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A review by sarahetc
Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine by Paul A. Offit
3.0
I don't believe in magic. I am a huge fan of Western medicine and all its practices, including big guns drugs as needed, shooting myself and my kids up with vaccines to prevent horrible death and wearing sunscreen all the time. That said, I have been known to visit a chiropractor and use sambuca lozenges when the colds get bad enough I can't stand it and my doctor will just prescribe a hot toddy. Yay, placebo effect!
Offit's book starts well by looking at the minor aches and pains of a normally aging body and all the ways you can spend your money on trying to quell the aches and pains and stop the aging without ever actually getting anything in return. There are all manner of supplement out there to help "support" your joints and none of them have ever been proven to work. There are all many of vitamin and mineral regimens being sold trying to stop death in its tracks and none of them work either. In fact, eating profoundly large doses of Vitamin C can actually give you cancer instead of preventing it!
Offit goes through the history of "alternative" medicine, which is really just "stuff that isn't actually effective as medicine." He also outlines biographies and histories of Major Quacks, like Mehmet Oz and Joseph Mercola. He outlines quite a bit of scientific information, which at times makes the book just pages and pages of lists. And he uses what I think of his trademark style of writing: find a story of a medical abuse of a child to illustrate the point. Those are hard to listen to, but must, to contextualize just what kinds of horrible things desperate and desperately misinformed parents will do.
I learned a lot from it, but found parts of it dry and repetitive.
Offit's book starts well by looking at the minor aches and pains of a normally aging body and all the ways you can spend your money on trying to quell the aches and pains and stop the aging without ever actually getting anything in return. There are all manner of supplement out there to help "support" your joints and none of them have ever been proven to work. There are all many of vitamin and mineral regimens being sold trying to stop death in its tracks and none of them work either. In fact, eating profoundly large doses of Vitamin C can actually give you cancer instead of preventing it!
Offit goes through the history of "alternative" medicine, which is really just "stuff that isn't actually effective as medicine." He also outlines biographies and histories of Major Quacks, like Mehmet Oz and Joseph Mercola. He outlines quite a bit of scientific information, which at times makes the book just pages and pages of lists. And he uses what I think of his trademark style of writing: find a story of a medical abuse of a child to illustrate the point. Those are hard to listen to, but must, to contextualize just what kinds of horrible things desperate and desperately misinformed parents will do.
I learned a lot from it, but found parts of it dry and repetitive.