Do You Believe in Magic? Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine - called Killing Us with Soft: Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine in the UK - is the 2013 book on treatment alternative by Paul Offit, an infectious disease expert and American vaccine. It was published in the United States by HarperCollins (255 pages) and in the UK by Fourth Estate (June 20, 2013, 336 pages). Video Do You Believe in Magic? (book)
Content
This book criticizes alternative medical treatments as ineffective, especially vitamins and dietary supplements. Among the most important supplements in this book is the use of Vitamin C to treat common colds, which also causes him to criticize Linus Pauling for promoting vitamin C for this purpose. In his book, Offit also attributes much of the effectiveness of alternative medicine to the placebo effect, which is the subject of one of the chapters in this book. He also noted that alternative medical treatments can have serious side effects, such as paralysis due to chiropractic and viral infections caused by acupuncture. Among the doctors criticized by Offit in the book were Joseph Mercola and Rashid Buttar, and Andrew Weil and Deepak Chopra. Offit said he wrote the book as a result of the experience where he underwent surgery on his left knee, and his doctor recommended that Offit take glucosamine and chondroitin sulphate. Offit then sought scientific studies on the efficacy of this supplement and found some that showed they were no more effective than placebo.
Maps Do You Believe in Magic? (book)
Reception
Do You Believe in Magic? has been reviewed at Boston Globe by Suzanne Koven and by Gail Ross at Publishers Weekly . Ross concludes that the book is "a clever and uncultured research guide devoted to consumers to differentiate between shamans and drugs." Other reviews appear in The New Republic , where Jerome Groopman writes that Offit "writes in a clear and flowing style, and bases a lot of information in a strong and clear narrative." Victoria Maizes, director of the Arizona Integrative Treatment Center, criticized the book's claim that St. John's wort is not an effective treatment for depression, citing a 2008 review that found that it was more effective than placebo. Offit replied in an interview with NPR that the point he tried to make in the book was simply that St. John's wort is ineffective for severe depression, and that there is "some research on values" with respect to moderate depression treatment.
In 2013 Offit presented with Robert B. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking by the Skeptical Inquiry Committee (CSICOP) for Do You Believe in Magic? . "Offit is a literal savior... educating people about the dangers of alternative medicine, can save you much, much more."
References
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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