A practitioner of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) was sentenced 10 years in UK prison (2025)

We had to deal with Hongchi Xiao several times before:

• Slapping therapy? No thanks!
• China Power and Influence
• Slapping therapy: therapist arrested and charged with manslaughter by gross negligence

Slapping therapy is based on the notion that slapping patients at certain points of their body has positive therapeutic effects. Hongchi Xiao, a Chinese-born investment banker, popularised this SCAM which, he claims, is based on the principles of Traditional Chinese Medicine. It is also known as ‘Paida’—in Chinese, this means ‘to slap your body’. The therapy involves slapping the body surface with a view of stimulating the flow of ‘chi’, the vital energy postulated in Traditional Chinese Medicine. Slapping therapists believe that this ritual restores health and eliminates toxins. They also claim that the bruises which patients tend to develop after the treatment are the visible signs of toxins coming to the surface. Hongchi Xiao advocates slapping as “self-healing method” that should be continued until the skin starts looking bruised. He and his follows conduct workshops and sell books teaching the public which advocate slapping therapy as a panacea, a cure-all. The assumptions of slapping therapy fly in the face of science and are thus not plausible. There is not a single clinical trial testing whether slapping therapy is effective. It must therefore be categorised as unproven.

Now it has been reported that Hongchi Xiao has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for the death of a 71-year-old diabetic woman who stopped taking insulin during one of his workshops.

Hongchi Xiao, 61, was convicted of manslaughter by gross negligence for failing to get medical help for Danielle Carr-Gomm as she howled in pain and frothed at the mouth during the fourth day of a workshop in October 2016. The Californian healer promoted paida lajin therapy which entails getting patients to slap themselves repeatedly to release “poisonous waste” from the body. The technique has its roots in Chinese medicine and has no scientific basis and patients often end up with bruises, bleeding — or worse.

Xiao had extradited from Australia, where he had been convicted of manslaughter after a 6-year-old boy died when his parents withdrew his insulin medication after attending one of his workshops in Sydney. “I consider you dangerous even though you do not share the characteristics of most other dangerous offenders,” Justice Robert Bright said during sentencing at Winchester Crown Court.“You knew from late in the afternoon of day one of the fact that Danielle Carr-Gomm had stopped taking her insulin. Furthermore, you made it clear to her you supported this.” Bright added Xiao only made a “token effort” to get Carr-Gomm to take her insulin once it was too late and had shown no sign of remorse as he even continued to promote paida lajin in prison.

Carr-Gomm was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1999 and was desperate to find a cure that didn’t involve injecting herself with needles, her son, Matthew, said.She sought out alternative treatments and had attended a previous workshop by Xiao in Bulgaria a few months before her death in which she also became seriously ill after ceasing her medication.However, she recorded a video testimonial, calling Xiao a “messenger sent by God” who was “starting a revolution to put the power back in the hands of the people to cure themselves and to change the whole system of healthcare.”

Xiao had congratulated Carr-Gomm when she told other participants at the English retreat that she had stopped taking her insulin.By day three, Carr-Gomm was “vomiting, tired and weak, and by the evening she was howling in pain and unable to respond to questions,” prosecutor Duncan Atkinson said.

A chef who wanted to call an ambulance said she deferred to those with holistic healing experience.“Those who had received and accepted the defendant’s teachings misinterpreted Mrs. Carr-Gomm’s condition as a healing crisis,” Atkinson said.

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A healing crisis?

A crisis of collective stupidity, I’d say!

3 Responses to A practitioner of so-called alternative medicine (SCAM) was sentenced 10 years in UK prison

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  Inge Palme on Saturday 07 December 2024 at 23:36

  Your fight is a great deception.
  Every Shiatsu-Therapiest for expample learned about the importance of the temporomandibular joint centuries ago.

  It took a long time that science developed awareness of this topic. Here we go. Science needs centuries to discover what practinioners knows since centuries: The importance of the temporomandibular joint.
  https://www.puk.uni-frankfurt.de/162396963/Wenn_das_Kiefergelenk_knackt_und_schmerzt

  This science you are fighting for is lacking behind. The sceptical approach is a approach who is to laugh about because of the lack of self-reflexivity.
  Same, same, but different: Practioniers knew about the importance of fascia since centuries. “Science” was declaring lack of evidence and unscientific, until science was able to discover fascia. Without methods of observation of fascia “science” declared everything of empirical explorable about fascia as “unscientifical”.

  Wow! What a great leap to progressive steps of forward. LOL. We as scientists are know confirming what practionioners knew since centuries. What a great leap forward. LOL.
  Natural medicine knew since centuries what – oh, wow! how progressive – microbiome science has now put into the so called scientific evidence: the gut with the microbiome, the earth with it’s microbiome is essential for health.
  this is nothing new. The news are that science can confirm is because of the new observation methods through biotechnology.
  But it’s not new. Human observation without technology was able to observe that since centuries. But science was always so clear to declare: This is not scientifically.

  Yes, this is a crisis of collective scientifically stupidity and a false understood of sceptisicms, I’d say! Be aware of every movement who claims a -ism for itself.

  Time has come that all of the so called sceptic movement are checking into a space flight of transhumanist Elon Musk to start the settlement of Mars and leave the earth and humans behind and alone.
  Earth and humans don’t need technocrats, scientocrats and psychocrats, which are represented with the so called sceptical movement.

  See Also

  Chinese medicine diagnosis and treatment for COVID-2019: Is China ready for implementing a national guideline?

  Please, check your flight to the Mars with Elon Musk to control the life of Mars and leave the earth and humans alone.

  The biggest failure the sceptical movement has to account is not avoiding that the holisitic perspective came back into policy thinking through allowoing TCM-perspective inside ICD-11.

  A historical failure of sceptic-movement to allow this holisitical view in policy, this whole-government approach.

  WWF is saying thanks to the sceptical movement.

  Reply

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  Inge Palme on Saturday 07 December 2024 at 23:42

  The great dream of behavioral medicene, behavioral policy has become realtiy since 2020. Behaviroal science as the standard for global policy.
  https://www.uninnovation.network/un-group-pages/behavioural-science
  We the scientists are constructing the new humanity, the new civilacation.

  What a great leap backward to the euginic thinking of the beginning of the 20th century in the name of progressive “leap forward” and so called Global Health Security Agenda of Tony Blair.

  Scientists are convinced that people are stupid.
  That’s the beginning of authoritarian thinking.

  Reply

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  DavidB on Sunday 08 December 2024 at 22:43

  These two posts by Inge Palme appear to me to be gobbledegook, even allowing for English not being the writer’s first language.

  Where is the respect for the life of the tragically deluded and mistreated victim?

  Do you know a cure for Type 1 Diabetes, Inge Palme?

  Reply

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