Finally, a just sentence for a super quack. The notorious TCM ‘slapping therapist’ Hong Chi Xiao was today sentenced to 10 years in prison with a non-parole period of 7 years and 6 months. This is extremely good news because I was afraid that he might be sentenced to a couple of months doing some sort of community service. But this drama is not yet over. The parents of the diseased boy have a civil case running against Hong Chi Xiao as well as the director of the clinic which hosted the slapping therapy sessions, ‘Dr’ Chin Ven Tan. In the UK, where the slapping therapist misled and killed another person, a warrant for his arrest was also recently issued. The UK victim’s son lamented the fact that those people and institutions enabling and profiting from the integration of quackery with modern healthcare are getting away scot-free. I have to agree, and hopefully one day someone will take on the enablers of people such as Hong Chi Xiao, specifically those universities in Australia that promote the integration of TCM (and all other sorts of quackery) with modern medicine. One of these universities, Western Sydney University (Prof Barney Glover), with their National Institute of Complementary Medicine (Prof Alan Bensoussan) played a very big role in this slapping therapy drama. Luckily some parts of their dark world were quite recently exposed in the media. Please read “Communists, smugglers, and millions of dollars: inside the taxpayer-funded NICM institute spreading Chinese medicine in Australia”. With any luck their time will come.

But let’s first celebrate this sentence which will hopefully send a strong message to the growing army of quacks out there. Below is the article which was published a couple of minutes ago, and I will keep you posted on any future developments.

Start of article

“Key points:

Xiao advised the boy’s parents to stop his insulin injections and blood glucose tests

The judge said Xiao showed no real remorse and had continued to practice on diabetics

The boy’s mother, father and grandmother were found not guilty of charges relating to the death

A self-proclaimed Chinese healer who showed “a disdain for Western medicine” has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for the manslaughter of a diabetic boy who attended “slapping” workshops in Sydney.

Hong Chi Xiao, 56, was extradited from London in 2017 to face charges more than two years after the conference he held in Hurstville in 2015.

The boy’s parents attended the event in April that year, where they were advised by Xiao to stop their son’s insulin injections and blood glucose tests.

The boy, 6, became visibly ill over several days and was vomiting a black substance, but in a group chat Xiao told the mother it was merely his body “adjusting” and part of the “self-healing process”.

The boy began to have seizures and was pronounced dead when he was taken to St George Hospital.

In October, Xiao was found guilty by a jury of manslaughter for breaching his duty of care.

Today he was handed a sentence of 10 years with a non-parole period of seven-and-a-half years.

District Court Judge Garry Neilson said Xiao had shown no signs of true remorse, despite claiming in a letter he had been maintaining prayers in prison for the family.

“The offender clearly expressed to people a disdain for Western medicine, implicit in it is a view of the superiority of traditional Chinese medicine,” Judge Neilson said.

In a sentence spanning five hours, the judge said Xiao had continued to conduct his workshops following the death “with no obvious restriction” preventing diabetics from taking part.

He’d also mounted a defence at trial which denied telling the parents to cease conventional medicine, despite evidence to the contrary.

The boy’s mother, father and grandmother have all previously been found not guilty of charges related to the death.

Xiao promotes a method known as Paida Lajin, an alternative therapy which involves fasting, stretching and slapping participants and claims to eradicate the symptoms of diabetes.

He has rejected criticism he is a “con man” and that his techniques can endanger lives.

He has already spent more than two years in prison and will be eligible for parole in October 2024.”