Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine

Absolutely brilliant. The meta-analyses constitute a deeper truth. Well done to you both. As a scientist and skeptic and not a cynic, I accept as the truth only information that has been shown to be true through repeatable demonstration by my colleagues. In my case my skepticism includes religious tenets which, according to the terms of scientific investigation, fails to convince me of a higher or divine power or being. I am nonetheless impressed with the clear and simple manner in which the information in this book has been presented. Many thanks for putting to print what I have long believed. This book deserves five stars. Well done Simon and Edzard. Gratefully yours, Ladd de Villiers

Like most books that attack any aspect of the healthcare industry, it only uses a select portion of the available research that fits their agenda. They rely on the fact that the vast majority of readers will not and do not have access to the many different healthcare journals out there that show the results that differ with them. Is it worth reading? The answer would be if you are able to critically read it. That has been the key to reading any peer reviewed research.

I perceived a slippery slope fallacy around the section on whether physicians and pharmaceutical companies would begin promoting alternative therapies. I have difficulty imagining any conversation with an MD/DO concluding in anything other than casual remarks about lack of efficacy. I have difficulty imagining my science distrusting relatives purchasing homeopathic remedies from Phizer or Eli Lilly, the whole point is to avoid anything that looks like peer-reviewed science after all.