China: self-styled 'divine doctor' Hu Wanlin, claiming non-contact qi healing, convicted after treatments linked to about 150 deaths

Spiritual nexus

Hu Wanlin presented himself as a qigong master able to heal by transmitting qi without physical contact, claimed a ninety per cent cure rate, and diagnosed patients in examinations lasting seconds. It was that claim to supernatural healing power, promoted through a book titled Qigong Master, rather than any claim of medical competence, that induced roughly 150 people to accept his sodium-sulphate preparations. The court charged the lesser offence of practising medicine without a licence; the mechanism of harm was the claimed spiritual power. Claimed supernatural healing power was the mechanism of harm, not incidental to it. Victims submitted to and continued a fatal treatment because Hu asserted spiritual power beyond medicine (non-contact qi transmission, mystical diagnosis) rather than ordinary medical competence. This distinguishes the case from ordinary unlicensed practice or medical fraud. The court charged the lesser offence of unlicensed medical practice; the corpus assesses nexus on the mechanism of harm, not on the prosecutor's charging choice.

• Spiritual healing or treatment
• Other spiritual authority or belief