Suckers
  • Published: 1 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9781409059165
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304
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Suckers

How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All

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In the tradition of Fast Food Nation, an entertaining, well-argued and very provocative calling to account of a huge and rapidly-expanding industry.

'Alternative' medicine is now used by one in three of us. In the UK we spend an estimated £4.5 billion a year on it and its practitioners are now insinuating themselves into the mainstream. There are methods based on ancient or far-eastern medicine, as well as ones invented in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many are promoted as natural treatments. What they have in common is that there is no hard evidence that any of them work.

Treatments like homeopathy, acupuncture and chiropractic are widely available and considered reputable by many. Ever more bizarre therapies, from naturopathy to nutraceuticals, ear candling to ergogenics, are increasingly favoured. Endorsed by celebrities and embraced by the middle classes, alternative medicine's appeal is based on the spurious rediscovery of ancient wisdom and the supposedly benign quality of nature. Surrounded by an aura of unquestioning respect and promoted through uncritical airtime and column inches, alternative medicine has become a lifestyle choice. Its global market is predicted to be worth $5 trillion by 2050.

Suckers reveals how alternative medicine can jeopardise the health of those it claims to treat, leaches resources from treatments of proven efficacy and is largely unaccountable and unregulated. In short, it is an industry that preys on human vulnerability and makes fools of us all.

Suckers is a calling to account of a social and intellectual fraud; a bracing, funny and popular take on a global delusion.
  • Published: 1 August 2011
  • ISBN: 9781409059165
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 304
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Rose Shapiro

Rose Shapiro has written for newspapers, magazines and medical journals including the Independent, the Observer, Time Out, Good Housekeeping and the Health Service Journal. She lives in Bristol.

Praise for Suckers

a potted history of alternative medicine, as well as a thorough rebuttal of it, and her research is both fascinating and illuminating

Natalie Haynes, New Humanist

A potted history of alternative medicine, as well as a thorough rebuttal of it, and her research is both fascinating and illuminating

New Humanist

A vigorous polemic

Guardian

Before you attend your next herbalism, homoeopathy, chiropractic or other CAM session, spend a few quid and a few hours on this book. It may change your life for the better - and save you some money

Irish Business Post

If you already buy into CAM, Shapiro's trade is going to make you feel angry and / or stupid. Which is sad, because you are exactly the kind of person who should digest it carefully before reaching for the arnica

The Times

Intelligent, passionate and well-argued

Christopher Hirst, Independent

Recommended treatment: another dose of Shapiro

Daily Mail

Shapiro expertly describes the pathology of medical counter knowledge

Daily Telegraph

Shapiro's polemic traces the origins of many of these practices in an attempt to expose much of the pseudo-scientific quackery

Glasgow Herald

This book... may change your life for the better

Sunday Business Post

This trenchant polemic against every form of quackery from crystal healing to colonic irrigation is brilliant, necessary stuff

Scotland on Sunday

Very readable book...clear and bracing

Evening Standard