Trick or Treatment?
January 11th, 2009 Posted in HealthJust a quick update to suggest that you all go out and buy a copy of the wonderful new book on Alternative Therapies in medicine, “Trick or Treatment”. Here’s the Amazon.co.uk link. The book covers all alternative therapies that I’ve ever heard of, concentrating most on Homeopathy, Chiropractic, Herbal medicine and Acupuncture. It comprehensively demolishes pretty much all of them, though is honest about the few conditions that a minority of these therapies may be able to treat.
Most importantly, it calls out the government to regulate an industry which is raking in billions of dollars worldwide, but which is shockingly unprincipled, and provides (in the most part) little or no testing to prove the safety or even the efficacy of any of its treatments.
Personally, I think the government should go round a list of all homeopaths and ask to see if they would prescribe anything for malaria (or a similarly dangerous disease); then, they should make a list of all homeopaths who suggest a homeopathic-only remedy, and ban them from selling any health product for at least ten years, followed by slamming them in jail for at least six to twelve months.
Harsh? Nope, dying of preventable illnesses is harsh. Being told that you can be cured of potentially fatal diseases by drinking water and eating sugar pills, then expiring in agony in some African hellhole is harsh. Spending tens of millions of pounds of public money on providing this branch of nonsense on the NHS is harsh. And also criminal.
So, anyway, go out and buy the book. Then read it, of course.
