Monday, May 12, 2008

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.

1 comment:

Del said...

Amen to that. Not sure if I've already told this story somewhere, but my mother tried to convince me of some new diet that is based on your blood type. Absolute bollocks, and I told her so in those terms. I really don't understand the pervasive attitude that exists in the world today that somehow science is a con designed to spoil everyone's fun.