Fake news is bad enough. We cannot allow ourselves to be buried in fake medicine. This book looks at quackery practiced under the cover of CIM (Complementary and Integrative Medicine). Why? To inform the consumer that there is a better way to spend their health-care dollar. How? By a better understanding of science and the scientific method. A brief summary of the development of science is given, from early Greece, through the Dark Ages, and into the twenty-first century. This history emphasizes that the development of the scientific method originated purely in Western culture, contrary to other interpretations by Islam and the Chinese. It traces the origins of anti-science in the United States. The placebo effect, an essential part of the science of medicine, is clearly defined. The absence of science is documented in twenty-five examples of CIM from acupuncture to homeopathy, from herbal medicine to aromatherapy, from spiritual healing to iridology. The history and the departure from science are emphasized. The weakness of the literature supporting these frauds is cited as are the politics of reimbursement. A section on marijuana stresses the need to take a hard look at the perils of legalization. While researching the cost of unscientific health care (over $40 billion), I discovered quackery embedded in the system (over $100 billion), including fraud in the scientific literature, fraud in the medical profession, in Big Pharma's pricing of drugs and hospital billing fraud. The extent to which legislatures are influenced by the money pharma spends on campaigns on an annual basis was tabulated. It exposes the weakness of our response to the opioid crisis. This book will be of interest to everyone in the United States interested in the quality of their health care. The aim is not to be all-inclusive but to stimulate national dialogue.

In Part II of this special issue of Nursing Clinics of North America, Dr. Krau is serving as Guest Editor again to provide information on complementary and alternative medicine with specific focus on herbal supplements and vitamins. Distinguished authors have contributed clinical reviews devoted to the following topics: Precautions when using Herbal Medications and Supplements; Vitamin B6 and its role in Women's Health; Fat Soluble Vitamins; Vitamin D: Vitamin or Hormone; Enhancing Cognitive Function with Herbal Supplements; Herbal Medications Used in Women's Health; Herbal Medication to Enhance or Modulate Viral Infections; Herbal Medications used to treat fevers; Traditional and Current Use of Ginseng; Herbal Medications Used to ameliorate cardiac conditions; Cannabis, Marijuana, and CBD oil; and Highs, Lows, & Health Hazards of Herbology-A Review of Herbal Medications with Psychotropic Effects. Knowledge of this information is not easy to find in the nursing literature, and Dr. Krau believes readers will come away with valuable information on managing patients who use complementary and alternative herbal supplements and vitamins.

In this enlightening and entertaining book, author and Skeptical Inquirer editor Kendrick Frazier takes readers on a journey to the contentious boundary zone between science and its antagonists: pseudoscience (pretend science) and anti-science (open hostility to science). Pseudoscience romps in the shadows of science but takes on the guise of science to excite, sell, mislead, and deceive the public. Anti-science denigrates, even denies, findings of science for ideological ends. In this dangerous age of misinformation (and dis-information), we need science’s remarkable truth-seeking tools more than ever to help counter society’s crazier impulses in which opinion, beliefs, and lies trump facts, evidence, and truth. In one sense, Shadows of Science is Frazier’s love letter to science, one of humanity’s greatest inventions, one we should exalt for its unique ability to find provisional truths about nature. In congenial prose he reports on recent discoveries and describes how science works and how its error-correcting mechanisms lead eventually to new knowledge. He tells the stories of some of our champions of science and reason. He describes the little-appreciated values of science, how it embraces uncertainty and humility, and its emphasis on fact-based observation and experiment. Pseudoscience adopts some of science’s language and has a beguiling appeal, but there the similarities end. Frazier has professionally reported on frontier scientific discoveries and observed and exposed the pretensions and dangers of pseudoscience and anti-science his entire career. Here he shares his experiences, his knowledge and insights, and his love and passion for our ability to learn what’s real about the natural world—and to identify and expose fake science, pretend science, and anti-science in all their multifarious forms.

#1 New York Times Bestseller In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering. Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified. Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal asserts that medicine can comfort and enhance our experience even to the end, providing not only a good life but also a good end.

For everyone who knows economics is important but doesn'treallyknow why,Gittinomicsis the indispensable, plain-speaking, entertaining and highly relevant guide to the economics of our everyday lives.

Originally published in 2012, revised edition published in 2013, by Fourth Estate, Great Britain; Published in the United States in 2012, revised edition also, by Faber and Faber, Inc.