• Complain

Dr. Simon Singh - Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial

Here you can read online Dr. Simon Singh - Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2009, publisher: Transworld Digital, genre: Romance novel. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

No cover
  • Book:
    Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Transworld Digital
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2009
  • Rating:
    3 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 60
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

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 worlds first professor of complementary medicine, based at Exeter University, where he has spent over a decade analysing 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,...

Dr. Simon Singh: author's other books


Who wrote Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Professor Edzard Ernst is the world's first professor ofcomplementary medicine. Formerly a clinical doctor, he hasstudied homeopathy and practised this and many otheralternative treatments. He has now built a world-classreputation for successfully applying science to test the value ofalternative therapies and is regularly interviewed for TV andradio.

Dr Simon Singh has a Ph.D. in particle physics and started hiscareer as a producer on BBC science programmes such asHorizon and Tomorrow's World. He is the author of the worldwidebestsellers Fermat's Last Theorem and The Code Book.Big Bang, his history of cosmology, became a New York Timesbestseller.

www.rbooks.co.uk

Trick or
Treatment?

ALTERNATIVE MEDICINE ON TRIAL

Simon Singh & Edzard Ernst

Trick or Treatment Alternative Medicine on Trial - image 1

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

ISBN 9781409081807

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS

6163 Uxbridge Road, London W5 5SA

A Random House Group Company

www.rbooks.co.uk

TRICK OR TREATMENT
A CORGI BOOK

ISBN: 9781409081807

Version 1.0

First published in Great Britain
in 2008 by Bantam Press
a division of Transworld Publishers
Corgi edition published 2009

Copyright Dr Simon Singh and Professor Edzard Ernst 2008

Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst have asserted their rights under the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work.

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK
can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk
The Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

Every effort has been made to obtain the necessary permissions with reference tocopyright material, both illustrative and quoted. We apologize for any omissions inthis respect and will be pleased to make the appropriate acknowledgements in anyfuture edition.

Dedicated to
HRH The Prince of Wales

Introduction

THE CONTENTS OF THIS BOOK ARE GUIDED ENTIRELY BY A SINGLEpithy sentence, written over 2,000 years ago by Hippocrates ofCos. Recognized as the father of medicine, he stated:

'There are, in fact, two things, science and opinion;
the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.'

If somebody proposed a new medical treatment, thenHippocrates declared that we should use science to decidewhether or not it works, rather than relying on somebody'sopinion. Science employs experiments, observations, trials,argument and discussion in order to arrive at an objectiveconsensus on the truth. Even when a conclusion has beendecided, science still probes and prods its own proclamationsjust in case it has made a mistake. In contrast, opinions aresubjective and conflicting, and whoever has the mostpersuasive PR campaign has the best chance of promotingtheir opinion, regardless of whether they are right or wrong.

Guided by Hippocrates' dictum, this book takes a scientificlook at the current plethora of alternative treatments that arerapidly growing in popularity. These treatments are piled highin every pharmacy, written about in every magazine, discussedon millions of web pages and used by billions of people, yetthey are regarded with scepticism by many doctors.

Indeed, our definition of an alternative medicine is anytherapy that is not accepted by the majority of mainstreamdoctors, and typically this also means that these alternativetherapies have mechanisms that lie outside the currentunderstanding of modern medicine. In the language of science,alternative therapies are said to be biologically implausible.

Nowadays it is common to hear the umbrella term 'complementaryand alternative medicine', which correctly impliesthat sometimes these therapies are used alongside and sometimesinstead of conventional medicine. Unfortunately it is alengthy and clumsy phrase, so in a bid for simplicity we havedecided to use the term 'alternative medicine' throughout thisbook.

Surveys show that in many countries over half thepopulation use alternative medicine in one form or another.Indeed, it is estimated that the annual global spend on all alternativemedicines is in the region of 40 billion, making it thefastest-growing area of medical spending. So who is right:the critic who thinks alternative medicine is akin to voodoo,or the mother who entrusts her child's health to alternativemedicine? There are three possible answers.

Perhaps alternative medicine is entirely useless. Perhaps persuasive marketing has fooled us into believing that alternative medicine works. Alternative therapists might seem like nice people, talking as they do about such appealing concepts as 'nature's wonders' and 'ancient wisdom', but they might be misleading the public or maybe they are even deluding themselves. They also use impressive buzzwords like holistic, meridians, self- healing and individualized. If we could see past the jargon, then would we realize that alternative medicine is just a scam?

Or maybe alternative medicine is overwhelmingly effective. Perhaps the sceptics, including many doctors, have simply failed to recognize the benefits of a more holistic, natural, traditional and spiritual approach to health. Medicine has never claimed to have all the answers, and over and over again there have been revolutions in our understanding of the human body. So will the next revolution lead to a discovery of the mechanisms underlying alternative medicine? Or could there be darker forces at work? Could it be that the medical establishment wants to maintain its power and authority, and that doctors criticize alternative medicine in order to quash any rivals? Or might these self-same sceptics be puppets of the big pharmaceutical corporations who merely want to hold on to their profits?

Or does the truth lie somewhere in the middle?

Whatever the answer, we decided to write this book in orderto get to the truth. Although there are already plenty of booksthat claim to tell you the truth about alternative medicine, weare confident that ours offers an unparalleled level of rigour,authority and independence. We are both trained scientists, sowe will examine the various alternative therapies in ascrupulous manner. Moreover, neither of us has ever beenemployed by a pharmaceutical company, and nor have we everpersonally profited from the 'natural health' sector we canhonestly say that our only motive is to get to the truth.

And our partnership brings balance to the book. One of us,Edzard Ernst, is an insider who practised medicine for manyyears, including some alternative therapies. He is the world'sfirst professor of alternative medicine, and his research grouphas spent fifteen years trying to work out which treatmentswork and which do not. The other of us, Simon Singh, is anoutsider who has spent almost two decades as a sciencejournalist, working in print, television and radio, alwaysstriving to explain complicated ideas in a way that the generalpublic can grasp. Together we think that we can get closer tothe truth than anybody else and, equally importantly, we willendeavour to explain it to you in a clear, vivid and comprehensiblemanner.

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial»

Look at similar books to Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial»

Discussion, reviews of the book Trick or Treatment?: Alternative Medicine on Trial and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.