Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine | 
 enlarge | Authors: Simon Singh, Edzard Ernst
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Rating:  17 reviews
Sales Rank: 37644
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.5
ISBN: 0393066614
Dewey Decimal Number: 610
EAN: 9780393066616
ASIN: 0393066614
Publication Date: August 18, 2008
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Product Description
The truth about the potions, lotions, pills and needles, pummelling and energizing that lie beyond the realms of conventional medicine.
Whether you are an ardent believer in alternative medicine, a skeptic, or are simply baffled by the range of services and opinions, this guide lays to rest doubts and contradictions with authority, integrity, and clarity. In this groundbreaking analysis, over thirty of the most popular treatments—acupuncture, homeopathy, aromatherapy, reflexology, chiropractic, and herbal medicines—are examined for their benefits and potential dangers. Questions answered include: What works and what doesn't? What are the secrets, and what are the lies? Who can you trust, and who is ripping you off? Can science decide what is best, or do the old wives' tales really tap into ancient, superior wisdom?
In their scrutiny of alternative and complementary cures, authors Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst also strive to reassert the primacy of the scientific method as a means for determining public health practice and policy. 16 illustrations.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 12 more reviews...
 Conventional = Tested December 26, 2008
Yogesh Upadhyaya
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The book does a very good job of bringing out how drugs and treatments in conventional medicine are tested. It also clearly brings out the fact that alternative medicine has been reluctant to subject itself to the same level of rigor in testing. The criticism of the different streams of alternative medicine (homeopathy, acupuncture, etc.) does get repetitive as in essence it is the same every time - Tested and found to be of low or no benefit.
I would have given this book 5 stars but for two issues, one substantive and the other stylistic:
1. The authors have been silent about the abuses in conventional medicine. Though, as a discipline conventional medicine has embraced rigorous testing, there are many instance of the practice falling short of the highest standards of integrity. Also, many practitioners get lazy and do not really follow Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) as their diagnosis and treatments fail to take all evidence into account. In other words, conventional medicine although better than alternative, is definitely not as good as it should be. Not acknowledging this fact leaves the book incomplete in my opinion. This is because many of the recommendations made for patients of alternative medicine become applicable even to those of conventional medicine as soon as you admit that there is a chance of your GP not practicing EBM.
2. I am a big fan of Simon Singh. His Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe (P.S.)and The Code Book: The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptographyare two of my favorite books. Somehow I did not find this book as good to read. Maybe his style of working through the history of the issues he is dealing with does not work as well here? Mind you, it still is a well written book.
I think that health is too important to be left only to Doctors. Reading Trick or Treatment is recommended if you share this belief.
CAM Perspective December 21, 2008
Stephen Stark
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I've struggled with the proper perspective of CAM for a long time. Both sides acknowlege the grand potential of our own healing. Both sides regard our own body as the world's greatest pharmaceutical source. Both sides acknowlege that our bodies can turn against us (auto-immune diseases and imbalance). Both sides acknowlege the essential participation of our body in healing. They are more alike than different, and yet...
And, I say the word 'body' when I mean body/mind for which our culture has no concept nor word (other than as a dichotomy).
We have an established scientific practice that works within limits and within these constraints (of the body). Just so you know my predilection, I think CAM is full of quacks.
People aren't dumb. We know that this scientifically-based practice is largely an art as well. In what % of cases is the doctor absolutely sure of the diagnosis? Sure, in a broken arm or whatever, great. We don't have this %? And we don't have it in a scientifically based practice? Actually, the cure or not/cure is helped used to confirm a particular diagnosis, and there's nothing wrong with that... But people know.
What % of conditions are auto-immune... again, why don't we have these statistics... In these cases, the doctor treats the symptoms. At this point we have to admit that doctors cease being doctors, in the medical sense. It becomes a practice of healing based on statistical guess-work and trial and error. It's a pseudo-scientific approach. What's the % of that, oh great healers? I'm not dissing our only remaining approach but how often is that approach administered with the false assurance of the 'backing' of scientific authority? How often do our approaches fail or do more harm than good? We don't have those statistics and never will. Although we have the means to collect it, I doubt we ever will.
Hence the search for alternative approaches with perspectives our scientific approach misses completely. Although we know the body/mind is a huge, intimate and essential factor in healing... we don't even have a concept for it. This is the concept of 'chi' and balance. We can say that doctors are right... let's pick a # since we don't have one... 20% of the time. They can be 90% sure about 30% of the time. Those are good numbers actually and people should take advantage of them. The rest of medicine (established) is less scientific or pseudo-scientific with the intent to do less harm than good.
So, it would behoove our practices to pay more attention to the largest factor in healing, more essential in a larger % of cases than not and that is the body/mind. The only direct and comprehensive reference to this in medical literature is called the 'sugar pill'. That's our homage to the greatest force and variable in the healing process in our great art.
So CAM tries to fill in this void in areas and with its non-scientific yet 'historic' approaches, while being innocuous, will succeed in 30% of the cases (according to our literature). This is actually better than some medical approaches... So who's right? In these cases, not the losers. It's not faith or belief, it's the intervention of procedures that kick the body/mind into participation or balance, whether it's a needle or an herb. It's also growth because disease is brought about by lifestyle, habit facing external factors and inner approach and natural healing is an internal and necessary learning process.
So, don't believe in your approaches, it won't make any difference in the outcome (the body/mind intervention is a largely subconscious affair) but don't blindly believe in our mildly scientifically based practice of western medicine either. That can also do more harm than good.
Sorry, I didn't read the book. If you look at a non-scientific approach through scientific methods, you'll disprove it and I think it's an essential and correct thing to do. I'd like to see similar scrutiny of our traditional medicine in terms of certainty. (when you veer off of certainty, you can't be practicing scientifically either, it's an art with pseudo-scientific trappings which may deceive as easily as CAM trappings).
To sum it up.. there is a reason the 'sugar pill' and/or 'deception' works and it isn't the sugar pill or deception (or belief). It might make sense to find out what's really at stake and how to properly incorporate it into our fabric of our healing approach.
 Could there be a more pointless book? December 21, 2008
Venugapal Vasudevan (Palatine, IL USA)
1 out of 10 found this review helpful
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.
 Incredibly important and eye-opening book December 21, 2008
Ben Rothke (USA)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The recent collapse of Madoff Investments Securities occurred in part since the operation was run like a black box. For many years, alternative medicine has similarly operated in the shadows with its own set of black boxes. In Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine, Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst, MD, break open that box, and show with devastating clarity and accuracy, that the box is for the most part empty.
I first encountered co-author Simon Singh at the 2005 RSA Conference. In his presentation, he included a demonstration of the human brain's unique capability for pattern matching when specific patterns are expected, and used Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven as an example. Stairway has long been rumored to have subliminal satanic messages. When played backwards, it is impossible to decipher any message. But when the message is known in advance, one can then hear the message imploring the listener to go to Satan's tool shed. Once Singh put the subliminal lyrics on the overhead, the subliminal message was now clear, not due to a subliminal message, rather via pattern matching.
While no reasonable person can believe in Stairway's subliminal lyrics, far too many people do believe in equally implausible things in the realm of alternative medicine. In the book, the authors tackle four main areas: acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic and herbal medicine. The books conclusion is that acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic are essentially worthless, while herbal medicine has limited value.
Chapter 1 starts with an overview of evidence-based medicine (EBM), of which the authors are staunch believers. EBM applies evidence gained via the scientific method and assesses the quality of the evidence relevant to the risks and benefits of the treatments. The foundation of EBM is the systematic review of evidence for particular treatments via mainly randomized controlled trials. In the chapter, the authors reiterate the concept that the plural of anecdote is not data. Acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic have plenty of first-person anecdotes, but no a lack of controlled studies with real data to back up their spurious claims.
EBM shows that homeopathy and other bogus cures are of no value, yet the public is oblivious to those facts. In a piece I wrote on this topic, New York News Radio - The voice of bad science, its shows that cheap radio advertising (with its mishmash of pseudoscientific claims) combined with a public that is ignorant of basic scientific facts, creates a perfect storm for the continuation of homeopathy and other bogus cures.
A recurring theme the book stresses is that acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic and other alternative therapies are scientifically impossible, and often will violate fundamental scientific principles. A perfect example of this implausibility is with homeopathy. Contrary to what common sense and basic science, in homeopathy, a solution that is more diluted is considered stronger and as having a higher potency. The issue is that the end result is a product that is so diluted, that its contents when in solid form is pure sugar, and when in liquid form; 100% H20. When a homeopathic liquid is in its most diluted state, there is not a single molecule of the active ingredient. Therein lays the scientific implausibility of homeopathy.
Chapter 1 also asks one of the book's fundamental questions: how do you determine the truth? The authors answer that it is via the scientific method. This is determined only after strict and careful analysis of a clinical study, of which the most effective is double-blind and randomized.
In chapter 3, the book jokingly notes that since homeopathic liquid remedies are so diluted that they contain only water; their only use would be for dehydration. And since homeopathy is based on the fact that the strength of a remedy is based on its dilution, one could conceivably overdose on a homeopathic remedy by forgetting to take a dose.
The chapter concludes with perhaps the strongest indictment against homeopathy; namely it's content. If one looks at the content of oscillococcinum, a homeopathic alternative marketed to relieve influenza-like symptoms, the packaging states that each gram of medication contains 0.85 grams of sucrose and 0.15 grams of lactose. Sucrose and lactose are simply forms of sugar, of which oscillococcinum is nothing more than am expensive sugar pill.
In chapter 4, the authors write that while homeopathy is nothing more than a placebo, the added danger with it is that patients will often forgo real medications to take a homeopathic one. It reports of a study in Britain, which demonstrated that the most benign alternative medicine can become dangerous if the therapist who administers it advises a patient not to follow an effective conventional medical treatment. The study demonstrated that alternative medical practitioners often recommend homeopathic remedies for malaria, and ignore proven conventional medicines. Such an approach can often mean a death sentence for the person taking the homeopathic remedy.
Chapter 5 deals with herbal medicine. The chapter is somewhat different in that the previous chapters about acupuncture, homeopathy and chiropractic showed them to be useless, herbal medicine does have value. The book notes that herbal medicine has been embraced by science to a far greater extent than acupuncture, homeopathy and chiropractics. The chapter lists over 30 herbal medicines and their levels of efficacy. An irony of herbal medicine is that some exotic ones, such as those with tiger bone or rhino horn are pushing the species to the brink of extinction, due to their level of popularity in certain parts of the world.
Chapter 5 concludes with on why smart people believe such odd things? Alternative medicine has failed to deliver the health benefits that it claims, so why are millions of patients wasting their money and risking their lives by turning towards a snake-oil industry? The authors provide numerous reasons for this, from the concepts such as natural, traditional and holistic, to attacks on the scientific method by the alternative medical community and more.
The appendix is a rapid guide to alternative therapies and lists over 30 new treatments with their benefits and potential dangers. The appendix gives single page summaries of the plethora other alternative therapies, from ear candles, colonic irrigation, reiki, to leech therapy and more. The authors write that most of these are bogus, many violate fundamental laws of sciences, and but a few have real, but limited value.
Alternative medicine operates in the shadows, blithely touting that their products have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, and that they are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. While these products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease; consumers nonetheless spends billions of dollars per year on unproven supplements. Consumers can be quite fickle. On one side they are furious at the SEC for their lack of oversight around Madoff Investments Securities. Yet when the FDA requires products use their disclaimer of how ineffective the item is, consumers will throw billions of dollars on ineffective products.
Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine is an incredibly important and eye-opening book. While Singh is a physicist and Ernst a medical doctor, the book is written in a clear and compelling style, avoids technical jargon, and sticks to the facts. In the spirit of the scientific method, the authors scrutinize alternative and complementary cures and the results show that the snake oil is still selling.
Witty and clever approach to alternative medicines December 12, 2008
Miguel Angel Gastelurrutia (Spain)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative MedicineIt's one of the best approaches I've read to bring some light on such a difficult issue such as alternative medicines. Real truth doesn't exist but there are ways to walk toward it and that's what the two authors do in a very easy language.
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