Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine [Paperback]

Edzard Ernst (Author), Simon Singh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 19, 2009

“For anyone who has ever wondered about the scientific evidence for the effectiveness of . . . alternative therapies.”—Susan Okie, Washington Post

Whether you are an ardent believer in alternative medicine, a skeptic, or are simply baffled by the range of services and opinions, this groundbreaking analysis lays to rest doubts and contradictions with authority, integrity, and clarity. Over thirty of the most popular treatments—including acupuncture, homeopathy, aromatherapy, reflexology, chiropractic, and herbal medicines—are examined for their benefits and potential dangers. What works and what doesn’t? Who can you trust, and who is ripping you off? In its scrutiny of alternative and complementary cures, this book also strives to reassert the primacy of the scientific method as a means for determining public health practice and policy. 16 illustrations

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Noted science writer Singh and British professor of complementary medicine Ernst offer a reasoned examination of the research on acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic, herbal medicine and other alternative treatments. Singh (Fermat's Last Theorem) and Ernst work hard to be objective, but their conclusion is that these therapies are largely worthless. As they examine the research on various alternative therapies, the authors explore the principles of evidence-based medicine on which their conclusions are based, including clinical trials and the placebo effect; they also explore related ethical issues. The authors report that many patients will improve with any alternative remedy—but no more than those given a placebo. Exceptions exist; some herbal remedies (e.g., St. John's wort, echinacea) can be helpful though not always advisable, and chiropractors can relieve low back pain under certain circumstances. This is a stimulating and informative account that will be indispensable to anyone considering an alternative treatment, though it may not dissuade true believers. 16 illus. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

Entertaining as well as informative. . . . The examination of evidence is comprehensive, forensic, and for champions of these therapies, damning. (Toby Murcott - Nature )

Physicians should recommend the book to their patients, and it will help health practitioners provide patients with sound advice. (New England Journal of Medicine )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1 edition (October 19, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393337782
• ISBN-13: 978-0393337785
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (71 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #133,452 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #77 in Books > Science & Math > Experiments, Instruments & Measurement > Methodology & Statistics

More About the Author

Simon Singh is an author, science journalist and TV producer. Having completed his PhD at Cambridge he worked from 1991 to 1997 at the BBC producing Tomorrow's World and co-directing the BAFTA award-winning documentary Fermat's Last Theorem for the Horizon series. In 1997, he published Fermat's Last Theorem, which was a best-seller in Britain and translated into 22 languages.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

84 of 107 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent analysis of "alternative" and "complementary" medicine, August 4, 2008

By 

Dr. C. Becker (Edinburgh, Scotland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine (Hardcover)

I have been meaning to write a review of Trick or Treatment for some months now and had a lot of sophisticated ideas how to phrase it. In the meantime, I had sent my mother a "care package", with dried cranberries, organic Earl Grey tea and a copy of Trick or Treatment. She called me last weekend and said:

"This book is so full of suspense and so extraordinarily well written. I understand what you mean now. I guess I will have to give up my beloved Arnica globules then. It *does* make sense that they cannot work if there is nothing in them. To bad that the German version does not come out until next year, I have some friends who should read this book."

There, that sums it up: Singh and Ernst obviously struck the right tone and paced the book appropriately for the educated user of "alternative medicine" to follow and accept the conclusions of many careful trials. That is excellent, because I myself somehow never muster the patience to go through the details, why this or that "alternative" is not even worth trying.

The only point that I found irritating (and so did my mum) is the sparseness of literature. Few sources are cited and they only refer to the chapter rather than a specific statement. This is something that would be worth amending in future printings and/or in other language additions. I want all necessary references in the book I am reading and don't want to be refered to another book of the author for background.

A must read for:

Any person in the medical field, so they understand who and what contributes to healing (the colour of the pill often as much as the ingredient).

Anyone with a longer lasting medical condition (since they are the prime "target" for most of the CAM methods and practitioners).

Any parent (most CAM products are essentially "Wellness" and parents should realize that they can generate "Wellness" for their child without the stringent rules of homeopathy, or the potentially dangerous upper spine manipulations of a chiropractor).

58 of 74 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Be prepared to revisit your thinking about acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic therapy and holistic medicine, October 23, 2008

By 

Blaine Greenfield "eclectic reader" (Belle Meade, NJ) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine (Hardcover)

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.

19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A must read for anyone interested in Alternative Medicine, July 26, 2009

By 

Ronald P. Ng (Singapore) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine (Hardcover)

This is an excellent book, and I would have given it a 5 star except for the fact that there is no reference given to many of the studies that are quoted in the book.

One of the authors, Prof. Edzard Ernst, was a professor of Complementary Medicine at Exeter University, he used to be a homeopath practitioner as well, happily doling out homeopathic "medicine" to his patients until one day, he decided to look at the science underpinning homeopathy and found there was none. He is therefore an insider of Complementary Medicine and has found that practice wanting.

He is very similar to Prof. R. Barker Bausell of Maryland University, who used to be the statistician at NIH responsible for analyzing the data in the NIH funded Complementary and Alternative Medicine Specialized Research Center, where after a couple of years of work there, found that there was no scientific proof that Complimentary/Alternative Medicine was better than placebo, he left the Center and wrote the book "Snake Oil Sciene" (ISBN 978-0-19-531368-0, available here at Amazon)

Both these books very clearly showed the claims of Complementary/Alternative Medicine do not stand up under the glaring light of science. Both were written by insiders, insiders who are scientists, and insiders where their honesty requires them to write these two books.

I will not add to what other reviewers have said except to voice my own personal opinion as to why CAM has been getting popular among the general population.

I think most patients want reassurance from their doctors that everything is alright. But because of the way the medical profession is now constrained to act, (I am a practicing clinical hematologist), we have to tell the patient the probability of success of the drugs we are using, the potential side effects and so on, this takes away the placebo effects of the drugs we are administering. When we treat someone with malignancy, we can never tell the patient he has a 100% chance of cure and that he will be alright, but there is no such constraint on the CAM practitioner. As "Trick or Treatment" says, CAM practitioners are never required by law to tell the patients the side effects or possible harmful effects of their treatments, instead their mantra is, 'this is holistic natural and has little side effect", the exact opposite of what the scietific medical community is required to do.