Blue Collar Scientist

Pull on the shoes of a 16 year old girl for just a moment, and walk with me:

You’ve been struggling with anorexia since you were 10. You’ve been in and out of hospitals, but you don’t have health insurance and you can’t afford to check yourself into a private treatment facility. You know your life is in danger, and you need to find help as soon as possible.

One day, someone tells you about a residential treatment program that has worked wonders for its graduates. This program, with treatment facilities all over the world, has taken girls suffering from eating disorders, mental health issues like depression and bipolar disorder, and pregnant teens, and transformed them, around six months later, into healthy, shiny and happy young women.

And the program is absolutely free.

Sound good?

When you visit the website of the organisation that runs the program, you realise they are a ‘Christian counselling’ group. Ok, no problem, you can handle the Jesus references and nightly prayer meetings won’t hurt you. You used to go to church when you were younger, anyway. Free access to medical professionals and healthy meals will be worth it.

So you start the application process at the Mercy Ministries website.

After being put on a long waiting list, you are finally admitted to one of Mercy’s residential treatment facilities. That’s when things get really bad.

Instead of medical treatment, you are told your eating disorder is caused by demons (not the metaphorical sort, you understand), and the prescribed antidote is prayer, speaking in tongues and the laying on of hands. An exorcism by any other name…

This story is not particular to any one person, but stories similar to it have been surfacing in the Australian media in the last few months. This media coverage has thrust Mercy Ministries into public discourse and debate in Australia, and two weeks ago, Mercy was referred to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for alleged breaches of the Trade Practices Act.

But it seems Mercy Ministries is continuing to operate in the US without much fallout from this. A quick online search shows that the controversy has not quite made its way across the Pacific Ocean.

The BCS asked me to write this post, geared towards a US audience, as an elaboration of a post on my blog about Mercy Ministries in Australia.

It is possible that the allegation of mistreatment made against Mercy Ministries in Australia is an isolated case, caused by a ‘bad seed’ at one treatment facility, but it is more probable that the common ideology of Mercy’s facilities around the world is to blame. If nothing else, this post serves as a cautionary tale against taking the word of a secretive religious organisation at face value.

Mercy Ministries was established as a public charity (which it still is) by Nancy Alcorn in 1983 in Louisiana, and has since spread to Australia, New Zealand, and the UK (don’t worry, Canada, it’s coming soon to a British Columbia near you). From their website, Mercy Ministries aims to:

…provide opportunities for young women to experience God’s unconditional love, forgiveness, and life-transforming power.

How does it do this? Once again, the US website speaks:

Our free of charge program serves a diverse population of young women from various socio-economic backgrounds, aged 13-28. Many of the girls, who come to Mercy for help, are facing a combination of debilitating circumstances and have been in various treatment facilities with unsuccessful long-term results. We are committed to providing the young women we serve with the most excellent program services that allow them to recognize their self-worth and prepare them to reach their full potential. Our non-conventional approach to healing allows young women to permanently stop destructive cycles and prepares them to take hope out into their communities.

If you had a Babel fish in your ear, this is what you would hear: Mercy recruits desperate and vulnerable young women, to indoctrinate them with a very specific brand of religious belief. ‘Conventional’ doctors, psychologists and dietitians are superfluous, as girls can only be healed if they become good enough Christians. All girls are descended from that hussy, Eve, and so are inherently gullible and/or evil. Their minds and bodies must therefore be strictly regulated.

Once a girl enters a Mercy Ministries treatment facility, she is effectively cut off from the rest of the world. Instead of teaching girls how to relate to other people living in the real world, Mercy teaches them the most important thing they need to do is to relate to the big invisible guy in the sky. Girls are allowed to send and receive mail (according to the application form, all mail must be opened in front of Mercy staff), and can make 15-minute phone calls to family only on weekends. Girls are not allowed to work. In Australia, girls are not allowed to continue with their secondary or tertiary education while attending the program. In the US, tertiary education is discouraged, and if a girl is still in high school, she can do a correspondence course with her current school or enroll in an online program designed for private schools.Mercy Ministries states:

The Director of Education works with the girls to keep up with the curriculum they are currently studying at school.

…with inappropriate bits like critical thinking skills taken out, no doubt.

But of course, education of that sort is not their priority. The Mercy day begins at 7am and ends at 10:30 pm. During the day, only 1.5 hours is dedicated to school. They have 2.5 hours of prayer/bible study, not including counselling sessions, which go for 3 hours (so essentially, its 5.5 hours of structured religious indoctrination). The rest of the time is spent on meals, chores and a bit of free time. There is no mention of time set aside for regular medical appointments.

Which brings me to the heart of the allegations made against Mercy Ministries in Australia. The girls who spoke out about their experiences said that they very rarely met with qualified medical professionals. Most of their counselling was conducted by bible college students, or counsellors trained in an in-house program by Mercy Ministries. Instead of visiting psychiatrists, girls were told that their problems were caused by demons, which would only disappear if girls worshipped in the proper way. They would be prayed over by Mercy staff, who spoke in tongues and laid hands on the girls. Relapses were a sign that they weren’t praying hard enough.

Girls in the Mercy Ministries program do not have access to their own doctors. Any general practitioners, dietitians and psychologists, when and if consulted, are hand-picked by Mercy. Contrary to any pesky progressive notions of privacy, the girls’ consultations with doctors are supervised by Mercy staff.

The girls do not have access to televisions or radios, and they are only allowed access to ‘Christian’ books and music. On the plus side, they can bring with them as many translations of the Bible as they wish, within the 5 book limit.

Removing people from destructive influences and habits is the basis for most treatment programs, but in the case of Mercy Ministries, the girls not only have to submit behaviourally, to rules and attitudes about drugs and eating and exercise, but are also expected to submit intellectually and emotionally. There is no room for questioning, and little recourse to outside medical assistance, because Mercy claims to operate according to god’s infallible word. As long as a girl questions or resists Mercy’s methods, she will never be healed because she has not accepted god.

On the subject of god, Mercy Ministries says it is:

…an independent organization that is not affiliated with any single church, organization or denomination.

WRONG. Mercy Ministries and its methods are entrenched in the Pentecostal tradition, with all the trappings: belief in the inerrancy of the Bible, in ‘Baptism in the Holy Spirit’ (outwardly manifested through happy-clapping and speaking in tongues), and in divine healing. The Australian arm of Mercy Ministries is closely allied with and financially supported by Hillsong, an Assemblies of God church in Sydney.

In keeping with its Pentecostal leanings, Mercy Ministries is strictly anti-abortion. Mercy’s website tells girls with unplanned pregnancies that:

The Mercy Ministries staff is dedicated to helping each expectant birth mother reach the best decision for herself and her child.

Very liberal of them, eh? But then, the knockout punch, from the program application form:

Mercy Ministries firmly believes in allowing you to make the choice between adoption and parenting. We believe that while you are here God will give you direction for your life and that of your unborn child.

The word coercion springs to mind. The silence on abortion as a choice is deafening. If you are doubtful of my conclusion, watch this Mercy Ministries promotional video.

Mercy Ministries has also been criticised for being anti-gay. It is common knowledge that Pentecostals don’t approve of homosexuality, so for Mercy to be anti-gay is not a huge leap. An article in the Sydney Morning Herald revealed that girls are shown videos like this one, from American ‘ex-gay’ speaker Sy Rogers.

The Mercy Ministries application form contains this gem:

Have you ever been a victim of rape or incest? How old were you?

Have you ever been the victim of sexual abuse, physical abuse or ritual abuse?

Have you ever been involved in prostitution?

Have you ever been involved in same sex relationships/lesbianism?

Have you ever tried to commit suicide? When?

Did they think they could slip it in, and we wouldn’t notice? I never realised being a lesbian was an –ism. And to group it with rape, incest, sexual and physical abuse, and prostitution gives you an idea of how homosexual girls or girls confused about their sexuality are dealt with in the Mercy program.

Mercy Ministries is paranoid about homosexuality. Those speaking about the Australian program mentioned ‘separation contracts’ between girls who had developed close friendships in the facility, and not being allowed to show physical affection of any kind towards each other. On a more amusing note, the application form also contains this:

Have you ever witnessed or been involved in the following occult activities?
…
Tarot Cards
Psychic Consultations
Levitation
Voodoo
Chanting
Ouija Boards
Witchcraft
Channeling
Reading
White Magic
Transcendental Meditation
Witches Coven
Dungeons and Dragons
Programming (color, number, location, etc.)
Putting Curses on Others

Reading through the application form, questions like those above, combined with questions about whether the applicant has committed her life to god make it pretty clear where Mercy Ministries’ allegiance lies. So why would a non-Christian (or non-Pentecostal) girl enter Mercy’s programs? One reason is the lack of publicly-funded resources and treatment centres for young women with these issues. Another reason is that the Mercy Ministries program is free. They keep telling us it’s free. It’s FREE!

Or is it?

From the Mercy Ministries website:

Mercy Ministries provides food and shelter, but we are not responsible for medical expenses or prescriptions. It is the responsibility of parents or guardians of minors, or their sponsoring agency to cover these expenses. Adult aged applicants should provide for their own medical needs.

Mercy Ministries only provides food, shelter and religious indoctrination for free. Everything else has to be paid for by the girl or her health insurer, sponsor or parents. It’s not free. It’s certainly not value-free.

Not all the girls who go through Mercy’s programs are complaining. In Australia, Mercy’s supporters are coming out of the woodwork to counteract the negative allegations against the program. Mercy Ministries claims a 90% success rate. There is no information about who conducted the ‘independent survey’ that yielded this result, nor are there any statistics to back up this success rate – only a few anecdotes.

At best, Mercy Ministries is misleading the public by claiming their program is not affiliated with any particular church or denomination, and by advertising their program as completely free. If their website, with its squeaky-clean models and liberal-sounding emotive language, is enough to lull skeptical old me into almost believing they’re not so bad, how much easier to lure in a young girl in need of help?

At worst, Mercy’s methods are dangerous. They deny medical treatment and counselling to vulnerable girls, and instead, teach that mental illness, eating disorders and homosexuality are the work of the devil and can be cured through prayer. Girls already confused now feel guilty because they are not good enough Christians to be cured; or they rebel and are expelled for being untreatable. Many of the girls who are speaking out against Mercy Ministries say they relapsed after leaving the program, and had to find other treatment facilities to counteract the effects of Mercy’s methods.

Mercy Ministries is currently being investigated by the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission, and I’ll be watching closely to see how that develops. I wonder if it will be too much longer before similar complaints about Mercy Ministries to emerge in the American media?

Further reading:

• See the Mercy Ministries application form for yourself, after filling out a few details.
• The Mercy Ministries Australia website.
• Sean the Blogonaut’s X-Mercy Stories: written by ex-Mercy Ministries women.
• Mercy Survivors - a website for ex-Mercy women from around the world.

The Bad Astronomer recently brought to my attention Jenny McCarthy’s advocacy of using nutritional supplements and dietary restrictions to treat autism. McCarthy has claimed that diet and nutritional supplements help autistic kids, saying:

“I’ve been speaking to moms across the country who are all shouting out the same thing: ‘This (diet and supplement intake) is working.’”

“It’s so heartbreaking to see the medical community not support something called diet and vitamins. And it pains us, city after city after city. I see this heartbreak on these mom’s faces.”

“Autism isn’t covered by [medical] insurance. If things like diets and supplements are working, then why not support it? These kids are getting better and I will not shut up and will not stop fighting about it.”

This parallels a larger set of claims from the DAN and biomedical folks who claim that certain interventions can cure autism. As is well known, Jenny McCarthy and her fellow-travelers are wrong. Diet and supplements don’t cure autism.

There are lots of people who don’t know this, however, and they hear the kinds of crazy things said by McCarthy, the mercury militia, the biomedical quacks, and sundry other nutjobs, and they wonder about this stuff. Occasionally, they ask, well, why couldn’t diet and nutritional supplements help?

When asked, you could trot out the data and go over the statistics. And that would be a great idea in certain situations, such as if you were addressing a conference, or if you were a physician going over the evidence for an interested parent, or if you were a genuine expert blogger who was going over the data for the rest of us.

For the rest of us, though, we encounter these kinds of questions from our acquaintances - those who know we are rational thinkers, who might be under the impression we are knowledgeable or smart, or at least who know we are likely to have an opinion. What’s the best way to respond to these people?

For my part, I admit that diet restriction and vitamin intake could help. Exercise could help. Avoiding sun exposure could help. Wearing special underwear could help. Appealing to a magic sky-god could help.

But then I change the rules of the discussion and take them on a journey through common sense. Here is what I tell them:

The question is whether it is really likely to help.

Let’s have a look at this question rationally. Autism is a neurological disorder caused by disrupted early brain development. Autistic persons’ brains are characterized by differences in size and mass, excess neurons in certain locations, abnormal synapses and dendritic spines, structural differences in mirror neurons, and a differently-functioning cingulate cortex. Genetic differences have been found in autistic persons. The biological evidence suggests the disorder is a result of genetics and environmental interaction during brain development, which results in the fetus “building” a brain which is anatomically and functionally different from that of a typical human.

Now, there are also people who, due to a combination of genetics and environmental influences, develop abnormal hands, feet, palates, noses, kidneys, pancreases, stomaches and other pieces of anatomy.

Do we find those people’s hands/feet/etc attain normality if they consume a specific diet and take vitamin supplements?

No.

As much as it would be nice if nutrients could rebuild a brain into a standard configuration, there’s no reason to think that they could, if they can’t even rebuild other, simpler organs in a similar way.

Another line of evidence makes it unlikely. We do know about thousands of chemicals that can cause the body to reorganize entire organs and body systems into new configurations. Those chemicals are (a) not nutrients, and (b) deadly. The few that aren’t deadly are highly specialized pharmaceuticals that need careful dosing so as to not cause more harm than good - and most of them work despite their tendency to cause organ development to go haywire, not because of it. Potentially, one or a combination of these chemical compounds, if given in the right dosages over a period of time, might possibly result in re-organizing the brain in such a way to ameliorate autism. The problem is, none of these kinds of chemicals are found in any significant amounts in a normal diet, or in supplements.

So the question becomes: why research nutrients? Why think they might work? There’s already tons of evidence that it would be pointless. In the meantime, there are other avenues of research that we have plenty of reason to think could be helpful. Perhaps neurological drugs could result in more-normal brain functioning. Perhaps some kind of surgical intervention could do the same. Perhaps genetic-environmental interaction research could reveal risk factors, resulting in preventive strategies to bar autistic brain development.

All of these techniques have been proven to be effective in other disorders that have origins similar to autism. Whereas nutrition has been proven ineffective in other disorders that have origins similar to autism.

In a world where resources were unlimited, I’d do formal, double-blind, large-n trials of nutrients. In the real world where resources are limited, however, I’m going to spend my money in the place that prior knowledge shows it is most likely to do good. And similarly, I’d be placing my faith in proven or at least plausible treatments, rather than disproven ones that don’t make any sense in the first place.