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Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine | 
 enlarge | Authors: Simon Singh, Edzard Ernst
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 6259
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.5
ISBN: 0393066614
Dewey Decimal Number: 610
EAN: 9780393066616
ASIN: 0393066614
Publication Date: August 18, 2008
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Product Description
The truth about the potions, lotions, pills and needles, pummelling and energizing that lie beyond the realms of conventional medicine.
Whether you are an ardent believer in alternative medicine, a skeptic, or are simply baffled by the range of services and opinions, this guide lays to rest doubts and contradictions with authority, integrity, and clarity. In this groundbreaking analysis, over thirty of the most popular treatments—acupuncture, homeopathy, aromatherapy, reflexology, chiropractic, and herbal medicines—are examined for their benefits and potential dangers. Questions answered include: What works and what doesn't? What are the secrets, and what are the lies? Who can you trust, and who is ripping you off? Can science decide what is best, or do the old wives' tales really tap into ancient, superior wisdom?
In their scrutiny of alternative and complementary cures, authors Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst also strive to reassert the primacy of the scientific method as a means for determining public health practice and policy. 16 illustrations.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 anyone thinking of CAM should read this November 18, 2008
Mr. C. Doyle (St. George's, Grenada)
This is an excellent book which gives the results of hard science on alternative medicine. Ernst (one of the authors) is a medical doctor who has practiced alternative medicine including homeopathy, and was the world's first professor of complementary medicine. So he started with a favorable view of CAM.
The results show that most (but not all) of the benefit of CAM comes from the placebo effect.
This is perhaps not surprising, because were CAM to really be as effective as traditional medicine, it would have replaced it.
Importantly it shows that that there very real dangers to some CAM practices, especially chiropractic work on the neck.
Many people, who feel they have really benefited from CAM treatments will be surprised at this result, and probably deny it. The authors also explain this to some extent. In the end double blind studies are the only source to really assess the value of CAM, and as has been pointed out before, the plural of anecdote is not data.
 Quackbusting the Quackbusters November 10, 2008
Bagattel (Toulouse, France)
13 out of 20 found this review helpful
When one sets out to use clinical trials for the basis of an evaluation for any therapy it is essential that one know who designed the protocol, what did the protocol encompass, who paid for the study and was the protocol strictly adhered to.
Dr Linus Pauling, who had extensive positive clinical experience with vitamin C and collaborated with Nobel Laureates, Hoffer and Szent-Gyorgyi in furthering the knowledge of the benefits of this essential nutrient, designed a protocol for a government funded Mayo Clinic control study. Pauling was stunned when he discovered that the Mayo did not follow his protocol (sabotage?) and arrived at a conclusion that ran counter to the findings of some of the greatest and most respected researchers in the field. The erroneous findings of the Mayo study, for all intent and purpose, closed the door on the future therapeutic use of vitamin C in mainstream allopathic medicine. High dose vitamin C therapy was reviled and cast aside, in spite of its previously documented dramatic benefits. To this day, as a result of the rigged conclusions of the Mayo Clinic vitamin C study, this essential nutrient has the ridiculous government approved minimum daily requirement of only 60 mg. The reality is that 1000 - 2000 mg daily are required for robust health and doses up to 10,000 - 15,000 mg are needed to help cure disease that has a C deficiency causal factor (certain cardiovascular diseases, cancers, etc).
This is only one example of what has been going on for a very long time when allopaths are tasked with rating alternative therapies. Granted, there is much snake oil being pushed upon the public by unscrupulous merchants. This creates a high noise to signal ratio for those seeking out the valid benefits and truths of alternative treatments.
Since over 100,000 people die annually in the US from reactions to properly prescribed prescription drugs, it seems disingenuous for academically trained allopaths to sit in judgment of therapies that they have not personally experimented with in their own bodies, for this is ultimately the only source of real objective knowledge. Since statistics play a big part in therapeutic analysis, It begs the question; have the authors compared the mortality rate numbers of alternative therapies against the frightening numbers generated by their own professional brothers in mainstream medicine. There is a huge disparity which, when viewed objectively, indicates that whether effective or not, Most alternative health and nutritional supplementation is far less dangerous than the pundits can allow us to believe.
I had tried several types of chiropractic treatment for chronic lower back pain for which the medical doctors could offer only pain pills and surgery. Then, over thirty years ago, I visited a NUCCA (National Upper Cervical Chiropractic Association) trained chiropractor. Their focus on the proper alignment of the upper cervical, specifically the relationship of the C1 to the skull, ended my chronic pain once and for all. To those practitioners I am forever grateful. Not only did their therapy correct my back pain, but it gave an enormous boost to the immune system. I would not defend 90% of those practicing chiropractic today, but those few doctors trained in the NUCCA discipline are in possession of a very important piece of knowledge of a basic requirement for robust health. It is a weak signal in a wall of noise, but it can be found if one perseveres.
Likewise, there is much demonization over the use of silver as a broad spectrum antimicrobial, as well there should be. The health food stores are filled with questionable nostrums containing silver, BUT, I discovered the groundbreaking work of a small biotech company in Utah which had developed and patented a novel method of creating nanoparticle sized pure elemental silver (not ionic, as is commonly found on the store shelves) in the purest of water. This company had amassed an impressive volume of scientific and clinical data, human, animal and in vitro, attesting to their product's non-toxicity, safety and efficacy. Much of their science is peer reviewed and published*. I began taking their products 9 years ago. Since that time I have not suffered one infection of any sort, nor have I taken any antibiotics in that time - or needed to. Can any of you say the same?
Since "alternative" therapy covers such a vast area of methods and ingredients, I do not place much value in those who skim over the extant research and draw conclusions from that data. Oriental and Ayurvedic herbal medicines have been keeping large populations healthy since pre-history, I would not be so hasty to dismiss them. I also would not jump right into the "latest" fad treatment based on these ancient practices.
If one wants to discover the realities of alternative health, much personal research should be required before self experimentation. But only through gathering objective observations of any substance or therapy, actually used on oneself, can real knowledge be acquired. It is obvious that for the authors of this book, this level of awareness did not factor into their conclusions.
The latest American life expectancy statistics were released a few weeks ago. The life expectancy of the American male has now dropped below 70. This is one of the worst in the 1st world, given that the US has the most expensive health care on the planet.
The truth is out there. It is seldom easy to find. Persistence, discernment and due diligence will eventually lead you to it.
[...]
Excellent and fair investigation October 28, 2008
Gaetan Lion
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is a hot topic. There are a lot of current books addressing this subject including Snake Oil Science: The Truth about Complementary and Alternative Medicine, Healing, Hype, or Harm?: A Critical Analysis of Complementary or Alternative Medicine (Societas) and Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All.
I decided I would read only one of those books and select the one that would appear the most balanced. Just by their titles that expressed an over the top anti-alternative medicine bias, I immediately disqualified some of the mentioned books. I ended up selecting "Trick or Treatment" because the authors themselves seemed pretty balanced in their approach by letting clinical trials do the talking. If anything, their background suggested a pro-stand on the whole thing. Indeed, Edzard Ernst, MD is the world's first professor of complementary medicine.
I started this book by reading the Appendix where the authors write summaries and share the clinical evidence (or lack of) on 30 or so alternative therapies. Their findings corroborated my other readings on the subject. And, it confirmed that the authors did not have a hidden bias against such alternative therapies.
Now imagine if medicine had not changed whatsoever over the past 200 years or so. Additionally, envision it was founded by a charismatic figure whose writings would be unquestionable to this day. Such a discipline would have no means of self-improvement and discovery. It would be frozen in time forever and would be more of a religion than a science. In actuality, this would mean the entire body of Western medicine would be limited to one single deadly universal "cure": bloodletting. That seems really absurd. Sadly enough, that is the fate of acupuncture, homeopathy, and chiropractic therapy today
The authors' excellent scientific investigation uncovers that the foundations of acupuncture, homeopathy, and chiropractic therapy have no scientific bearing and defy common sense.
Acupuncture was invented over 2000 years ago and, has not changed since. Its core concepts of body meridians and chi are myths that have no physiological evidence. The famous Chinese surgeries done with the patient awake without anesthetics turned out to be frauds. The patients actually received massive dose of anesthetics and sedative in pill form.
Homeopathy is even stranger. Its core principle is that the more you dilute an ingredient the more potent it becomes. With this rational you should suffer an overdose by the time the ingredient is entirely eliminated from a water solution. This does not make any sense. Yet, homeopathic remedies are so diluted that not a single molecule of the active ingredient remains in the remedy. Supposedly, water has a "memory" of the ingredient that was in it and so does sugar pills. I was personally disappointed in those findings as I truly thought Arnica was an excellent muscle pain reliever. But, knowing what I know now I'd be hard pressed to use something that has no active ingredient left in it.
Chiropractic therapy also lacks any scientific bearing. The core concept of subluxation (misalignment of the vertebrae) and the related universal cure of spinal manipulation are just myths. To think that spinal manipulation can cure you of asthma, diabetes, or anything else is delusion. Also, neck manipulation, a very prevalent practice, is dangerous as it can impair one of the main aortas going to the brain and cause strokes sometimes days after the neck manipulation. Those findings did not surprise me. I had been to two chiropractors. One advanced that he could cure me of adult acne, yet his own skin was twice as bad as mine. The other one gave me a back and neck adjustment that I'll never forget and left me just about traumatized.
The authors show that all three of those disciplines fail the tests of effectiveness and occasionally safety in any well structured clinical trials. What those disciplines exploit is the placebo effect and the body's own ability to recover when left to its own devises. Thus, practitioners assign full credit to their therapy and so do the patients who believe in those. But by doing so, the practitioners just perpetuate myths.
When it comes to herbal medicine, the record is a lot more mixed (meaning much better). The authors uncover that many herbal remedies have successfully demonstrated health benefits in rigorous clinical trials. They provide excellent summary of those findings in table 1 on page 203. They also share the risks and side effects to watch for in table 2 on page 214.
The underlying main topic of the entire book is the development of the scientific method as it pertains to testing drugs and cures. This entails how to capture the placebo effect, how to conduct rigorous and accurate clinical trials, how to eliminate various biases, and how to use meta-analysis. The authors dedicate two full chapters out of six on the subject. Additionally, all other chapters reiterate the subject to such a degree that I feel the book could have been better organized. In other words, the two chapters covering the scientific method should have been longer. And, the four other ones should have been more focused on the actual topic of the chapter.
One should not derive that because most alternative therapies do not work that conventional ones do not have issues. To further explore how the actual practice of the scientific method is not always perfect, I recommend the fascinating Inside the FDA: The Business and Politics Behind the Drugs We Take and the Food We Eat. For explorations about the concerning prevalence of erroneous diagnostics I recommend How Doctors Think. Also, to learn more about the flaws of current medicine practice I recommend The Last Well Person: How to Stay Well Despite the Health-Care System. And on the excessive practice of cancer screening I suggest Should I Be Tested for Cancer?: Maybe Not and Here's Why.
thorough, reasoned, fair October 28, 2008
Steven M. Strong (The Woodlands, TX)
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book explains the scientific method, clinical trials and evidence based medicine very well then applies these concepts to evaluating alternative treatments.
Be prepared to revisit your thinking about acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic therapy and holistic medicine October 23, 2008
Blaine Greenfield (Belle Meade, NJ)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
If you're a fan of acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic therapy,
or holistic medicine, you probably won't want to read TRICK OR
TREATMENT by Simon Singh and Dr. Edzard Ernst . . . its premise,
as stated in the subtitle, is to present THE UNBELEVABLE FACTS
ABOUT ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE.
In doing so, they state in the very first two paragraphs what readers
can expect to find:
* The contents of this book are guided entirely by a single pithy
sentence, written over 2,000 years ago by Hippocrates of Cos.
Recognized as the father of medicine, he stated:
"There are, in fact, two things, science and opinion;
the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance."
There's much to like about this book . . . for one, there were
interesting tidbits about famous people, including the following
about Florence Nightingale:
* Nightingale's passion for statistics enabled her to persuade the
government of the importance of a whole series of health reforms.
For example, many people had argued that training nurses was
a waste of time, because patients cared or by trained nurses
actually had a higher mortality rate than those treated by
untrained staff. Nightingale, however, pointed out that this was only
because more serious cases were being sent to those wards with
trained nurses. If the intention is to compare the results from two
groups, then it is essential . . . to assign patients randomly
to the two groups. Sure enough, when Nightingale set up trials
in which patients were randomly assigned to trained and untrained
nurses, it became clear that their counterparts in wards with untrained
nurses. Furthermore, Nightingale used statistics to show that home
births were safer than hospital births, presumably because British homes
were cleaner than Victorian hospitals. Her interests also ranged
overseas, because she also used mathematics to study the influence
of sanitation on healthcare in rural India.
I also liked how the authors clearly explained concepts and while
doing so, incorporated some humor into what otherwise could have
been very dry material . . . for example, as indicated in this passage:
* Scientists even began to poke fun at homeopaths. For example,
because homeopathic liquid remedies are so diluted that they
often contain only water, scientists would sarcastically endorse
their use for the treatment of one particular medical condition,
namely dehydration. Or they would jokingly offer to make each
other a drink of homeopathic coffee, which was presumably
incredibly diluted and yet tasted incredibly strong, because
homeopaths believe that lower amounts of active ingredient
are associated with greater potency. Similar logic also implied that
a patient who forgot to take a homeopathic remedy might die
of an overdose.
At the very end of the book, there's an excellent "Rapid Guide to
Alternative Therapies" . . . these cover some 36 others, including
Colonic Irrigation, Feldenkrais Method, Magnet Therapy, Osteopathy,
and Reiki.
Be forewarned that you might not like what you read in TRICK
OR TREATMENT, particularly if you believe in any and/or all
of the above . . . however, it will get you thinking--and that's
always a good thing.
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