Listeners of my podcast and followers of Canadian news in general will probably be familiar with the case of two First Nations girls with leukemia whose parents decided to have treated at a Florida massage establishment called The Hippocrates Health Institute. A judge recently declared that the girls could not be taken away from their parents, as the latter were well within their rights to explore traditional medicine, even though what the Institute offers is pure quackery and has nothing to do with First Nations beliefs. (For a further discussion of why Western medicine is not relative, see my article in the Prince Arthur Herald)

Here’s a fun development: the owners of the Hippocrates Health Institute are now facing  lawsuits from former staff members who claim it’s a scam.

From the CBC website:

“Canadians represent a significant part of HHI’s business, with sources telling CBC that more than a third of the health spa’s customers at any given time could come from north of the border.”

From the National Post website:

“Mr. Torchinsky is representing four ex-employees, some of whom are registered nurses, who allege they lost their jobs at Hippocrates Health Institute for objecting to the center’s policy of ‘enabling unlicensed physicians … to prescribe medication to patients.'”

Finally, a bit of good news in this otherwise deplorable saga….