Most doctors claim tobacco smoke causes serious diseases, but at the Griya Balur clinic, in Indonesia, it’s used as a cure for cancer, autism or emphysema.
In most western countries, a clinic that uses tobacco as a remedy would have been closed down immediately, but in the city of Jakarta, it’s one of the busiest treatment centers. People suffering from serious illnesses, some ironically caused by years of smoking, come to Gryia Balur searching for miraculous cures associated with tobacco smoke. Its founder, Dr Gretha Zahar told AFP that she has treated over 60,000 people from all over the world, in the last ten years.
The treatment for cancer or emphysema sufferers includes blowing smoke from “divine cigarettes” infused with “nanotechnology”, through a tube, to remove cancer-causing “free radicals”. Smoke is blown into the mouth, nose and ears of the patients. Zahar claims that smoking actually manipulates the mercury found in tobacco cigarettes, curing deadly diseases and even slowing down the aging process. On her website, she says her theories don’t need to be published in medical journals or subjected to clinical tests, and that she doesn’t have the financial resources to “fight Western medical scientists”.
With tobacco cigarettes becoming more and more popular in Indonesia, Griya Balur clinic is in no danger of being shut down, as the government collects around $7 billion a year in industry taxes. Old traditions relating to tobacco, and aggressive advertisements from cigarette companies hoping to gain a new foothold in the area, after losing ground in the western world, are causing an increasing number of young Indonesians to take up smoking
According to the World Health Organisation, 400,000 Indonesians die from cigarette smoking every year, while another 25,000 die from passive smoking, but that hasn’t stopped some tobacco farmers and legislators from challenging a law that recognizes the plant as addictive and hazardous to health. They recently went to court invoking Dr. Zahar’s theories and claiming tobacco is in fact a cheap alternative to more expensive drugs, and that it eliminates anxiety, calms the nerves and increases concentration. A pharmacology professor even told the judges he has never heard of anyone dying from smoking…
