Too pat to state that this book should be required reading for all high school science students (and perhaps more importantly, high school science teachers) but it is one of those books that casts a harsh light on some dark nonsense. He argues for science, of all things, critical thinking, statistical analysis and other tools for understanding how things work. Detoxification rituals get a good examination (that brown muck that you see in the detoxic foot bath is actually rust) as do nutrionists, homeopaths and big pharma. (Just because a medicine is better than a placebo doesn't mean it's all that good - it should be better than medicine already in use).
The darkest chapter is the one that wasn't included in the UK version of the book because of a lawsuit. Matthis Rath convinced the South African government to forgo administrating HIV/AIDS medicine in lieu of vitamin treatments, a decision that costed an untold amount of lives and an example of just how dangerous all this nonsense can be.
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