Healing, Hype or Harm?

"[T]his book represents the very best of contemporary albeit on the whole skeptical scholarship. It is highly refreshing to find a collection that does not toe a line but instead gives a wide range of pros and cons and includes some new and stimulating ideas... [I]t is wonderful that academic honesty is still alive and well... For those people actively researching in the field of CAM this book is a 'must have'." -- Kevin M. Purday * Metapsychology * "We see here people deeply concerned about the infiltration of quackery into the healthcare system and how it is undermining important advances in medicine and society... In perhaps the most moving essay we read Michael Baum looking at the concepts of holism in medicine and the vapidness of CAMs view of holism... Baum does this in a way that no quack could ever come close to and tells us how, 'alternative versions of holism are arid and closed belief systems, locked in a time warp, incapable of making progress yet quick to deny progress in the fields of scientific medicine'." * Scientific and Medical Network *

Professor Ernst qualified as a physician in Germany where he also completed his MD and PhD theses. He was Professor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) at Hannover Medical School (Germany) and Head of the PMR Department at the University of Vienna (Austria). He came to the University of Exeter in 1993 to establish the first Chair in Complementary Medicine. Since 2012, he is Emeritus Professor.

Introduction: 1. What is CAM?, 2 Why is CAM so popular; General issues: 1 Evidence in healthcare - what it is, and how we get it, 2 Reclaiming compassion, 3 Teaching CAM at university level, 4 Healing but not curing: alternative medical therapies should be considered part of New Age spirituality, 5 Research on CAM: the importance and frailty of impartiality, 6 An amateur's view of the CAM scene, CAM in court; Specific issues: 1 Ethics and CAM, 2 Politics and CAM, 3 Integrated medicine?, 4 Homeopathy in context, 5 Chiropractic: Science, religion or political movement?, 6 Concepts of holism in orthodox and alternative medicine, 7 Vitalism is dead: long live vitalism, 8 Placebo, deceit and CAM, 9 CAM and the media, 10 Patient choice.