Product Description

Welcome to the world of alternative medicine. Prince Charles is a staunch defender and millions of people swear by it; most UK doctors consider it to be little more than superstition and a waste of money. But how do you know which treatments really heal and which are potentially harmful?Now at last you can find out, thanks to the formidable partnership of Professor Edzard Ernst and Simon Singh. Edzard Ernst is the world's first professor of complementary medicine, based at Exeter University, where he has spent over a decade analyzing meticulously the evidence for and against alternative therapies. He is supported in his findings by Simon Singh, the well-known and highly respected science writer of several international bestsellers. Together they have written the definitive book on the subject. It is honest, impartial but hard-hitting, and provides a thorough examination and judgement of more than thirty of the most popular treatments, such as acupuncture, homeopathy, aromatherapy, reflexology, chiropractic and herbal medicine.In "Trick or Treatment?" the ultimate verdict on alternative medicine is delivered for the first time with clarity, scientific rigour and absolute authority.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5690 in Books
• Published on: 2009-05-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 416 pages

Daily Mail, April 8, 2008
"a definitive - if controversial - guide to what works, and what doesn't. It makes indispensable, if sometimes alarming, reading"

Sunday Times, April 20th 2008
Fearless, intelligent and remorselessly rational.

From the Back Cover
Welcome to the world of alternative medicine.
Prince Charles is a staunch defender and millions of people swear by it; most UK doctors consider it to be little more than superstition and a waste of money. But how do you know which treatments are effective and which are potentially harmful?Now you can find out.
Edzard Ernst is the world’s first professor of complementary medicine and Simon Singh is the author of several international bestsellers. Together they have written the definitive book on alternative medicine. It is honest, impartial, hard-hitting and provides a thorough examination of more than thirty of the most popular treatments, including acupuncture, homeopathy, reflexology, chiropractic therapy and herbal medicine.Whether you are a follower, sceptic or just baffled by the subject, Trick or Treatment? delivers the ultimate verdict on alternative medicine with clarity, scientific rigour and absolute authority.
‘A definitive – if controversial – guide to what works, and what doesn't.It makes indispensable, if sometimes alarming, reading’ Daily Mail
‘Its up to date scientific evidence provides a good reference point for anyone thinking of spending money on alternative treatments’ Breast Cancer Care News
‘This book is good; very good.

Customer Reviews

An interesting insight
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.

made my mum give up her Arnica 30C globules!
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).

The answer to the question is trick
There's always a danger with books like these that the very detailed, point-by-point refutation of the beliefs and practices in question lends the practices and beliefs a kind of credence. After all, if it takes 400 pages to put complementary and alternative (CAM) medicine in its place, then surely there must be many aspects of it that are hard to disregard out of hand? In that respect this book reminds me quite a bit of Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. A personal God and homeopathy are so patently nonsense, counter-logical and not supported by a shred of evidence that it seems indulgent to even waste words on them. Having said that, this book is a bit of a hard read. It repeats itself each chapter as the discussions about each complementary medicine are roughly the same.

The salient points I took from this book is that scientific studies by themselves should be viewed critically to make sure they are robust, and also that meta-analyses of many scientific studies are much more likely to paint a truer picture than a single study in isolation, which may have been flawed. Secondly, the media is often guilty of sensationalising scientific news, concentrating on the bad for conventional medicine, and on the good for complementary medicine. Articles and headlines also tend to say, "Scientists have announced..." rather than "A group of scientists has announced..." The former implies there is a consensus and that science has collectively and unanimously made a declaration. It's subtle, but it undermines scientists' media profile. Thirdly, by definition alternative medicine doesn't work. If it did, the scientific establishment would embrace and endorse it and it would no longer be called alternative. The authors make this point on page 346.

I think this book could be read in conjunction with The Emperor's New Drugs by Irving Kirsch. They would complement each other well, and Kirsch's scepticism about evidence-based science and randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind clinical trials with respect to anti-depressants would give the reader something to think about. It is strange, and surely no coincidence that many alternative therapies are supposed to be effective against illnesses that have a very subjective component to them, such as pain, anxiety and depression. It is surely no coincidence also that these conditions are also affected strongly by placebos. It's hard to come away from this book without having the opinion that most CAM practitioners are either deluding themselves or they are charlatans.

I loved some of the quotes that are provided by this book. Some of them were priceless. However, I was cautious about some of the language at times. Quite a few times, the authors say something like: "We can therefore only presume that..." I thought that was very unscientific and uncorroborated by any reasoning behind those presumptions that were always detrimental to CAM. Overall, this book is very logical, evidence-based and reasonable and the authors choose their words wisely and carefully in a very scientific manner. But in the end it is just all a bit repetitive and quite boring. This book could well have just been a magazine or newspaper article. It seems to have been padded out unnecessarily.

Buy it anyway. Support Simon Singh's crusade.