Tom's Mazola Mess

The actor and his fiance, Katie Holmes, hosted a fundraising benefit in New York City tonight, amid blistering criticism. Cruise is a co-founder of the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, a Scientology-based program claiming to have the secret in curing lingering health problems associated with 9/11 rescue workers.

Tom and Katie were more than happy to share their secrets and meet and greet the heroic firefighters and others at the gala event, with one catch. Ticket prices started at $6,250. Proceeds from the event benefit the "project." For the record, the median salary for New York Firefighters is $46,160.

The controversial program purports to cleanse the body using a proprietary L. Ron Hubbard technique, the "purification rundown," which consists of "sauna sweating, ingestion of cooking oil and large doses of niacin."

On the Project's website, www.detox.org, President Jim Woodworth describes the results, "Patients have had black paste coming out of their pores in the sauna. Their sweat has stained towels purple, blue, orange, yellow and black. They have reported bowel movements that are blue, or green, or that have smelled like smoke -despite the fact that they had not been at a fire scene for months."

The New York Fire Department has withdrawn its initial support of the program upon learning that "Cruise and company advise everyone to stop taking their prescription medications or using inhalers" according to the New York Post's Page Six.

Cruise made headlines this year with his couch-jumping ways on Oprah and his attack against Brooke Shields for taking anti-depressants to help her through her post-partum depression.