Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13489

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

Publication type: Journal Article

Farrell L.
The Best Medicine: Passion required
BMJ 2008 Apr 5; 336:(7647):776
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/336/7647/776-a

Abstract:

A few years ago I felt compelled (out of both a sense of duty and a feeling of nausea) to chide the Independent about its complementary health guru. “Oooh, but he’s very popular,” was the newspaper’s defence. So is pornography, I said. “Oooh no,” they replied, in an outraged tone, “that wouldn’t be ethical,” though I reckoned that big tits on page 3 is a lot more ethical than snake oil salesmen peddling the illusion of knowledge to the gullible and the vulnerable.

But if even a newspaper as pretentious and worthily dull as the Independent can be trying to court the favour of the lumpen proletariat, then there is a lesson for all of us.

Every quarter someone (I don’t know who, some anonymous benefactor who thinks I should be bettering myself) sends me the Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin. As I am sometimes a good doctor, I read . . .

William.Farrell@528.gp.n-i.nhs.uk