Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine

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 todayThe 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 .

The argument of this book is that there is no scientific proof of alternative meidcines efectiveness.I personally experienced with acupunture, digipunture, chinese massages, homeopaty and some forms of chiropratic treatments (osteopathy, etiopathy). I never experienced a clear benefit from all these treatments, except maybe from an osteopat that recommended me to stretch more often and drink more water (not sure if this advice qualifies as alternative medicine).Despite this I still thought that these treatments may have some benefit (1.3 billion chinese can't be wrong) and that I was just unlucky. Furthermore, although I never believed in some of the foundations of these practices (like the chinese explanation for acupunture, with its energy flows and meridians), I thought there was a reasonable doubt that treatments may be benefitial due to some other, more scientifically accepted reasons.Well, this book demolished my faith in all these treatments, and in the way made me feel like an idiot for spending so much financial, time and emotional investment in them.A great read, then, but you need to approach it with an open mind. If you are already have a position on alternative medicine (or believe that "big pharma" control the world) don't waste your money on this book. If you are ambivalent about alternative medicine, and want to get more facts, this book is great for the "against" side. Just beware, it is a very, very, very convincing read.Pros- Good structure. Before entering into the specifics of each alternative treatment, the authors take their time to discuss the scientific method in general, including its origins, evolution and and how it applies to both conventional and alternative medicine.- Good balance between citing scientific, statistic and anecdotical evidence to give the facts and illustrating them too.- Extensive discussion of sources.- Good explanation of the placebo effect, including an interesting discussion on whether alternative medicines are worth taking just for the placebo effect (which can be quite significant, after all)Cons- It focuses on only four medicines: acupunture, homeopaty, herbal remedies, and chiropractice. Other alternatives (Feng Shui, meditation, rectal cleansing, etc) are referred to in an appendix, on one page summaries. I would have liked to see more.- The book concludes that many of the alternative treatments "don't work better than a placebo". However, a placebo can work remarkably well in some cases, and reading this book can eliminate it by making the reader loose faith in these treatments.

Fantastic expose of the alternative medicine Industry. Required reading for anyone considering using complementary medicine. Comprehensive summary of results of clinical trials of CAM showing that they essentially result in the placebo effect but at the same time can cause harm and in some cases fatalities.

This book gabe a great insight into the lengths medical science will go to validate the effectiveness of forms of medicine and medicinal practice and despite being not having a specific interest in medicine found the book to be a great read, highly informative and empowering in the importance to do my research.The pure nature of the book in the way each field is analysed for effectiveness has empowered me to be more thoughtful in other areas of life and to make methodical decisions over decisions with minimal thought.

It's a book that is preaching to the converted. If you truly believe in alternative treatment you probably won't read this book, if you don't they you probably already know there isn't much science based evidence behind it.Singh is a very entertaining writer, but even he gets a little repetitive in this.Excellent section on chiropractic though.

Highly recommended. Easy to read with concise explanation as to what works and what does not. Read chapter on Chiropracters before submitting yourself to their tender mercies.

In part it reveals the appalling ignorance of the human race. The desperate need to cure some real or imagined ill. Thescandal of some corrupt practitioners and the gullibility of people who should know better; our Prince of Wales quiterightly comes in for harsh criticism