The latest Western celebrity to seek the East's heating touch is British billionaire and father-in-law of cricket icon lmran Khan, Sir James Goldsmith. The healer is the renowned metal therapist based in Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh,'Vaidya Balendu Prakash, who is treating Goldsmith, 64, in Paris for cancer.

The cancer, that first appeared in Goldsmith's liver in 1993, went into remission and surfaced in his pancreas in 1995. It has recently led to further complications in his gut tissues. It forced Goldsmith to undergo painful treatment while he was campaigning for the Referendum party during the recent British general election, pushed to the limits of conventional allopathic treatment, his family sought the intervention of Vaedya Prakash, who is well-known in Pakistan and India, where he has successfully treated many multiple sclerosis and cancer patients using burnt traces of heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury - a therapy based on the ancient Indian Rasayan Sastra (Down To Earth, Vol 5, No 13).

Still, the British played the doubting Thomas act. Sir James' brother and one of the founder editors of The Ecologist, Edward Goldsmith, made inquiries about the healer's credentials with Indian environmentalists, including Vandana Shiva, Sunderial Bahuguna and the editor of Down To Earth (DTE).

Prakash, who was in Delhi on his return from Paris in the first week of June, told DTE that Sir James had contributed US $40,000 to the corpus of the Vaidya's medical research foundation in Dehra Dun. Prakash has reason to be proud - two years after being snubbed by Australian doctors, who asked people to stop his metal therapy, he has been accepted by their French counterparts as the last resort for a British noble. He considers it a recognition of his work in traditional Indian medicine.