‘Scam’ autism cure offered: Exploitative charlatans

Human nature decrees that for every weakness, there is an individual, a profession, or one entity or another ready to exploit the situation.

An atheist might argue that sending a sick person on a pilgrimage to a shrine, Lourdes or Knock, say, in the hope of achieving a physical cure, is exploitative and cruel. Cardinal John Henry Newman, who will be canonised in Rome next Sunday, might have argued otherwise, and might have suggested that a pilgrimage need not have a physical outcome to be successful.