Trick or Treatment
Cover of the first edition
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| Author | Simon Singh, Edzard Ernst |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Alternative medicine |
| Publisher | Bantam Press |
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Publication date
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2008 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 352 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 190777228 |
Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial (North American title: Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine) is a 2008 book about alternative medicine by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst. Singh is a physicist and the writer of several popular science books. Ernst is a professor of complementary medicine.
The book evaluates the scientific evidence for acupuncture, homeopathy, herbal medicine, and chiropractic, and briefly covers 36 other treatments. It finds that the scientific evidence for these alternative treatments is generally lacking. Homeopathy is concluded to be completely ineffective: "It's nothing but a placebo, despite what homeopaths say".
Although Trick or Treatment presents evidence that acupuncture, chiropractic and herbal remedies have limited efficacy for certain ailments, the authors conclude that the dangers of these treatments outweigh any potential benefits. Such potential risks outlined by the authors are contamination or unexpected interactions between components in the case of herbal medicine, risk of infection in the case of acupuncture and the potential for chiropractic manipulation of the neck to cause delayed stroke.
The book is very critical of Prince Charles' advocacy of alternative medicine and the actions of his now-defunct The Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health. Trick or Treatment is dedicated, in an ironic fashion, to the Prince.
The book contains six chapters:
How do you determine the truth?
The truth about acupuncture
The truth about homeopathy
The truth about chiropractic therapy
The truth about herbal medicine
Does the truth matter?
The book received generally good reviews. The New England Journal of Medicine's review said this about the authors: "Simon Singh is a physicist and science journalist, and his coauthor, Edzard Ernst, is a physician and professor of complementary medicine. Ernst is one of the best qualified people to summarize the evidence on this topic." The Daily Telegraph found the book to be "a clearly written, scrupulously scientific examination of the health claims of key areas of alternative medicine: acupuncture, homeopathy, chiropractic therapy and herbal medicine. The results are stark. In no case, apart from in some limited ways in herbal medicine, do any of these 'therapies’ work. On the contrary, they can be life-threatening." The journal Nature tempered a generally positive review with a concern that the authors' sense of certainty "mirrors that of the proponents of alternative therapies, leaving each position as entrenched as ever."
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