Book Calls Alternative Medicine a ‘Throwback to the Dark Ages’

Hundreds of studies have examined the purported benefits of various alternative medicine treatments. In Trick or Treatment, Simon Singh and Dr. Edzard Ernst, MD, report on the results. To­gether they conclude, after cataloging the evidence, that most of the popular forms of alternative medicine are “a throwback to the dark ages.” Too many alternative practitioners, they say, are “uninterested in determining the safety and efficacy of their interventions.” The book includes a brisk history of the evidence-based approach to medicine, tracing the development of the modern clinical trial from its earliest days. The authors are particularly hard on homeopathy, calling it “the worst therapy encountered so far—it is an implausible therapy that has failed to prove itself after two centuries and some 200 clinical studies.”