‘The New Alchemists’: a new commendable book

Bernie Garrett is a professor of nursing at the University of British Columbia. He is being mentioned here because he has written a book entitled THE NEW ALCHEMISTS which deals (mostly) with so-called alternative medicine (SCAM). It is a well-written, informative, critical, and evidence-based text that I can recommend wholeheartedly. It will be available in the UK on 29 July but you can pre-order it already.

On Amazon, It is being advertised with the following words:

How to identify and see through deceptive and unethical health marketing practices Health scams come in all shapes and sizes-from the suppression of side-effects from prescription drugs to the unproven benefits of ‘traditional’ health practices-taking advantage of the human tendency to assume good intentions in others. So how do we avoid being deceived? Professor of Nursing, Bernie Garrett explores real-world examples of medical malpractice, pseudo and deceptive health science, dietary and celebrity health fads, deception in alternative medicine and problems with current healthcare regulation, ending with a simple health-scam detection kit. And he looks at how these practices and ineffective regulations affect our lives.

The book is written for the interested layperson. But I am sure that healthcare professionals will like it too, not least because it is fully referenced. Its aim is to inform and prevent consumers from being deceived and exploited by charlatans, an aim shared with this blog – while reading the book, I often got the impression that Bernie Garrett might be a regular reader of my blog.

This does not mean that I did not learn a lot from reading Bernie’s book. On the contrary, there was a lot that I did not know before and that is worth knowing. For instance, were you aware that you can earn a ‘Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine, Advanced Diploma’ or Reiki master qualification for $ 12.99 in a 6-hour online course (if you want to know where you’ll have to get Bernie’s book)?  Well, I didn’t.

Yes, I did enjoy reading this book, and I share Bernie’s views on SCAM. In his overall conclusions, he writes: “The sad truth is, many health fraudsters are highly skilled manipulators, and do not always end up being held to account for their crimes, and many continue to profit from them.” Because this is so, it is good to have another splendid book that will help us in our struggle to inform the public responsibly.