Edwards - Alternative Cover

Alternative, Complementary, Holistic and Spiritual Healing

An examination of non-traditional healthcare systems

Harry Edwards

Australian Skeptics, 1999, 385 pp, ISBN 0-646-35356-X. Counter page views.

Disenchanted with conventional medicine, more and more people, including the desparate and the terminally ill, are turning to alternative health practioners.

More often than not, false hopes are raised by claims of seemingly miraculous cures, enticing the vulnerable and uninformed into the clutches of those who would take advantage of them.

Unlike science-based medicine, alternative diagnoses often rely on unproven simplistic and pseudoscientific methods. Most of the treatments touted have not been subjected to rigorous double blind testing and rely on unreliable anecdotal evidence for testimony.

The author looks at over one hundred popular health care modalities and examines the claims from a science-based viewpoint. A comprehensive bibliography is provided to enable readers to delve further and judge for themselves whether or not they are good, bad or dubious.

Health care is as mich a retail exercise as buying a car. You are entitled to ask questions. If you do not, you will buy a lemon. To that end, this book is a buyers' guide designed to help consumers. It does not expressly teach how to think, but it describes the products you may be tempted to buy. It helpd you beware. It lifts the cover off advertising and attractive claims. It empowers you to ask questions. Ask them and protect yourself. If not, just give them your money, do not bother with the treatment, and save yourself the grief of failure.

Nikolai Bogduk
Professor of Anatomy and Muscoskeletal Medicine
University of Newcastle, Australia

Contents

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