For the next two years, I went to the dermatology clinic at the University of Pennsylvania, getting periodic physical examinations, chest X-rays, and blood tests looking for evidence of further metastases. None were found. Also, no one could find the original site from which my melanoma had supposedly spread. A mystery, they claimed.
Later, my wife, who is also a doctor, sent my biopsy to a dermatologist friend of hers, who said that I didn’t have malignant melanoma—my real diagnosis was cutaneous blue nevus syndrome, a benign disorder that mimics melanoma. I was happy to be done with it. But two years of thinking that I was suffering from a fatal illness had been hell.
When I was in my early fifties, a sharp, persistent pain in my left knee made it difficult to walk. Unable to tolerate it any longer, I visited an orthopedist, who diagnosed a partially torn medial meniscus (the cartilage in the knee that keeps bone from rubbing against bone). The surgery will be simple, he explained, with a full recovery in a few days. But in the postoperative haze of anesthesia, I learned that it hadn’t been that easy. The orthopedist explained that my problem wasn’t a torn meniscus after all; it was a loss of cartilage behind my kneecap. Instead of minor knee surgery, I had just undergone microfracture surgery, where small holes are drilled into bone. The recovery wasn’t going to be a few days—it was going to be a year. The miscalculation didn’t seem to surprise or upset the orthopedist. But it upset me.
By my mid-fifties, consistent with my age, I began to suffer symptoms of an enlarged prostate. Now I was in the world of urologists, which meant I would periodically get my PSA level checked. PSA, or prostate-specific antigen, is supposedly a predictor of prostate cancer. But the more I read studies about PSA, the more I realized it isn’t a very good predictor at all. Even biopsies of the prostate are confusing. As it turns out, most men with prostate cancer die with the cancer, not from it. Which means that most men with prostate cancer have needless surgery. And the surgery is brutal, leaving many incontinent and impotent. As a consequence, urologists have varying opinions about how to avoid prostate cancer.
During these misadventures, I’ve gotten a lot of advice from a lot of people. Some have gone as far as to suggest I abandon conventional medicine. They said I should take saw palmetto for my prostate and chondroitin sulfate and glucosamine for my foot and knee pain—all readily available without a prescription. They told me that I shouldn’t have seen an orthopedist—I should have seen an acupuncturist or a chiropractor—and that I shouldn’t have gone to a urologist for prescription drugs: I should have gone to a naturopath for something more organic, more natural. They urged me to stop being so trusting of modern medicine and to once and for all take control of my health—to leave a system that was clearly flawed.
So I went to a health food store and bought saw palmetto, chondroitin sulfate, and glucosamine. But before I took them, I looked to see whether studies had been done showing they worked. The studies were large, internally consistent, well controlled, and rigorously performed. And the results were clear: saw palmetto didn’t shrink prostates, and chondroitin sulfate and glucosamine didn’t treat joint pain. Then I reviewed studies of acupuncture, naturopathy, homeopathy, and megavitamins, which also showed results far less amazing than my friends had led me to expect. Some therapies worked; most didn’t. And for those that did work, it was how they worked that was surprising.
Perhaps most concerning, I found that alternative therapies could be quite harmful. Chiropractic manipulations have torn arteries, causing permanent paralysis; acupuncture needles have caused serious viral infections or ended up in lungs, livers, or hearts; dietary supplements have caused bleeding, psychosis, liver dysfunction, heart arrhythmias, seizures, and brain swelling; and some megavitamins have been found to actually increase the risk of cancer. My experience wasn’t limited to reading medical journals. As head of the therapeutic standards committee at our hospital, I learned of one child who suffered severe pancreatitis after taking more than ninety different dietary supplements and another whose parents insisted on using an alternative cancer cure made from human urine.
What I learned in all of this was that, although conventional therapies can be disappointing, alternative therapies shouldn’t be given a free pass. I learned that all therapies should be held to the same high standard of proof; otherwise we’ll continue to be hoodwinked by healers who ask us to believe in them rather than in the science that fails to support their claims. And it’ll happen when we’re most vulnerable, most willing to spend whatever it takes for the promise of a cure.
The purpose of this book is to take a critical look at the field of alternative medicine—to separate fact from myth. Because the truth is, there’s no such thing as conventional or alternative or complementary or integrative or holistic medicine. There’s only medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t. And the best way to sort it out is by carefully evaluating scientific studies—not by visiting Internet chat rooms, reading magazine articles, or talking to friends.
They were small
And could not hope for help and no help came.
—W. H. Auden, “The Shield of Achilles”
My first exposure to alternative medicine came by way of a story that circulated during my pediatric residency in the late 1970s. It involved a popular alternative cancer remedy called laetrile. Some might read what follows and feel assured it could never happen today—that no parent would ever do such a thing. But every single influence that drove these parents to do what they did is still very much alive, arguably even more so than it was then.
The story concerns a little boy from upstate New York.
On October 5, 1977, Joey Hofbauer complained to his mother about a lump on his neck. When the lump didn’t go away, she took him to their family doctor, Denis Chagnon, who prescribed penicillin, without effect. When the lump got bigger, Chagnon referred Joey to an ear, nose, and throat specialist, Dr. Arthur Cohn, who, on October 25, biopsied it at St. Peter’s Hospital, in Albany. Two days later, Cohn had his diagnosis: Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymph glands. Joey was seven years old.
Although the news was devastating, Joey’s prognosis was excellent. By the early 1970s, investigators had proved that radiation and chemotherapy offered Joey a 95 percent chance of recovery—with proper treatment, Joey could live a long and fruitful life. But for Joey Hofbauer, the road to recovery wasn’t going to be easy. Within weeks, a battle erupted over how Joey should be treated and by whom. On one side were Joey’s parents, citizen activists, the media, the John Birch Society, and a movie star. On the other were cancer specialists, Senator Edward Kennedy, the Saratoga County Department of Social Services, and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The battle lasted three years.
When he learned that Joey had Hodgkin’s disease, Arthur Cohn advised the Hofbauers to see a cancer specialist. The specialist would determine the extent of Joey’s cancer by taking biopsies of the liver and spleen. Then Joey would receive radiation and chemotherapy—medicines like procarbazine, prednisone, vincristine, and nitrogen mustard. Cohn reassured the Hofbauers that their son had an excellent chance of survival. But John and Mary Hofbauer weren’t reassured. They heard words like radiation and chemotherapy, and it scared them, conjuring up images of hair loss, vomiting, diarrhea, anemia, and worse. Certainly there was a better way to treat their son—a more natural way. So they rejected Cohn’s advice and signed Joey out of St. Peter’s Hospital. On November 8, the Hofbauers flew their son to the Fairfield Medical Center, in Montego Bay, Jamaica, to receive a remedy they believed was far gentler, far kinder, and far more reasonable than those recommended by Dr. Cohn: laetrile, a natural remedy made from apricot pits.
The day the Hofbauers flew to Jamaica, Denis Chagnon wrote a letter: “Dear Mr. and Mrs. Hofbauer, I have repeatedly asked for the name and address of