!
Host: Philip Meyer, are you amused by such stories.
Dr. Meyer: Certainly not. I am very serious on issues like that. I would just like to know if the first diagnosis has been further corroborated by other doctors to validate without a doubt this healing...
V. Aguerre: Absolutely, many tests have been conducted by different medical teams. My baby has undergone a complete battery of sophisticated and complementary tests that all confirm the existence of the genetic disease in a similar way. All those tests today show that my son is healed. He is just perfect and extremely healthy...Actually his vital energy is absolutely extraordinary.
Dr. Meyer: Well, I am very happy for you but I still have doubts that anyone can sort out the course of such a well known genetic disease that is now being scrutinized and studied in the field of genetic engineering. How can just subtle energies or some incantations provoke something like that? I think we should just go over this specific case and try to put the debate in its true dimension. In every disease, there are two components: the disease itself and the way we perceive the disease. Traditional medicine which I represent deals with the disease itself and begins to investigate the way by which we perceive the disease. Some doctors do, some don't do it the way they should. It depends on the kind of physician and the kind of patients one is dealing with. Some patients have a clear perception of their own disease and some don't. Therefore I think that all those medicines or alternative medicines on which we are debating right now, relate to this perception of the disease which is of course very important, but they do not relate directly with the disease itself.... what I am saying is not new, you know. Those two terms of medicine have co-existed for thousands of years as to distinct synergistic professions. However, nowadays we are making remarkable scientific progress. Don't forget that just last century, people were still dying around 40. This is attributable to our own form of medicine, not to the other medicine.
Host: Philip Gwezh, did you actually save this baby?
P. Gwezh: Let me quote Dr Ambrose Parce, the founder of modern medicine, "I just provide my patients with the first cares, but it's God who heals them." ... I have just done what I am used to. And what I know is that this "kid" who was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis has no longer cystic fibrosis as all the tests prove it.
Host: But didn't he suffer from some minor troubles at birth.
P. Gwezh: Sure, there were unrelated little problems that have been fixed immediately with some minor surgery.
Host: Ok. I understand.
P. Gwezh: Well, I can do many things, but not surgery yet. That's why this pertained to the legitimate domain of medicine.
Host: So how do you delineate the healing field in opposition to the medical field?
P. Gwezh: To me, contrary to the slanderous definition that one can find in a dictionary, a healer is not someone who pretends to heal, but someone who heals for real, period! Now, I will like to answer Doctor Mayer immediately. I am a paleontologist and therefore a scientist myself and my biology teacher, Pr. Grasse, used to say that it is more scientific to believe in everything than to believe in nothing." In my opinion it is even the very idea of "belief" that is clearly non-scientific. Facts are. To me it is always the same old song. That is why I have founded the National Healing Board to replace the question in the scope of pure scientific verification and experimentation. The benchmark of science is the scientific experiment. Scientific facts that can be observed, explained or, according to the most famous epistemologist in the world, something that can also be scientifically refuted. Consequentially I am the one to challenge my adversaries for them to test me according to their own scientific criteria. By the way, I will like to give strong emphasis on the fact that I don't see physicians as my adversaries at all. They are my friends actually and in my clan we have been working with them in perfect intelligence for generations. Let me give you an anecdote: One day I was debating publicly with a physician who asked me ironically, "What kind of tools exactly do you use in your line of work?" I knew that he was making allusion to a crystal ball or a magic wand of some sort. My answer was, "You doctors are the only tools I ever use!" I have always been working with the doctors and after the doctors...
Host: OK, Ok, but how can we make sure that you are right?
P. Gwezh: We could, for instance make a case study of any specific pathology that Dr. Meyer himself could select and I will be tested in his own laboratory. Of course, these tests should relate to a healing pathology, and not what really belongs to the medical field. For instance if you try to see me for a severe septicemia the chances are that I am going to kick you out of my office pretty quick! What doctors do and what I do is different and complementary. What they are supposed to do is out of field and, similarly, what I can do in my own domain they cannot. There should never be any antagonism between us.
Host: Please let me focus on the ongoing poll (live TV show): "Medicine: do you believe in healers powers? Yes or no"
Host: Now Dr. Meyer if you would like to answer...
Dr. Meyer: Sure, I am going to take a concrete example. By the way, I am not going to quote as many famous scientists as you do but just mention regular patients. Let's take the case of a broken leg. Some patients may react very differently to the pain, for instance. Some can become really hysterical when facing pain, not capable of supporting it at all. I understand perfectly that you can have beneficial results on this perception of the pain, but I have yet to be convinced that you are capable of fixing the damages on the bone itself when surgery is required. I agree totally that you can work with success on one aspect of the question although I still don't know how we could demonstrate your effects, but I still don't believe in your treatment on the broken bone itself.
P. Gwezh: Let me help you on that. Why don't we take a traumatology that archetypically belongs to my domain. At least there wouldn't be any form of psychosomatic interference, right? What I really want is to rule out once and for all the pernicious idea that healers only have effects through some kind of "placebo" or "suggestion" effects. You are using the same lame old argument and so is the other journalist in her study who, in so doing, puts the discredit on the healers when she pretends supporting them. My purpose is to establish scientifically that I do not relate at all to the "placebo" domain or to the field of "psychosuggestion." Further more I am convinced that among all known forms of therapy, my own treatment is the only one that does not use in one way or another the "placebo" effect. Which by the way proves that what I am doing does not belong to the therapeutical domain per se.
Dr. Meyer: I am sorry, but you haven't answered my question yet. Since I know you and your legendary abhorrence of the concept of placebo, I wouldn't mention it myself. However, what will happen in the case of this patient with a broken leg who is applying for your cares?
P. Gwezh: This couldn't happen, because I would kick such a hypothetical patient out of my office right way for him to see a physician immediately.
Dr. Meyer: This wouldn't be nice for this person to be kicked out of your office.
P. Gwezh: It is just a way of speech and you know very well how nice I am with all my patients. But let's go back to the question. I am not a traumatologist, you know that. Contrary to my own field, traditional medicine and alternative medicines only work on the container, what I call our organical vehicle or our vital machinery. By the way, what you improperly call traditional has nothing of traditional at all. It exists at the very best for only more than one century.
Host: Ok, now I would like the other journalists to give us an account of her own experience with a healer which happens to be a rather negative experience, right?
Journalist: I have met actually several healers and I am not the only one who has worked on the subject. At this time, I was not sick and yet I wanted to try it myself so I asked to make me quit smoking.
Dr. Meyer: Smoking is not a sickness...
Journalist: Maybe it isn't, but since some would-be healers claimed they could make me quit I just wanted to try. So one of them reclined me on his massage table and apparently made with his hands some "magnetic" manipulations. Unfortunately, I didn't feel anything at all while he was treating me or after... It does not mean that some of the people cannot heal but...
Host: By the way, was it expensive?
Journalist: Not at all.
Host: What about you Philip Gwezh, are you expensive?
P. Gwezh: I am outrageously expensive.
Host: What? Are you serious?
P. Gwezh: Absolutely, I am even more expensive than you could imagine!
Dr. Meyer: He is right! I agree with him! It's a part of the therapy.
P. Gwezh: Remember, Dr. Sigmund Freud, who explained that his psychotherapy never worked as long as he was only a poor unknown doctor. His treatment started to work only when he became the world-renowned and very costly Doctor Freud... In fact, this belongs also to the placebo domain, which I don't need. Doctors do need all their magical tools and scientific gimmicks to bring results. I don't.
Host: Do you have some sort of medical background?
P. Gwezh: No way, medicine has nothing in common with my line of work.
Journalist: This lack of medical knowledge seems to be usual among the healers.
P. Gwezh: Excuse me, I may not be a physician, but I am a paleontologist with a vast knowledge of human anatomy. In fact, being a scientist myself poses a problem to some doctors, since we belong to the same scientific community. Actually I understand perfectly well their medical jargon and their rationalistic logic, but I am afraid that most doctors do not have in return a sufficient knowledge to understand exactly what I am talking about. That is why I need to go myself on their own turf since they won't come on mine. Once again, I challenge them to organize those scientific experiments on burn-related traumas. I know that even in cases of third-degree burns, the subjects I would have so treated should heal completely and in an exceptionally short period of time. In case I would fail those scientific tests, I pledge to quit my profession right away and to resign from my post of chairman of the National Healing Board. What a wonderful opportunity for my opponents to get rid of me once and for all and to let me make a fool of myself!
Other guest: I have never personally resorted to a healer and I must tell you, that I don't have much use for the doctors either. I am a lucky man with a perfect health. However, in case of real sickness, I think that my first choice would be to see a physician. When I think of it though, I wonder if I wouldn't see them both in case of a serious illness.
Journalist: I want to lay stress on the fact that about ninety percent of those people who consult some healer have seen doctors first and it is because they have become disappointed with medical cares that they chose the healer as the very last option.
Other guest: I think the healer has a legitimate role under many circumstances.
Dr. Meyer: That is exactly what I have been saying all the time. Such a treatment is valid only when it deals with the subjective perception of the disease. I would like to make three points: first healers scare me when they keep the patient from seeing his physician at the very beginning of a serious organical illness. Of course, you know that I am not talking of you (Philip Gwezh.)
P. Gwezh: And, you are right on that subject.
Dr. Meyer: For instance some minor cancers that have been properly treated otherwise may become much more dangerous, when patients are treated by people who do not have any medical knowledge at all.
P. Gwezh: I agree with you completely.
Dr. Meyer: My second point is that I disagree with you when you demand the reimbursement for healing cares. First, the public insurances cannot afford it today being on the verge of a complete bankruptcy...
P. Gwezh: You are having a very "Frenchy"2 way of understanding all those issues. Germany, Switzerland and many other European countries have already integrated healers in the general health systems...
Dr. Meyer: But there's no reimbursement, right?
P. Gwezh: Wrong. In those countries, the patients are actually reimbursed. I have my own office in Switzerland and I know exactly how it works. I am very positive.
Dr. Meyer: It must be a private medical insurance system then. That's not like the French system...
P. Gwezh: Right, and those systems seemed to work much better than the French system and some times, like in Germany, for more than half a century.
Dr. Meyer: My last point is that the patients should do what they want on such issues. Doctors don't have the right to tell them what to do or not to do. However, they have to understand that it is only traditional medicine that deals with the physical and organical aspect of the disease. I would like though to warn the patient against the subjective perception of his disease. The healer may improve it but he wouldn't heal completely the disease by his work alone.
Host: What you are saying is that, at least to some extent, you believe in Philip Gwezh's healing ability.
Dr. Meyer: I deeply believe in the power to improve the patient's perception of his own disease, that's right. Everybody knows how people can create themselves their own illness when facing extreme stress, for instance. We must accept the idea that we do not know very well all those strange interactions between mind and body. Those interactions must play a very important role, yet I do not want to endorse everything that Philip Gwezh is saying.
Host: Ok, Now it is time to see the results of our live poll on the public...Well, 83 percent of the people believe the healer's power, when only 17 percent don't. This is absolutely amazing!
Public: Wow, unbelievable, amazing!
Host (To Philip Gwezh): Do you think yourself that it is amazing?
P. Gwezh: Not so much, in fact! This just gives me an opportunity to say that I am certainly even tougher than Dr. Meyer on those people that you call "healers". The very aim of the National Healing Board on which I preside is to track down and bring to justice all those charlatans who put a terrible discredit on a person like me, who is always working in perfect respect -- harmony and respect -- with the physicians. There is no way I would ever interfere with the regular course of a medical treatment. I know and respect the boundaries between our two lines of work. And remember that I, myself, am known to bring to justice those self-proclaimed healers who are actually dangerous charlatans. They can cost the life of people whom they would grossly misdiagnose. I repeat it once again, I am always working with the doctors or in parallel with the doctors, never against the doctors. In fact, people shouldn't consult the healer versus the doctor. They just should see them both. Only criminal charlatans would keep people from consulting a physician and likewise only medical dinosaurs could keep their patients from seeing a person like me.
Host: So, Marina, you have written somewhere that the healer listens to his patient much more that the doctor does and that is what people need some times.
Journalist: That is right, it is very usual. The healer becomes like a confidante. He listens even caters to his patient and there is a sort of relationship or trust that is so established. In fact healers exist due to this act of faith from their patient. This is the same faith that makes them their patient eventually.
P. Gwezh: Once again, same old song on faith healing!
Dr. Meyer: I would like to say that I think she is just right and if the physician would pay more attention to his own patient, we wouldn't have this explosion of alternative medicines.
Host: Thank you all of you...
VIDEO No. 4: Translation
TELEVISION DOCUMENTARY ON PHILIPPE SAUVAGE (GWEZH)
Journalist 1: In the City of Auray in Brittany lives a healer who has utterly decided to bring to justice all the charlatans in his own line of work. To do so, he has founded a National healing Board. The idea creates a real turmoil in the profession, and among the doctors it is like a war declaration.
Journalist 2: Complete turmoil in the very closed world of the healers because of a specialist in Southern Brittany who demands nothing short of a forceful purge of his profession which he considers completely discredited by too many charlatans.
P. Gwezh: Today there is an explosion of self-proclaimed healers who are nothing but a bunch of charlatans and let's face it, criminals. They are taking advantage of their patients' gullibility. They are way beyond the role of mere social or psychological cop-outs by now. They are literally invading the field of true healing and are making dangerous inroads into the medical domain. It is about time that the Justice department starts to deal with such a problem. We need a new legislation and to press charges when and where it is justified.
Journalist 2: But to start cleansing the profession, one still needs to sort out the criminals. To do so Philip Gwezh wants to set out true scientific tests that would be like a ritual of initiation for whomever wishes to join his National Healing Board. Doing what Philip Gwezh himself does – healing on animals and burn-related traumas – would work.
P. Gwezh: I propose that any self-styled healer pass the same scientific tests. "Can you do, right away, what any true healer should be capable of doing or what?" For centuries genuine healers are said to "make the fire go away." If they can do it like me, excellent. If not, just take a hike!
Journalist 2: As expected, Philip Gwezh's initiative has provoked a hail of criticism from the doctors of the Medical Board. To them, this duplicate medical board cannot be tolerated.
Dr. Bot: It is something completely improper, ridiculous and illegal. This is a criminal enterprise, pure and simple. The French Medical Board considers that they should be brought to Justice. However, we must also be very careful in doing so, otherwise it may backfire in us giving a lot of publicity to people that shouldn't even be allowed to live!
Journalist 2: The war is now all out and according to our sources, Philip Gwezh already has in his organization many professionals. His objective now is to achieve his mission while keeping good relations with physicians.
P. Gwezh: According to our by-laws, even in cases of an attack from the doctors of the Medical board, as unfair as they should be in doing so, we will never retaliate. We are not practicing medicine at all and if ever any healer does, he is dead wrong. Such a healer is doing nothing more than aping a doctor. The true healing domain starts exactly where medicine ends, and the other way around.
Journalist 2: Obviously the accusation of practicing medicine without a license does not apply to Philip Gwezh. Now we just have to wait to know whether such an isolated crusade will ever succeed. If it does, it should be for the best interest of a profession that is viewed by many with a lot of skepticism.
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