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

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.