Trick or Treatment (37 page)

While sometimes denigrating conventional medicines that do work, Weil seems to encourage alternative therapies that do not work, such as homeopathy. He even suggests to patients that they should experiment with a range of alternative therapies and find out what works for them, which particularly concerned the retired physician Harriet Hall, who reviewed his book in
Skeptical Inquirer
magazine: ‘The problem with this approach is many conditions are self-limited and others have variable courses. When your symptoms happen to subside, you will falsely attribute success to whatever remedy you happened to be trying at the time.’ Rather than encouraging patients to self-experiment and come to possibly unreliable conclusions, it would be better if Weil accurately publicized the conclusions from carefully and safely conducted clinical trials.

Dr Weil’s suck-it-and-see philosophy is shared by many of his fellow authors in the genre of alternative medicine. They readily throw every imaginable alternative treatment at their readers, as shown by Professor Ernst and his colleagues, who surveyed seven of the leading books on alternative medicine. Altogether, these books offered forty-seven different treatments for diabetes, of which only twelve appeared in more than one book. Five of these treatments (hypnotherapy, massage, meditation, relaxation and yoga) can help patients with their general wellbeing, but none of the other treatments for diabetes is backed by any evidence at all. There is a similar level of conflicting and misleading advice in relation to cancer – the seven books suggest a total of 133 different alternative treatments.

Kevin Trudeau is another high-profile guru – his book
Natural Cures They Don’t Want You To Know About
has sold 5 million copies and topped the
New York Times
bestseller list. This success is baffling, as Trudeau has no medical credentials. Instead, his Wikipedia entry describes him as ‘an American author, pocket billiards promoter (founder of the International Pool Tour), convicted felon, salesman, and alternative medicine advocate’. After serving two years in a federal prison for credit-card fraud, he worked in partnership with a company called Nutrition for Life. He soon fell foul of the law again, and was sued for essentially operating a pyramid-selling scheme. In his third incarnation, Trudeau started using TV infomercials to sell products, but over and over again he was accused of making false and un substantiated claims, so much so that in 2004 the Federal Trade Commission fined him $2 million and permanently banned him from ‘appearing in, producing, or disseminating future infomercials that advertise any type of product, service, or program to the public’.

Although he can no longer promote products on TV, freedom of speech means that he can still appear on TV to tout his books, sometimes topping the table of infomercial appearances in a single week. His bestselling book contains such dangerous nonsense as ‘The sun does not cause cancer. Sun block has been shown to cause cancer’, and ‘All over-the-counter non-prescription drugs and prescription drugs CAUSE illness and disease.’ In 2005, the New York State Consumer Protection Board issued a warning that Trudeau’s book ‘does not contain the “natural cures” for cancer and other diseases that Trudeau is promising’. The Board also cautioned the public that ‘Trudeau is not only misrepresenting the contents of his self-published book, he is also using false endorsements to encourage consumers to buy the book.’

Unfortunately, Trudeau seems like an unstoppable force, and he continues to sell alternative health products via his website. The New York journalist Christopher Dreher sees a clear strategy in Trudeau’s business ambitions: ‘In essence, the infomercial sells the book, which sells the Web site – which nets Trudeau tons of money.’ Alternative-health gurus nearly always promote health products from which they benefit financially, either directly or indirectly. Even the mild-mannered, avuncular Dr Weil does not shy away from a corporate approach to his role as a health guru, as demonstrated by his brand of alternative therapies sold under the banner of ‘Dr Weil Select’. On top of this, in 2003/4 he received $3.9 million in royalties, having signed a deal with Drugstore.com.

Similarly, American radio host and self-proclaimed health visionary Gary Null markets products through his own website. Part of his marketing policy is to trash conventional medicine in order to promote the alternative, but this leads to some particularly irresponsible and dangerous proclamations. In his book
AIDS: A Second Opinion
, Null states: ‘AIDS of the 90’s has become an iatrogenic disease brought on or made worse by immunosuppressive drugs.’ In other words, Null argues that conventional medicine harms rather than helps HIV/AIDS patients. Peter Kurth, a journalist infected with HIV, reviewed Null’s book and did not pull his punches:

Another health guru with a strange view on treating HIV is Patrick Holford, a British-based alternative nutritionist who is the author of twenty-four books, which have been translated into seventeen languages. In 2007, his latest book was accused of making dangerous claims about the treatment of HIV. When he was in South Africa, he even repeated his claims to the press: ‘What I have said in the latest edition of my book, the
New Optimum Nutrition Bible
…is that “AZT, the first prescribable anti-HIV drug, is potentially harmful and proving less effective than vitamin C.”’

Holford’s views have angered so many scientists over the years that he has even inspired a website entitled Holford Watch (www. holfordwatch.info) which seeks to highlight and correct his errors. Nevertheless, the University of Teeside judged Holford to be of sufficiently high standing to appoint him as a visiting professor. This links back to the problems highlighted in two of the previous subsections. First, some universities are acting in a peculiarly shoddy manner when it comes to alternative medicine. And second, medical researchers who should be making a fuss are not standing up for academic standards at their institutions.

5 The media

Newspapers, radio and television are, of course, hugely influential in any debate. However, the desire to attract readers, listeners and viewers means that the media are under pressure to sensationalize. This sometimes means not letting the facts get in the way of a good story.

This was demonstrated by a survey of Canadian print media by the Department of Community Health Sciences at the University of Calgary. Three researchers scanned nine publications for articles that appeared between 1990 and 2005, looking for any that linked CAM (complementary and alternative medicine) to cancer treatment. They found 915 articles in total, of which 361 had CAM treatment for cancer as the primary focus of the article. The main results confirmed previous, similar investigations:

In short, the print media in Canada (and elsewhere) tend to present an overly positive and simplistic view of alternative medicine. The way that alternative medicine is presented in newspapers all too often flies in the face of the evidence.

Turning to television, it seems that daytime programmes are always happy to invite a misguided alternative therapist onto their sofas.
The Wright Stuff
, for instance, is a largely reputable morning show on Channel Five in the UK, but it can arguably mislead its viewers with its regular slots for alternative practitioners. Jayney Goddard, President of the Complementary Medical Association (CMA), appears frequently on the show, usually promoting homeopathy. Chapter 3 explained that homeopathy is nothing more than a placebo, but innocent viewers of
The Wright Stuff
are generally given the impression that it is a powerful form of medicine.

It is interesting to note that the CMA’s website claims: ‘Thousands of people have contacted the CMA and
The Wright Stuff
about some of the products mentioned on the show by Jayney Goddard in the last few weeks.’ This is a conflict of interest, inasmuch as Goddard admits that she helped to formulate a brand of supplements that were promoted on the programme and which are sold on the CMA’s website. Such conflicts of interest turn out to be the rule and not the exception. The programme producers probably feel that they are simply filling fifteen minutes of airtime with some harmless medical chat, but they are actually encouraging a market in unproven treatments. Moreover,
The Wright Stuff
is indirectly promoting some rather peculiar views, as Goddard is the author of
The Survivor’s Guide to Bird Flu: The Complementary Medical Approach
, which claims to offer: ‘Information about a specific remedy for the precise symptoms of H5N1.’ There simply is no alternative cure for bird flu, and to say otherwise is irresponsible in the extreme.

Daytime TV has a particular penchant for the truly wacky end of the alternative spectrum, such as miracle healers who have superpowers. In North America, Adam Dreamhealer has been a popular miracle healer ever since a large black bird informed him of all the secrets of the universe. His massive media presence would be comical if it were not for the fact that large numbers of patients put their faith in the supposed healing skills of Mr Dreamhealer. According to his website: ‘Adam uses energy healing in a unique way to merge the auras of all participants with healing intentions. Then he uses holographic views to energetically affect through intention those present.’

The European equivalent of Dreamhealer is Natasha Demkina, who claims to be able to diagnose disease thanks to her X-ray vision, which she has had since she was ten years old: ‘I was at home with my mother and suddenly I had a vision. I could see inside my mother’s body and I started telling her about the organs I could see. Now, I have to switch from my regular vision to what I call medical vision. For a fraction of a second, I see a colorful picture inside the person and then I start to analyze it.’ However, in 2004 she underwent scientific testing and failed to prove that she had X-ray powers.

That same year Demkina appeared on a British daytime TV show called
This Morning
. She examined the show’s medical expert, Dr Chris Steele, and saw problems with his gallbladder, kidney stones, liver and pancreas. As reported by Andrew Skolnickin in
Skeptical Inquirer
: ‘The physician rushed off to have a battery of expensive and invasive clinical tests – which found nothing wrong with him. In addition to being exposed to unnecessary diagnostic radiation, he had a colonoscopy, which is not without risks.’ Studies show that 1 in 500 patients who undergo colonoscopic screening suffer a bowel perforation. Viewers who saw Demkina’s appearance on the show were probably impressed by her proclamations. Even though a later programme revealed that her diagnosis turned out to be alarmist and potentially dangerous, only a fraction of the original viewers would have learned of Demkina’s failure.

It might come as no surprise that daytime TV, tabloid newspapers and mass-market magazines are featuring bogus therapies and miracle healers, but it is disappointing when the world’s most respected broadcasters stoop to similarly low standards. In Chapter 2 we discussed how the BBC showed a misleading sequence that implied that acupuncture could act as a powerful anaesthetic for open-heart surgery, which was part of a supposedly authoritative documentary on the evidence for acupuncture. The BBC has a much deserved reputation for high-quality television, but sometimes it seems to lose its critical faculties when it comes to alternative medicine.

For example, a BBC news item in 2005 featured a
bioresonance machine
that could supposedly cure smoking addiction, but this was nothing more than fake gadgetry. John Agapiou, a neurophysiologist at University College, London, complained to the BBC:

Another good example of bad broadcasting, cited by Dan Hurley in
Natural Causes
, comes from CBS in America. Their flagship investigative news programme
60 Minutes
essentially created an entire market for one of the most dubious alternative treatments in recent years. In 1993 the programme ran a segment entitled ‘Sharks Don’t Get Cancer’, based on the contents of a book with the same name. Written by a Florida businessman called Bill Lane, the book argued that shark cartilage could be used to treat tumours. Lane’s evidence to back this treatment came from some very preliminary research and the observation that sharks rarely get cancer. In fact, the ‘Tumor Register of Lower Animals’ records that forty-two varieties of cancer (including forms of cartilage cancer) have been found in sharks and related species.