QUACK DEALER

A PSYCHIC healer convicted for claiming he can cure cancer is charging almost £900 for an event in Edinburgh which he says will treat trauma and disease.

- KARIN GOODWIN

Critics claimed the two-day seminar held this weekend and promoted by Star Magic Healing was "quackery" and could put seriously unwell and vulnerable people at risk.

Star Magic Healing founder Jerry Sargeant who claims to be a reformed former bank fraudster and drug smuggler says he discovered his gift for healing after being in a car crash and "encountering aliens".

But medical experts last night warned that self-styled healers were a danger to the public and advised people against taking medical advice from Sargeant.

This weekend he is holding "group healing" in Edinburgh's Sheraton Grand Hotel, charged at £555 for one six-hour workshop or £888 for two, which Star Magic claims are sold out.

Video footage of previous healing sessions staged by Sargeant show him laying his hands on people's heads while they shake and convulse, sometimes falling to the floor.

Professor Edzard Ernst, who was the UK's first professor of alternative medicine, warned those with serious illness to steer clear of healers.

He said it "stood to reason" that "the worse our NHS provision becomes, the more desperate patients would consider using healing or other forms of quackery".

But he claimed the "energetic fields" of psychic healing did not exist and were not proven "beyond a placebo effect".