Know Your Enemy

"Most forms of alternative medicine remain either unproven or are demonstrably ineffective and several alternative therapies actually put patients at risk. We are not anti-alternative medicine, we are pro-evidence. If people take medicine, they should know it's safe".

So sayeth Edzard Ernst - and as a former homeopath and the first professor of complementary medicine in Britain, he's worth listening to. Simon Singh, co-author of 'Trick Or Treatment' with Ernst, is rather more blunt about homeopathy: "It's all baloney".

Which reminds me - I really must recover my copy of 'How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered The World', Francis Wheen's skewering of quackery in all its forms.