“Trick or Treatment – Alternative medicine on trial” is written by Simon Singh, a scientist and Edzard Ernst a medical doctor and professor of complementary medicine. Neither of the authors have ever been employed by a pharmaceutical company or profited from the “natural health” sector. They look at alternative medicine from a scientific view and ask “Is alternative medicine effective for treating disease?“. They do this by analysing published medical research on a range ot different therapies.
- Did I enjoy this book? Yes.
- Was it hard to understand? No.
- Would I recommend it? Yes.
Am I biased? Well, I am a scientist, so you would expect me to agree that the scientific method is the best way we have of understanding the truth. Do I believe all conventional medicine is wonderful and all alternative medicine is crap? No. I’m open to new ideas and I believe that many complementary therapies can help people with cancer endure the very unpleasant side effects of conventional treatments like chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In this respect I think complementary therapies are a great idea. I do NOT believe that complementary or alternative therapies can cure cancer. You can read more about my views in “Frequently Asked Questions“.
When reading this book it’s important to remember that the authors aren’t trying to work out if alternative therapy makes you feel better they are trying to find out if it is effective at treating disease. This is an important distinction. Other people’s positive experiences and testimonials are good news, but they are not scientific evidence.
As the book points out for centuries mainstream doctors thought that blood-letting (deliberately cutting you open and letting your blood run out) was a good way of treating a whole variety of illnesses and ailments. The doctors thought they were helping but when people began to collect evidence and carry out research it became clear that bloodletting did NOT help. Just because you think a treatment works doesn’t mean that it actually does.
The authors start by studying acupuncture as this was an alternative treatment that Edzard Ernst practiced. They also looked at the evidence for homeopathy, chiropractic therapy and herbal medicine. Instead of looking at just one or two research papers they look at something called “systematic reviews” where you look at the results from all the published research you can find and combine the results from the best trials where the investigators have done everything in their power to make sure they are carrying out a fair test. Note, you don’t just combine all the results of all the studies because some studies will not have been carried out properly and will be biased. But surely picking only “good” studies is biased? No, that is the point, it doesn’t matter what the study showed, for example the study could show that the alternative treatment was fantastic or it could show that the alternative treatment was no better than placebo. All that matters is that the actual study itself was “good” which means it was carried out in the right way to minimize bias.
So what are the books conclusions, there is little evidence that most alternative therapies are effective (although you may feel better through the placebo effect). There is evidence to show that acupuncture may be an effective treatment for pain and nausea and that chiropractic treatment is effective for lower back pain. They repeat this a lot and by the end of the book I was sick of reading it!
At the end of the book they list 37 alternative treatments and in one page for each treatment sum up the evidence for or against them.
Massage therapy, meditation and relaxation improve wellbeing and are helpful. Exercises such as yoga, T’ai Chi and Pilates are helpful in the same way that any other conventional form of excercise is good for you. Yoga, Tai Chi and pilates are not any BETTER than running, cycling, playing football, swimming or walking.
Most of the other alternative therapies are considered to be ineffective (that is they don’t work), they are expensive or can be dangerous. This includes things like the Alexander technique; aromatherapy; alternative “tests”; alternative diets and gadgets; aroma therapy; colonic irrigation; crystal therapy; detox; food supplements; homeopathy; herbal medicines; reflexology; Reiki and others.
As I said, I liked this book and on a side note, if you are Scottish you can be proud of our history, several of the pioneers who used evidence to decide if a treatment worked, or not were Scottish, including James Lind, a Scottish naval surgeon who discovered that citrus fruit treats scurvy and a Scottish military surgeon, Alexander Hamilton who questioned the practice of bloodletting.
Have you read this book? What do you think?
If you are more impressed with the images than the text “
[...] CLAN also offer a range of complementary and alternative treatments, some of which have no or very little scientific evidence to support them. If you are interested in the evidence for and against complementary medicine have a read of Trick or Treatment? [...]
alternative treatments that are based on natural and organic stuffs are the best *
The best for what? Spending your money on?