Saturday, March 20th, 2010
- ISBN13: 9780393337785
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
“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 acup… More >>
Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine
Learned men often can be blind to the efficacy of a given treatment. They may be unfamiliar with the culture the treatment has successfully been used in. They don’t know nor do they understand the thinking in the culture, it’s beliefs and levels of faith and knowing of how things work there. These guys easily dis Auyervedic . . . my goodness, could Deepak Chopra be wrong all these years on the amazing things in this branch of medicine? They also dis Feng Shui . . . an understanding of energy flows and movements just by whose subtlety these guys are left far behind. Accupuncture comes out of a culture 1000s of years older than ours . . . they just might know something that our few 100 year old culture doesn’t know. Accupuncture broke my 103 degree fever in minutes where a western medicine internist couldn’t do a thing. The single element these guys have no belief in is the capability of the mind in itself. It’s power is vast, and we’re only now touching in to that. If you’ve no sense of faith, of possibilities, of believing things, anything, can be better or different, then this book is for you. It thinks precision and absolutes are all there is . . . hmm, I wonder if they’re atheists? Or if they believe in God how they explain faith?
Rating: 2 / 5
As someone who is a technologist and regularly worships at the altar of experimental and scientific methods for disciplines other than medicine, I can’t think of a more pointless book. The reason for the proliferation of alternative medicine is the abysmal record of drugs created by following the scientific method – and the fact that their side effects far exceed their ostensible (and severely attenuated) benefits for anything more serious than a headache. My empirical experience over a few decades of being subjected to diagnostic medicine for any meaningful ailment, is that calling it a science might be premature – and a view from that hill certainly doesn’t justify the supercilious attitude that pervades this book.
So the starting point of this book – namely to assume scientific method’s efficacy in medicine as self-evident and to examine alternative medicine’s with that lens, could be flawed at the outset. the point worth studying is not whether alternative medicine is successful, but why.
Rating: 2 / 5
This book claims to offer “an unparalleled level of rigour, authority and independence” in the assessment of alternative medicine. In fact it has nineteen major faults in the areas of evidence, science, definitions and analytical tools:
Evidence: (1) The authors frequently rely on figures, trials, events, quotations, statements, opinions and explanations which are unsupported by reference to sources. (2) This evidence is frequently misleading as a result of being presented out of context. (3) The authors use different criteria when assessing the validity of evidence, depending on whether the evidence supports their views or not.
Science: (4) The authors commit the common fallacy of confusing absence of proof with proof of absence. (5) The importance of theory is minimized or even ignored, when discussing both science in general and individual alternative therapies. (6) The authors assume that orthodox medicine is scientific, but offer no justification for this position. (7) There is evidence that the authors do not understand the principles and practice of orthodox medicine.
Definitions: (8) Alternative medicine is defined in four different ways in the course of the book. (9) Other significant terms, such as `science’, `disease’, `cure’, `effectiveness’ and `orthodox medicine’ are undefined. (10) This allows arguments to be built on vague preconceptions rather than on clearly defined principles. (11) The differences between orthodox medical and alternative medical definitions is not taken into account, despite their impact on the design of trials. (12) The authors fail to present the ideas of evidence-based medicine accurately. (13) The authors fail to present the nature and development of homeopathy accurately, raising doubts about their presentation of the other therapies. (14) They also call into question the principles of orthodox drug therapy, despite the fact that the tests used by this therapy underpin much of their argument.
Analytical tools: (15) The authors fail to prove that their main tool, the randomised controlled trial (RCT), is valid for testing curative interventions, while presenting evidence that there are serious problems with using it for this purpose. (16) They show that a tool derived from these trials, the meta-analysis, is prone to lack of objectivity, yet they rely on this for some of their conclusions. (17) Their conclusions are also dependent on the concept of the placebo effect, but they make it clear that this effect has no scientific basis and is so unpredictable as to have questionable scientific validity in this context. (18) They acknowledge the importance of individuality in the curative process, but deny its significance for the design of analytical tools. (19) They fail to take into account the need for analysis of evidence from clinical practice.
Full details of these faults can be read in Halloween Science, a new work commissioned by the charity Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21st Century (H:MC21), which concludes that Trick or Treatment? “has no validity as a scientific examination of alternative medicine”. [...]
Rating: 1 / 5
I perused this book at the bookstore. As a Chiropractor I was especially interested in the information on Chiro and their suggestions. One statement was that Chiros commit more malpractice than medical doctors. That is an absolute lie. If that were true than insurance rates would reflect that. I pay $96.08 per month for 3 million dollars worth of malpractice coverage. They are either very poor researchers of the literature or they are purposely being dishonest. They also neglected to include some very important data on the use of Chiropractors as primary care physicians in Illinois and published in the peer-reviewed journal JMPT May 2007. Here is a summary statement from Richard I. Sarnat, M.D. (An honest medical doctor) “My research, conducted over a ten-year period utilizing clinical and cost outcomes data from one of the largest insurance underwriters, suggest that the regular utilization of chiropractic could reduce the need for hospitalization, pharmaceutical usage and overall global healthcare costs by almost 50%” The 10 year study showed that using Chiropractors as primary care physicians resulted in a 60.2% decrease in in-hospital admissions, 59% decrease in hospital days, 62% decrease in outpatient surgeries and procedures and an 85% decrease in pharmaceutical costs. If all these patients saw the MD first (as they suggest you should) then these savings would not be realized. It’s so easy to paint any picture they want by conviently leaving out vital information. Let’s also look at who utilizes Chiropractic care. Tiger Woods, Lance Armstrong, Tom Brady, Joe Montana, Dan Marino, Peyton Manning etc. All the NFL, NBA and MLB teams have staff chiro’s. These athletes would not subject their million dollar bodies to Chiro care if it wasn’t safe and effective. These authors need to get together with Michael Moore and make a fake-u-mentary. They can leave out facts such as prescription drugs being the 3rd leading cause of death or that medical errors are the fourth leading cause of death (Facts that are well documented in PubMed and books written by other honest MD’s). They can convince everyone that the only solution to your health problems are man-made patented, synthetic toxic substances and that everything natural is “unscientific”. Americans consume more prescription drugs than the rest of the world combined but the US is rated 37th in health. Using logic, and common sense, it is apparent that drugs do not equal health. I could go on and on about these bozo’s but that should suffice. The fact is that most of their undeniable facts are in fact deniable.
Rating: 1 / 5
The book is flawed. For example, the section on chiropractic doesn’t talk about pain caused by the spine being out of alignment. I have personally seen the impact of chiropractic on back spasms. Once I started chiropractic, that pain could be relieved immediately or reduced to mild soreness. The authors admit that chiropractic could be useful, but no more useful than conventional treatment. Really? I could have gotten the same result from back surgery or addiction to pain medication?
There is some quackery in the alternative medicine field, but it doesn’t logically follow that alternative medicine is useless. Practitioners don’t have representatives from a few multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical companies telling them what to think. So there’s going to be some practitioners that have crazy ideas and do dangerous things. The choice isn’t dangerous or completely safe. Look at the statistics for people that die due to pharmaceutical drugs, particularly interactions. There’s danger everywhere and the authors imply that the danger is only with alternative medicine.
Why do the authors focus on quackery in each of the alternative medicine fields? It appears that they have a strong bias against alternative medicine, but perhaps they can’t scientifically discern the quackery from the strengths of various alternative medicine disciplines. I was really excited when I heard about this book, and, unfortunately, disappointed when I read it.
The short version is that alternative medicine is useless, except for the placebo effect, with a few quack ideas highlighted and some cherry-picked studies to support that conclusion. Not the objective analysis I was looking for. It’s similar to doing a scientific study of Christianity and concluding that it does no good and will likely result in suicide, and include stories of a few fringe groups as “proof”.
Rating: 2 / 5