A Consumers Guide to Alternative Medicine: A Close Look at Homeopathy, Acupuncture, Faith-Healing, and Other Unconventional Treatments [Paperback]

Kurt Butler (Author), Stephen Barrett (Author, Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1992

Butler disposes of the myths and madness perpetrated by fringe practitioners, bogus nutritionists, 'health pornographers', and the 'quackery Mafia'. Laying bare the absurdities and dangers of some popular diets and the unethical behaviour of health gurus, he also shows how some unscientific 'healing cults' are getting their dogma written into state law, defrauding the public and siphoning off billions of healthcare dollars.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Butler, no stranger to fraudulent health claims and quackery (he was founder and president of the Quackery Action Council) here presents a rogue's gallery of physicians, pseudo-scientists and self-appointed guardians of health, contending that they have taken Americans for the proverbial ride through rip-offs, health misinformation and just plain fraud. Although attacks on these people--who include Stuart Berger, M.D., Gary Null, Earl Mindell and Lendon Smith, M.D.--are hardly new, Butler's message of prevalent health fraud in alternative therapies does bear repeating. In addition to taking swipes at various alternative and New Age therapies, from homeopathy to crystal and faith healing and Christian Science, Butler bears down especially hard on chiropractors, calling them "masters of doubletalk and weasel wording." The media, he says--the Phil Donahues, Oprahs, Larry Kings and Geraldo Riveras--are also to blame for quackery. He hits on consumer magazines, names publishers who in the past have published books he believes are detrimental to health and chides Publishers Weekly book reviews for allegedly promoting suspect alternative therapies. Butler makes helpful suggestions about how to be a smart but skeptical health-care consumer, as well as about what other professionals (nurses, dentists, physicians, pharmacists, ethical chiropractors, librarians) can do.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Butler, a nutritionist, attacks just about every alternative therapy in existence, including crystal healing, aromatherapy, and astrological counseling. Much of his data can be found in other works ( The Health Robbers , edited by Stephen Barrett and Gilda Knight, LJ 12/1/76), but he provides hard-to-find information refuting ultra-fringe therapies like firewalking and live cell analysis. Librarians may not appreciate his list of "book publishers to beware of," his suggestions that they place warning labels in books promoting unconventional therapies, or his allegation that many book reviews in Library Journal and Publishers Weekly "are done by non-experts who cannot tell the difference between a fact and a piece of nonsense." This is an extremely one-sided book mainly for libraries that collect heavily in alternative medicine. Others need more balanced viewpoints.
-Natalie Kupferberg, Montana State Univ. Lib., Bozeman
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 299 pages
• Publisher: Prometheus Books (June 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0879757337
• ISBN-13: 978-0879757335
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,284,508 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, December 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Consumers Guide to Alternative Medicine: A Close Look at Homeopathy, Acupuncture, Faith-Healing, and Other Unconventional Treatments (Paperback)

I wish the author had cut the bombast and bluster and been more dispassionate -- explaining exactly what each "cure" was and why it didn't work. Instead he goes on about he quacks and expects us to take him at his word that the remedy is no good. I bought this book so I could understand exactly why certain remediesdidn't work, why they were quackery, partly to head off a friend. Instead I get told something is no good, but not why and not what should be used instead. I'm still searching for a good up-to-date book on the current fads and fallacies.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A SKEPTICAL AND CRITICAL OVERVIEW OF ALTERNATIVE HEALTH, July 19, 2011

By 

Steven H. Propp (Sacramento, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Consumers Guide to Alternative Medicine: A Close Look at Homeopathy, Acupuncture, Faith-Healing, and Other Unconventional Treatments (Paperback)

Calling this book a "Consumer's Guide" is definitely a misnomer---it's published by Prometheus Books, the preeminent skeptical/secular humanist publisher. So that should tip you off that the book takes a definite "negative" stance toward nearly all forms of "alternative medicine." But once you understand that, the book contains some interesting and useful information.

The author, Dr. Kurt Butler, is also the author of The New Handbook of Health and Preventive Medicine and The Best Medicine: The Complete Health and Preventive Medicine Handbook.

He wrote in the Introduction to this 1992 book, "Health fraud, especially nutrition fraud, seems to enjoy a privileged status in our society... there is almost no protection from fake cancer cures, bogus arthritis remedies, miracle diets, and scores of other snake oils that are worthless, dangerous, or both... The health-fraud industry is large, entrenched, and institutionalized... Pyramid-style organizations are creating armies of zealots intent on getting rich by selling herbs, vitamins, and weight-loss products to their friends and neighbors... Almost anyone with an 'alternative' health-related product, procedure, pill, diet, or book is free to market it with little or no social opposition or government regulation... In the areas of nutrition and health care, you can follow the flock and get fleeced. Or you can learn to see through the schemes and scams, and to stay healthy without all the paranoia, pills, potions, and paraphernalia now in vogue."

Here are some additional quotations from the book:

"Macrobiotics is more than just a diet; it offers a mystical system of medicine. Its dangers include more than malnutrition; they include misdiagnosis, inappropriate treatment, and unnecessary injury and death." (Pg. 22)
"Gary Null, who bills himself as 'America's #1 Health Crusader,' is in reality one of America's foremost promoters of dangerous health misinformation and a peddler of supplements as well." (Pg. 42)
"Most chiropractors cling tenaciously to century-old philosophy for which there never has been any evidence or theoretical support and which has been disproved beyond reasonable doubt... As with astrology, chiropractic has established no scientific standards... There are dozens of different methods, none of which has been scientifically validated or proved better or worse than the rest." (Pg. 64)
"Nor is there evidence that chiropractic treatment can relieve pain as well as the commonly used pharmaceuticals (though for some chronic pain, the risk of using drugs may outweigh the benefit)." (Pg. 77)
"Ayurvedic medicine is traditional Hindu folk medicine. It is vigorously promoted in the United States and other Western countries by Marahishi Mahesh Yogi's trancedental meditation (TM) movement. Physicians and lay followers of the guru market a line of products as well as services."

14 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars There can be no 'Alternative' in science. Either something works or it doesn't., January 3, 2007

By 

Jim Carey "stabbyappleton" (Hollywood, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Consumers Guide to Alternative Medicine: A Close Look at Homeopathy, Acupuncture, Faith-Healing, and Other Unconventional Treatments (Paperback)

You can't have 'alternative' biology and 'alternative' physics, but yet the Cult of 'Alternative' medicine seems to think they are immune to scientific analysis, empirical testing, facts and all those other "nuances" that get in the way of their faith.

I see the majority of the reviews come from this Cult of true believers who no doubt found this searching for more scripture to preach to them. "What's this? Something that goes against my preconceived notions? Blasphemy!"

In actuality this book is NOT an attack-piece. It is a series of findings compiled by licensed professionals taken from well-documented, peer-reviewed, established sources such as JAMA and many other medical journals who used methods such as double-blind testing and chemical analysis to reach their conclusion. You see in science, the conclusion comes AFTER the research. This is the fatal flaw in the 'alternative' medicine field: much like with so called 'Christian' science, they have established the conclusion first and then seek to bend the 'evidence' to reach their pre-conceived end. (i.e. The Earth is only 600 years old this is why carbon-dating MUST be inaccurate). That is, of course, when they even ATTEMPT to use science to explain their outrageous beliefs. More often than not 'alternative' health is based on secondary sources (my friends mother swears the blood of a virgin cured her hangnail!) or ancient scripture (what worked in 16th century rural Asia MUST be better than today because those Asians were SO in tune with their bodies and so mystical and wise!) and ignores all evidence to the contrary (hangnails clear up naturally and 16th century rural Asia wasn't the healthiest place to be.)

Unfortunately this belief has permeated into society and has gotten away with a lot of fraud and false-hope by becoming an unquestioned 'alternative' to serious treatment. The book focuses in on how this developed as well as what causes a person to accept the irrational claims made by 'alternative' medicine con artists like Deepak Chopra and Andy Weil. The information in this book can be a great source of knowledge and comfort for any person who is seeking a truthful and honest look at alternative medicine and finds themselves awash in a sea of new age health books written with no sources or references and 'alternative' health gurus and self-proclaimed 'doctors' who speak like children and never back anything up.