BBC News | AFRICA | Elderly 'witches' persecuted in Mozambique

Sounds like a fun place. Some people die of AIDS, and everyone looks for the closest old woman to blame it on. They're helped along by traditional "healers", whom I'd guess would prefer nobody look that closely at them.

Professor Ricardo Duarte believes there are victims but, in general, the traditional healers "do more good than harm".

Duarte -- an ethnologist and not a physician -- probably hasn't had his house burned down by his drunken son who was told by a "healer" that Professor Duarte was causing the son's impotence. Or been exiled from his home into a famine-stricken region for cursing people with HIV.

This is a mean-spirited post, but I hate people of this stripe -- faith healers, witch doctors, "spiritual healers" of the oh-so-badly-named "Christian Science" movement. All of them. There was a time when this sort of thing had its place, but we know better now.