Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial
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Product Description
Daily Mail, April 8, 2008
"a definitive - if controversial - guide to what works, and what doesn't. It makes indispensable, if sometimes alarming, reading"
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Sunday Times, April 20th 2008
Fearless, intelligent and remorselessly rational.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential read but Kindle edition is lazily adapted (5 stars for content; 1 star for Kindle edition quality),
This review is from: Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial (Kindle Edition)
This should be essential reading alongside Ben Goldacre's Bad Science. Both books serve a vitally important role. Where Goldacre's book is a little more chatty, it's author being the 'David Brent' of the popular science writers world (I'm cool, you'd love to have a drink with me, and yeah, I can drink loads, while leading two double-blind trials, writing newspaper columns, participating in amateur dramatics (yes, really!) and being the funniest guy you've ever met... I'm cool, I swear, particularly if it impresses the kids and ...), Ernst and Singh's book is a little more sober, the authors being less desperate to impress. The books compliment each other well. If you come away, as some readers have, unconvinced,claiming the authors to be part of some conspiracy, or accusing them of blind prejudice against CAM then you have simply failed to understand the basic points they're making, and those points are not difficult to understand. This book and Goldacre's explain with admirable clarity the placebo effect and the way a double blind trial works and why they're important. Not difficult notions to understand in any case, but, just in case, here they are explained clearly, so all can grasp them. All treatments should undergo rigorous testing, much of the stuff on your health food shops' shelves hasn't, and when it has it has been shown (with very very few exceptions)to have all the healing qualities of a sugar pill, which in the case of homeopathy isn't surprising since that's what they generally are.
Now, to the KINDLE edition. 1 month into my Kindle ownership and I'm now getting pretty irritated by the shoddy quality of many of the Kindle editions. This one leaves block quotes (long quotes that are set out separate from the text in the print edition) in the same font, without quotation marks and with the same paragraph indentation as the main text; so often you find yourself half way through a quotation before realising that you are reading a quotation, and then you have to workout where it ends and the main text recommences. In addition, some special symbols just come out peculiar, as do some of the lists. Is it too difficult to make the Kindle editions the same quality as the print editions? This should not even be a question. This is really poor and shows disrespect for those who have bought Kindles. C'mon Amazon!
68 of 86 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An interesting insight,
By
This review is from: Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial (Hardcover)
Any thinking person would likely agree that the public is largely capable of making its own mind up when it comes to matters which may have a bearing on their own health. So it follows that any valid evidence which might influence a decision by an individual on what might be beneficial or prove harmful in the treatment of a condition of their own health should be welcome.
I found a wealth of such information in the pages of "Trick or Treatment?" and am grateful to the authors for the depth of their research which I could never have mustered the resources to embark on myself. Professor Ernst is clearly a champion of evidence-based medicine with loyalty only to the patient. The importance of highlighting the possibility that some herbal remedies can seriously interfere with the impact of prescription drugs can surely never be underestimated and I unreservedly commend this work which emphasises that point without overstating it. The point is also made that some so-called remedies are a complete waste of money which, if so, might be better invested in the purchase of this book.
54 of 71 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
made my mum give up her Arnica 30C globules!,
By
This review is from: Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial (Hardcover)
I have been meaning to write a review of Trick or Treatment for some months now and had a lot of sophisticated ideas how to phrase it. In the meantime, I had sent my mother a "care package", with dried cranberries, organic Earl Grey tea and a copy of Trick or Treatment. She called me last weekend and said:
"This book is so full of suspense and so extraordinarily well written. I understand what you mean now. I guess I will have to give up my beloved Arnica globules then. It *does* make sense that they cannot work if there is nothing in them. To bad that the German version does not come out until next year, I have some friends who should read this book." There, that sums it up: Singh and Ernst obviously struck the right tone and paced the book appropriately for the educated user of "alternative medicine" to follow and accept the conclusions of many careful trials. That is excellent, because I myself somehow never muster the patience to go through the details, why this or that "alternative" is not even worth trying. The only point that I found irritating (and so did my mum) is the sparseness of literature. Few sources are cited and they only refer to the chapter rather than a specific statement. This is something that would be worth amending in future printings and/or in other language additions. I want all necessary references in the book I am reading and don't want to be refered to another book of the author for background. A must read for: Any person in the medical field, so they understand who and what contributes to healing (the colour of the pill often as much as the ingredient). Anyone with a longer lasting medical condition (since they are the prime "target" for most of the CAM methods and practitioners). Any parent (most CAM products are essentially "Wellness" and parents should realize that they can generate "Wellness" for their child without the stringent rules of homeopathy, or the potentially dangerous upper spine manipulations of a chiropractor).
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