Read an extract from Suckers

THE SIMPLEST EXPERIMENT can have the most disturbing result. Type “cure for cancer alternative medicine” into Google and you get 1,900,000 pages. “Cure for cancer chemotherapy” brings up 1,730,000 results. It is an imperfect comparison but it might lead us to infer, wrongly, that alternative medicine has more to offer the cancer patient than conventional medicine.

Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is a vast industry that has, despite little or no evidence of effectiveness, ensnared one in three of us. In the UK we spend about £4.5 billion on, for example, homoeopathy, reflexology, herbal medicines, chiropractic and acupuncture.

In fact, so common are they that the label “alternative” has come to be seen as old-fashioned. They have been rebranded “complementary”, as if conventional medicine cannot suffice to meet our medical needs. The rebranding is still under way: the Prince of Wales, among other luminaries, insists on calling it “integrated medicine”, a holistic approach that treats as one the body, mind and soul.

In fact, Rose Shapiro argues in Suckers: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All, we have got ourselves into a right royal mess over CAM. These therapies — which also embrace such exoticisms as ear candling, cupping, colour therapy, vibrational healing and crystal therapy — remain unproven and unregulated.

When you buy a herbal medicine you don’t know how much active ingredient is in it, nor whether it will interact harmfully with any other medicines you are on (which is why the European Union, sensibly, wants to regulate it). Many therapies — such as homoeopathy and distance healing — offer no viable scientific mechanism by which they can cure. For example, homoeopathy uses solutions so dilute that patients are, in effect, treated with water.

Worse, CAM endangers people by propagating the untruth that Western medicine is, at best, ineffective and, at worst, harmful, despite it having eradicated many killer diseases and resulted in longer life expectancies than ever. And so cancer patients have perished after eschewing lifesaving chemotherapy for light therapy, nutritional supplements or coffee enemas (the heir to the throne once suggested that flushing out our nether regions with caffeine might alleviate cancer).

Shapiro insists, with some justification, that CAM has earned a status far beyond its merits, and is now, owing to popular demand, leaching money from an already overstretched NHS. The bill for an estimated tenth of CAM spending — some £450 million — is picked up by the taxpayer, and the public is fooled into believing that CAM is more than snake oil simply because the NHS uses it.

In short, Shapiro does much, in sprightly prose, to convince the reader that CAM is a sham. She points out that many CAMsters (my phrase) deride Western medicine as driven by greed, profit and Big Pharma — while their own tills ring loudly from the sale of ineffective pills to the gullible. She draws useful attention to “quackery’s red flags” — the ways in which the industry exploits our gullibility. For example: “The Establishment is trying to suppress my therapy” (which is why it’s available only over the internet); “it may make you feel worse before you feel better”; “why do you need scientific proof of its efficacy when I can offer you fulsome, near-anonymous testimonials?”

She revisits the origins of various therapies, including homoeopathy, and covers the existing literature either supporting it or, more usually, debunking it. Bach Flower Remedies, sold in Boots, wilts under her analysis. Acupuncture receives a good needling; chiropractic has more than its nose put out of joint. It was eye-opening to learn that traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) as it’s practised today was developed by Chairman Mao as a way of appeasing peasants denied modern healthcare — and that TCM is in decline in its homeland.

Shapiro’s unremitting scepticism means, though, that she can be wrong-footed by fresher research; the British Medical Journal recently reported that women undergoing IVF were 65 per cent more likely to become pregnant if they received acupuncture at the same time.

Edzard Ernst, Britain’s only professor of complementary medicine, at Exeter University, agrees that there may be something to acupuncture. Science, one of the world’s top research journals, recently revealed how some scholars plan to study rolfing (soft-tissue massage).

Shapiro is too dismissive, also, of the placebo effect, known to exert a powerful effect on patients. If administering a dummy pill or therapy provides some improvement, whether clinically or psychologically or both, should it be considered a valid medical approach? Shapiro argues no, but many respectable voices are calling for further investigation.

There is also a deeper sociocultural issue that is largely unaddressed: what has caused us to abandon our critical faculties when it comes to CAM? Why are we urged to respect others’ beliefs, no matter how irrational or ridiculous? Why are middle-class, well-educated, affluent women so ready to entrust their own health — and that of their children — to a field crowded with quacks, convicted fraudsters and charlatans?

Modern medicine has brought about the absence of sickness; do we hunger, in this vacuum, for something more that we call “wellness”? There is, undoubtedly, a degree of choice, control and personal attention in CAM that is lacking in conventional medicine (compare an eight-minute GP consultation with an hour-long initial CAM consultation). And if CAM empowers patients, what is it about modern medicine that disempowers them?

My fear is that the people who need to read this book, won’t. If you already buy into CAM, Shapiro’s tirade 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.

SUCKERS: How Alternative Medicine Makes Fools of Us All by Rose Shapiro
Harvill Secker, £12.99; 272pp

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