So, Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts About Alternative Medicine was written by Simon Singh, who I used to respect, and Edzard Ernst, MD, who calls himself "the world's first professor of complementary medicine" and immediately relative to this I have heard people who know him clear their throats and add: "Although, I have never heard where he studied any complementary medicine." (See what I just did there? I cast aspersions upon one of the authors by relating an anecdotal and therefore s

Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts About Alternative Medicine

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 father of medicine he stated: 'There are, in fact, two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.'

"Scientists began examining him... he was covered in tattoos consisting of lines and dots, ... 80 percent of the points correspond to those used in acupuncture today."

In short, the Prince of Wales ought to start listening to scientists rather than allowing himself to be guided by his own prejudices.

So,was written by Simon Singh, who I used to respect, and Edzard Ernst, MD, who calls himself "the world's first professor of complementary medicine" and immediately relative to this I have heard people who know him clear their throats and add: "Although, I have never heard where he studied any complementary medicine." (See what I just did there? I cast aspersions upon one of the authors by relating anand thereforesource.)The book has a single goal to prove through repetition that complementary medicine is invalid because it can not be proved through that golden standard of medicine the double blind trial to lead to "evidence-based medicine". The introduction states:which says it all and I need explain nothing further. From the outset, science is the only thing that is important in the field of medicine. Anything else is opinion. Which illustrates the delightful paradox in that this book is positively chockof opinion. For example, the first first chapter "The Truth About Acupuncture" begins with the bold statement that it wasthe Chinese who invented it because in 1991 two German tourists Helmut and Erika Simon discovered a frozen corpse 5,000 years old covered in tatoos that resemble conventional acupuncture points.Voilà, case proved, ipso factoinvented acupuncture. For two men who profess to loathe anecdotes they have no compunction about pulling them out to prove one of their batty theories.Next the authors discuss "ch'i" and frankly, anybody who studies Chinese medicine knows that what they say is wrong wrong wrong. The character for ch'i (or qi) rarely if ever exists alone in Chinese text books; it is always modified because, and this is thebetween Chinese medicine and biomedicine: qi describes a process or function, not a structure or a measurable substance. See, Westerners like tangible, measurables in medicine. When the Chinese talk about yuan qi (vitality) or wei qi (immune robustness) or gu qi (nutrient absorption) it is all. The Chinese philosopher-doctors use their language to describe how systems function in relative terms, not how they compare from one human to another. In other words: how is someone handling all of their basic functions: digestion, elimination, breathing, sleep ... not: what are your values? To talk about Chinese medicine without understanding this most basic concept is the equivalent of saying:By the way, the photo on page 45 of illegal, non clean-needle technique in which a patient has 16 needles in his face makes me wonder: what's going on there? A face lift by acupuncture? Because, jeez-loueez, it's not recognizable acupuncture I've ever seen.Next, there are all the scary stories about infections, death, and so on. C'mon you guys. In my 15 years in the biz. I've heard of one case of pneumothorax--caused by an untrained MEDICAL doctor. The explanation he gave to his patient was, get this: "Your lungs are too big." See, I can use anecdotes, too!Actually, this book continues along just more of the same. The "scientific" part of the book turns out to be a selective review of some of the scientific studies. Conclusions are drawn, but they are wifty. Here are some thoughts about the difficulties posed by studies of acupuncture efficacity:1) Double blind tests with acupuncture protocols where there are no reduction of symptoms don't prove acupuncture doesn't work they just prove that that protocol doesn't work;2) The first thing a student of Chinese medicine learns is: "Same symptoms different treatment, different symptoms same treatment." This means that even when the symptoms are same over a group of people you treat them differently because they have different presentation, age, sex, robustness. In order for any treatment to be successful it must be tailored for each subject. Thus, for obvious reasons the double-blind test for acupuncture efficacy is not viable--there would always be too many variables;3) Sham needling is SHAM study. The Japanese-style of acupuncture called Toyohari, for example, developed by blind practitioners, do not (for obvious reasons) insert the needle into the dermis--they just use needles to stimulate the surface of the skin. Toyohari has been shown to have tremendous therapeutic value. Therefore, the idea of using sham (retractible) needles that contact the surface of the skin means there still has been treatment;By the way, I had a Toyohari treatment when I was in Japan. At the time didn't think I'd gotten any treatment at all. Later on, do you know how I felt? Like a million freakin' bucks, that's how I felt! When was the last time you left a doctor's office and felt like a million freakin' bucks?Let's not go into that rat's nest of placebo, but frankly, do you think acupuncturists are talking dogs, cats and horses into feeling better with acupuncture? A veterinarian with an equine practice in Middleburg, VA, came to acupuncture school after he successfully treated a horse with a dripping eye. The key is that conventional treatment had not been effective--it was only after he had tried acupuncture that he had positive results. Do you think he persuaded the horse into stopping his eye from dripping?Ernst and Singh do the same thing for chiropractic therapy (thank god for chiropractors, my "doctor" wanted to cut open my back for exploratory surgery. When I declined he offered me physical therapy--didn't work--and Oxy, no thanks. My chiropractor, bless him, fixed me.) However, Ernst points out that you are taking your life into your hands any time you step into a chiropractic office (despite the fact mine pays about $900 a year in malpractice whereas my G.P. pays $50,000) and that chiropractors are 9 times more likely to be brought up for charges for sexual misconduct. Oh you randy randy chiropractors! What will we do with you? I guess Ernst and Simon have forgotten all those years when female patients were given unauthorized pelvic exams by residents and students while under anesthesia--a practice that continues today. Google: "Unauthorized practice: teaching pelvic examination on women under anesthesia" andI guess only chiropractors fall under the bright light of scrutiny--medical doctors sticking their hands into anesthetized women's parts doesn't rate mention.The authors continue to find hoaxes within homeopathy, herbal medicine, meditation, naturopathy, Alexander technique, leech therapy (why do they not call it "hirudotherapy" and why do they not acknowledge it is now used for over a dozen approved post surgical therapies in North America?), etc.They conclude with a chapter entitled: "Does the truth matter?" ... Well, hah, of course it doesn't. Smart people know this is all bunk. Those stupid people who head to acupuncturists and chiropractors in droves are not to be blamed for being hood-winked. Oh, and "the Prince" to whom the book is dedicated, is a Royal fool, gullible and weak-minded.They ask: who is to blame for all this nonsense? Well, celebrities are, especially pretty ones like Pamela Anderson and Goldie Hawn; medical researchers are, here they may be talking about people like a man diagnosed with M.S. while he was finishing his PhD in Biostatistics at Johns Hopkins University, upon receiving the diagnosis he set his considerable mind to pursuing available information about treatment protocol outcomes and concluded there was no pharmaceutical on the market that actually performed better than placebo. He decided to go holistic and is now a teacher of qi gong of national renown (and has had no further exacerbations.); universities are ... bad universities! bad, bad, down boy. By awarding profitable degrees in these alternative therapies they are creating false hope and real profits; alternative gurus are, e.g. charismatic MDs like doctor Oz. This really cheeses me off: when I've been telling patients for four years their Raynaud's symptoms would improve if they stopped smoking inevitably they come back to me and and say Dr. Oz says such and such!; the media, well look at the bullshit that's happened in the last 16 months there. who can believe anybody any more; the World Health Organization; the National Institutes of Health; and so on.When the authors talk about biomedicine moving out of the "dark ages" I think they refer to biomedicine moving away from: "how are you today?" towards an Orwellian world where your physician faces a screen (Electronic Health Records, anyone?) instead of her patient. To a world where the patient's numerical values are the end all be all and outside of those values he, as a patient, has no value himself.One area the authors never touch upon is the importance alternative medicine has for society: in a world in which doctors are priests standing between a man and his own health, and only care about that small slide from ill health to death, alternative medicine allows for a place in which a person can go to learn about self care to augment the quality of his healthy life and prevent an odd situation from becoming a chronic situation.As a final statement, I'd like to mention the Starfield report, published by Barbara Starfield, MD, in JAMA 2000; it stated that the third leading cause for untimely death in the US isin nature. This is in direct conflict to the CDC's list of top ten killers, in which lung disease is third after cardiovascular disease and cancer. Please note that alternative medicine doesn't figure in the top 100 causes of untimely death. Draw your own conclusions.Written for:Stephen--dead at 23, from a fatal drug interaction prescribed by a medical doctorElizabeth--currently blind, crippled and brain-damaged by a routine allergy shot administered incorrectly by a medical doctorEgan--survived pneumo-thorax caused by medical doctor using acupuncture (incorrectly) while attempting to treat his shinglesWilliam--saved from sepsis by a phenomenal surgeon and an extraordinary team of physicians, nurses, and techs at Yale Teaching hospital