Bare-Faced Messiah (PDF) - Apologetics Index

nuclear weapons by 'as-ising' the atomic bomb, for in that month he hired the Royal Empire Society
Hall in London in order to preside over the 'London Congress on Nuclear Radiation and Health'.
The various lectures delivered at this extraordinary event were later condensed into an even more
extraordinary book titled All About Radiation and written by 'a nuclear physicist' and 'a medical
doctor'.
The doctor was anonymous, but the 'nuclear physicist' was none other than L. Ron Hubbard
offering the benefit of his advice with customary scant recourse to the laws of science. He asserted,
for example, that a sixteen-foot wall could not stop a gamma ray whereas a human body could, an
assertion later described by an eminent radiologist as 'showing complete and utter ignorance of
physics, nuclear science and medicine'.[7] In line with his philosophy that most illnesses were
caused by the mind, Hubbard avowed, 'The danger in the world today in my opinion is not the
atomic radiation which may or may not be floating through the atmosphere but the hysteria
occasioned by that question.' Radiation, he added, was 'more of a mental than a physical problem'.
Fortunately, however, no one needed to worry about radiation, since Hubbard had devised a vitamin
compound called 'Dianazene' (after his first child by Mary Sue?) which provided protection:
'Dianazene runs out radiation - or what appears to be radiation. It also proofs a person against
radiation to some degree. It also turns on and runs out incipient cancer. I have seen it run out skin
cancer. A man who didn't have much liability to skin cancer (only had a few moles) took Dianazene.
His whole jaw turned into a raw mass of cancer. He kept on taking Dianazene and it disappeared
after a while. I was looking at a case of cancer that might have happened.'
The doctor, writing under the pseudonym Medicus, confirmed in his section of the book that 'some
very recent work by L. Ron Hubbard and the Hubbard Scientology Organization has indicated that a
simple combination of vitamins in unusual doses can be of value. Alleviation of the remote effects
and increased tolerance of radiation have been the apparent results . . .'
The Food and Drugs Administration in the United States was inclined, after studying a copy of All
About Radiation, to disagree. FDA agents swooped on the Distribution Center Inc, a Scientology
company in Washington, seized 21,000 Dianazene tablets and destroyed them, alleging that they
were falsely labelled as a preventative treatment for 'radiation sickness'.
In July 1957, Hubbard addressed the 'Freedom Congress' at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington;
during the lecture he carried out a christening ceremony for the first time. Its function, he explained,
was simply to help get the thetan oriented in its new body and informality was the keynote, as was
made evident in a booklet titled 'Ceremonies of the Founding Church of Scientology'. After
introducing the child to its parents and godparents, the ceremony proceeded: 'Here we go. (To the
child): How are you? All right. Now your name is ---. You got that? Good. There you are. Did that
upset you? Now, do you realize that you're a member of the HASI? Pretty good, huh?' Thereafter the
parents and godparents were introduced to the child and the ceremony concluded: 'Now you're
suitably christened. Don't worry about it, it could be worse. OK. Thank you very much. They'll treat
you all right.'