Customer Reviews

Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(4)

 

 

Suckers is an easy read and very well researched. I must admit that I rarely read "popular science" books, since I find them brushing over details and ultimately getting facts wrong. This book however, has the facts and backgrounds of a whole host of "alternative" "treatments" down to a T, teaches you how to recognise a quack by the language they use and will ultimately save you money, because you will not fall for their promises. I finished the book on Monday and have already recommended it to two colleagues.

Did you know that "Traditional Chinese Medicine" is barely over 50 years old?

Did you know the origins of chiropractise and osteopathy?

This book is an essential read for the parent who constantly needs to defend their decision not to use a naturopath and for the health professional who has preserved their ethics and is not offering unproven treatments to satisfy the modern trend for supposedly ancient healing methods.

Snake Oil Science: The Truth About Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Suckers is an excellent book that critically reviews the many problems with all forms of alternative medicine. Any person using or considering the use of any form of alternative medicine (CAM,integrative, complementary, etc.)should read this well researched book. It covers a broad range of ineffective practices, nicely exposing the weaknesses of those practices, many of which could be dangerous and contribute to the delay of the application of an appropriate therapy. Unlike other excellent books exposing the problems of alternative medicines (SNAKE OIL SCIENCE, TRICK OR TREATMENT)this book covers the increasing use of alternative medicine practices in infants and children, practices which I believe should be considered malpractice or even criminal. I am not aware of any alternative medicine practice that could be justified for infants or children.
Carl Bartecchi, M.D.

This is a great book. Lot's of historical background to explain how some of the wackier alternative medicines originated (homeopathy, chiropractic, TCM, etc.) and some good explanations as to why they are still around. While there is some "preaching to the choir" to be had in this one, the historical context is more than worth the effort.

I became interested in quackery more than 30 years ago, when I was a pharmaceutical scientist (not a pharmacist). Ms. Shapiro's book may be the best written for the layman (I have read the others; I used to think Kurt Butler's "Consumer's Guide" was the best- it remains useful despite its age). Shapiro excels at comprehending quackery, and writing in terms that non-technical people can understand.

I admire the author's conviction and courage to write against the crowd and resourceful merchants selling false hope with billions of ad money, though I dont think her book will be effective to convince users of Alternative Medicine that they are suckers indeed. Afterall, AM is now such a mammoth cult of huge followers whose faith cant be shaken by a book or two. Neverthelss, I am obliged to state that some data, in particular the history and pharmacology on Chinese Traditional Medicine, is not accurate. Despite the minor defects, it is still readable and informative. Recommended!

Rose Shapiro has applied a magnifying glass and blowtorch to the cult of "alternative therapies", in both an intelligent and interesting way. There isn't much new here for anyone who rejects the notions of fairies-in-the-garden healing, maaan, but there is some fascinating historical info. Let's face it, though, Dr Shapiro is pretty well preaching to the choir. Your average "alternative therapies" proponent will have neither the nouse nor discipline to comprehend the science and facts Shapiro presents. And her call for the voodoo industry to be regulated will have its zombie fanatics hitting the (snake-oil) bottle like there's no tomorrow.

As part of my work, I have taken part in numerous trials for the NIH. Some of these involved integrative medicine and as such I became acquainted with a number "alternative medicine" physicians. In my experience, western medicine and alternative medicine have similar distribution of personality types among doctors. The quacks and greedy to the brilliant and genuine exist in both camps. Therefore good and evil can be selectively and easily found and proven in all disciplines.

I am a skeptic by nature and felt the need to look up and review the references listed in this book. They were unquestionably cherry picked to support a predetermined bias. This serves no useful purpose as it dose not seek to tell the truth. What actually helps patients improve should be the ultimate goal whether it be medicine or natural medicine. Again, my experience, and the scientific evidence proves that there is both harmful and efficacious treatments in use today by natural and western medical practitioners.

But hospitals and doctors have a problem too. The scientific evidence often conflicts with their ideology. They could address this problem in several ways. Hospitals could modify their specific ideological beliefs on the basis of scientific evidence. Doctors could question whether ideology has had an inappropriate impact on the promulgation and validation of their recommendations. Both those approaches would involve a threat to cherished and often dogmatic beliefs. They, therefore, have taken a different approach. They've tried to claim "evidence based practice." while ignoring scientific evidence.

Medicine, is a pragmatic, probabilistic activity. It requires that decisions be made on the basis of available evidence, within a limited time. Particularly evidence-based medicine as it is currently practiced, aspires to a scientific standard of proof.

But medicine, is an art of probabilities, or at best, a science of infinite uncertainty. One can better practice medicine by using other evidentiary standards in addition to the scientific. To employ only the current scientific standard of proof is inappropriate, if not impossible; furthermore, its application in medicine is fraught with bias as is this book.

One of the best ways to determine relative risk of a given specialty in health care is to look at the malpractice insurance rates. My counterparts in alternative medicine enjoy insurances rates so low as to shame every medical doctor into silence if they were honest about its true implication and meaning. When compared to my premiums from the same insurer, the alternative doctor pays tens of thousands of dollars less per year. Granted, this only applies to safety, not efficacy, but the fact is that they simply win hands down when it comes to overall safety. Not to mention that patient satisfaction is rated much higher than medical treatments.

Bottom line there can exist a balance where beneficial therapies from all sources operate in an integrated setting. We must dispel the myth that this book seeks to perpetuate and find what works best.

R. Gibson, M.D.

If people use alternative medicine it is precisely because mainstream medicine has completely failed to cure their problem. Are not mainstream medicines full of chemical substances that are harmful to health? Are there not raging controversies on harmone pills and many more medicines? This book makes excellent (ab)use of statistical data. For example, the author says 20% of Ayurvedic medicines sold in the US have been found to have some harmful substances (such as lead). But she does not say clearly whether it is a problem with the pharma or whether it is a fundamental problem with Ayurveda? At the end of the same Chapter she says that Ayurveda has not proven to be effective without explaining the reasons or showing evidences. Such careless statements abound in the text throughout the book. The book is written in an obscure style with data and conclusions scattered here and there to confuse the reader in the end. There is no medical system that has solved all problems. Until such system arrives it is preposterous to make a judgement with such a strong title "Suckers". I would have appreciated if strenghts and weaknesses of various alternative medicines, the diseases they can/can't cure are explained in detail to make the reader - nay the patient - aware of the issues. Unfortunately the book has none of these.

Well paid, no doubt, medical propaganda. They churn out this rubbish 24/7

"It reveals how alternative medicine jeopardizes the health of those it claims to treat, leaches resources from treatments of proven efficacy, and is largely unaccountable and unregulated."

talk about chutzpah!! Of course, the exact opposite is true, but it is propaganda 101 to accuse your opponents of your own faults, the ignorant observer will be easily taken in as they don't believe amorality exists.

For example, apart from the fact Allopathy has only cured bacterial infections, they have a huge stinking elephant in the room---iatrogenic disease.

In the USA alone they kill 780,000 people every year, which includes 120,000 drug reaction deaths, plus a few million addicted to psychiatric drugs,which are completely useless, except in inducing mental illness, and addiction, 4 million being addicted to Benzos, see Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill

and we are still waiting for Allopathy to cure ONE person of mental illness!

But that hasn't stopped them giving millions of kids Ritalin for a non-existant disease they created to sell that drug and others. So in effect they have rebranded an old street drug, speed, so they could sell it as a 'medicine'. How is that for snake oil racketeering? And the fallout is something like 1 million kids given bi-polar disease:

"When you research the rise of juvenile bipolar illness in this country, you see that it appears in lockstep with the prescribing of stimulants for ADHD and antidepressants for depression. Prior to the use of those medications, you find that researchers reported that manic-depressive illness, which is what bipolar illness was called at the time, virtually never occurred in prepubertal children. But once psychiatrists started putting "hyperactive" children on Ritalin, they started to see prepubertal children with manic symptoms. Same thing happened when psychiatrists started prescribing antidepressants to children and teenagers. A significant percentage had manic or hypomanic reactions to the antidepressants.
When you add up all this information, you end up documenting a story of how the lives of hundreds of thousands of children in the United States have been destroyed in this way. In fact, I think that the number of children and teenagers that have ended up "bipolar" after being treated with a stimulant or an antidepressant is now well over one million. This is a story of harm done on an unimaginable scale."--- [2010] Robert Whitaker Interview

Then we have thousands given alzheimer's from drugs, see: Drug-Induced Dementia: a perfect crime

while another stinking elephant is the fact allopathy has suppressed cures for alzheimer's such as Chelation, see Toxic Metal Syndrome: How Metal Poisonings Can Affect Your Brain (Dr. Morton Walker Health Book)

"Since 1952 the medical profession has had the means to reduce or reverse the signs and symptoms of Alzheimer's disease."--H. Richard Casdorph, Morton Walker

along with a 100 year history of suppressing cancer cures. While they claim 50% cure rates, the actual figure is nearer 20%, and that is no better than placebo, and it is only 5 year survival anyway, and their best medicine is surgery!! No kidding. So when can we expect surgery to cure cancer? Read: Alternative Medicine: The Definitive Guide (2nd Edition)

any good alternative doctor will cure over 80% of cancer patients, without using any toxic 'medicine', that can actually give you cancer!

As for herbal medicine being ineffective, read There Are No Incurable Diseases: Dr. Schulze's 30-Day Cleansing & Detoxification Program Curing With Cayenne: The Untold, Unknown, and Unpublished Facts About How to Cure with the Greatest Herb of All Time! Left for Dead Death by Deception: Unmasking Heart Failure

to bust that lie. Just one herb, cayenne, will reverse herat disease as Dick Quinn found out, and surgery, their main 'therapy' is hardly 'medicine' is it? It is like bolting the stable door after the horse has bolted.

Then there is the well documented herbal formulas, Hoxey: When Healing Becomes a Crime: The Amazing Story of the Hoxsey Cancer Clinics and the Return of Alternative Therapies and Essiac, see Bridge of Hope, the Life of Rene M. Caisse, RN Canada's Cancer Nurse and the History of Essiac

I think we all would prefer those non-toxic effective herbs over the Pharma boys efforts at herbal extracts such as Taxol! Not fogetting their killing of 80% of the sacred yews in China.

Notice how they avoid the well documented success of Vitamin C, this one vitamin would put them and all the Pharma boys out of business overnight if it was widely known. Cure for infections, see Curing the Incurable: Vitamin C, Infectious Diseases, and Toxins only 1,200 medical citations to back that up! Plus reverses heart disease, see Stop America's #1 Killer, effective against cancer

"We studied patients with advanced cancer (stage 4). 40 patients received 40,000-75,000 mg intravenously several times a week. These are patients that have not responded to other treatments. The initial tumor response rate was achieved in 75% of patients, defined as a 50% reduction or more in tumor size. . . As a radiation oncologist, I also give radiation therapy. Vitamin C has two effects. It increases the beneficial effects of radiation and chemotherapy and decreases the adverse effects. But this is not a subtle effect, is not 15-20%. It's a dramatic effect. Once you start using IV vitamin C, the effect is so dramatic that it is difficult to go back to not using it." Victor Marcial, M.D., an oncologist in Puerto Rico

prevents cot-death!: Medical pioneer of the 20th century: Dr Archie Kalokerinos : an autobiography

"We know the cause of SIDS. We can and have prevented them. It's all done with a compound called ascorbate. Not to use it means deaths will continue. There is no other answer. There never will be. For our findings are based on scientific facts. Not medical opinion."---Dr Kalokerinos

Cures drug addiction:

"We have developed a non-toxic, detoxication procedure where we can take the addicts off heroin or methadone with no withdrawal symptoms. The addicts have no desire to return to the drug and if they do take a "fix," it is like injecting plain water, the detoxication is so complete and rapid. ........Methadone is far worse on the body, from a metabolic point of view, than is heroin.........It is unconscionable to me to put a person on methadone maintenance with no way to get them off......Why is it that the media supports orthodox views so readily, rejecting all other avenues of scientific investigation? --Dr kalokerinos

I could go on and on, but you get the picture. Doesn't make this book look good does it?

And I haven't even mentioned thier biggest fraud, vaccination, but I'll leave with one quote on antibiotics:

"Gut flora is responsible for 70% of your immune system.....when you take antibiotics you napalm the whole of your body, the consequences of which can be long term."---Hilary Butler

It all depends how you use natural treatments. This book is so inaccurate, natural treatments are the only treatments I would use. The author has an axe to grind, maybe she tried a wrong treatment, but most treatments from reputable suppliers are good value, why would you kill yourself with chemotherapy? There are no good tests on natural treatments as they do not earn big money for 'big pharma', so no-one is able to say that they do not work. The best advice is to try, as I did. Follow the advice from the supplier for 3 months.