This book is a fully documented exposé of the considerable damage being done to health by modern “scientific” drug-based medical practice. The author is a psychiatrist whose earlier books include Mania: A Short History of Bipolar Disorder, Shock Therapy: The History of Electroconvulsive Treatment in Mental Illness, The Creation of Psychopharmacology: The Discovery and Development of Antipsychotic Medication, and The Antidepressant Era: The First Complete Account of the Phenomenon of Antidepressants. These described how psychiatry had gone badly wrong by fixating (...) on drugs and misinterpreting what they do, and how the pharmaceutical industry (Big Pharma) fought against acknowledging the harm done by these drugs, notably increased rates of suicide and significant decreases in expected lifespan. In this new book, Healy extends the critique to drug-based medicine across the board. (shrink)

The traditional concern of anomalistics has been to demonstrate that its interests are substantive and worth attending to, within a wider social context that has treated mainstream science as a touchstone of an authenticity that anomalistics still has to earn. Increasingly over the last few decades, however, mainstream science has become less and less trustworthy as a result of excessive competition and concomitant dogmatism (Bauer 2012a). This has happened quite markedly in medical science and practice, and The Risks of Prescription (...) Drugs describes this retreat from reliability. Complementary and alternative medicine have traditionally been decried by mainstreamers and their groupies on two related grounds: that any claimed successes of alternative treatments can be ascribed to the placebo effect rather than to the treatment, and that eschewing mainstream treatment robs patients of health-safeguarding, possibly life-saving benefits. The Risks of Prescription Drugs takes the wind out of both sails. Eschewing rather than accepting drug-based mainstream treatment can safeguard health and save lives. Moreover, the ability to summon the placebo effect is no mean feat and brings tangible benefits (Brody & Brody 2000). (shrink)

The common view of science is a misunderstanding of today's science that does not recognize how "modern" science has changed since its inception in the 16th to 17th centuries. Science is generally taken to be objectively reliable because it uses "the scientific method" and because scientists work disinterestedly, publish openly, and keep one another honest through peer review. That common view was not too unrealistic in the early days and the glory days of modern science, but it is quite wrong (...) about contemporary science, which has ceased to be trustworthy because it is subject to commercial and bureaucratic influences that have spawned highly damaging conflicts of interest, institutional as well as personal. The birth of "modern" science is credited uncontroversially to "The" Scientific Revolution of the 17th century, but it has not been widely under-stood that there have been three distinctly different stages of scientific activity since then. In the first stage, amateurs were seeking to satisfy their curiosity about how the world works. There were essentially no controlling interests other than truth-seeking. Missteps taken resulted chiefly from the inherent difficulty of making discoveries and from such inherent human flaws as pride and avarice. The second stage, roughly the 19th century, saw science becoming a career, a plausible way to make a living, not unlike other careers in academe or professions like engineering: respectable and potentially satisfying but not any obvious path to great influence or wealth. Inevitably there were conflicts of interest between furthering a career and following objectively where evidence pointed, but competition and collegiality served well enough to keep the progress of science little affected by that conflicting career interest. The way to get ahead was by doing good science. In the third and present stage, which began at about the middle of the 20th century, science faces a necessary change in ethos as its centuries-long expansion at an exponential rate has changed to a zero-sum, steady-state situation that has fostered intensely cutthroat competition. At the same time, the record of science's remarkable previous successes has led industry and government to co-opt and exploit science and scientists. Those interactions offer the possibility for individuals to gain considerable public influence and wealth. That possibility tempts to corruption. Outright fraud in research has become noticeably more frequent, and public pronouncements about matters of science are made for self-interested bureaucratic and commercial motives. The public cannot now rely safely on the soundness of advice from the scientific community. Keywords: historical changes in science, science become untrustworthy. (shrink)

Understanding Hashimoto’s Encephalopathy: A Guide for Patients, Families, and Caregivers by Nicola Nelson, Susan Foley, and Shari Lawler for the Hashimoto’s Encephalopathy SREAT Alliance. CreateSpace, 2013. 458 pp. $21.95 (paperback). ISBN 978-1484883099. Some number of people feel ill, yet mainstream medicine tells them via their doctors that there is no discernable reason for their symptoms and therefore no clear way to offer any real help. Sometimes the sufferers may be told that it’s psychological stress, “all in the head,” that there’s (...) nothing “really” wrong even though the physical pains are indubitably felt; or perhaps that what they think they suffer from doesn’t even exist. Consider Chronic Lyme Disease, for example: The term ‘chronic Lyme disease’ is not recognized in the medical literature, and most medical authorities advise against long-term antibiotic treatment for ‘chronic Lyme disease’. Studies have shown that most patients diagnosed with ‘chronic Lyme disease’ either have no objective evidence of previous or current infection with B. burgdorferi or are patients that should be classified as having post-Lyme disease syndrome, which is defined as continuing or relapsing non-specific symptoms (such as fatigue, musculoskeletal pain, and cognitive complaints) in a patient previously treated for Lyme disease. (Wikipedia; Science-Based Medicine). (shrink)