A Journey to the Fringes of American Medicine
January 1, 2023
A wry, wide-ranging investigation into the "alternative medicine" business and the dangers it poses. In bygone days, fast-talking charlatans sold snake oil from carnival stages. These days, quirky treatments pop up in the wilder corners of the internet, but the message--this stuff will cure anything, from baldness to cancer--is essentially the same. Hongoltz-Hetling, a George Polk Award-winning journalist and author of A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear, has a rollicking good time delving into strange treatments for which there seems to be no shortage of customers. He follows the careers of several "alternative" therapists and finds a recurring pattern. They claim that all diseases and ailments have a single cause; therefore, there is a single treatment. The author calls this the One True Cure method, and it has the advantage of making everything simple and clear. Often, patients just want certainty, and the therapists are effective at citing spurious studies and cases. They also spin a convincing tale of how big pharma is actively working to keep other treatments off the market to protect their profits. These range from leeches to remove infected blood to lasers that can cure cancer (apparently, by killing the little bugs that cause tumors). Hongoltz-Hetling is not sure whether the therapists believe what they are saying or are just money-hungry hucksters. He sympathizes with the Food and Drug Administration, often overwhelmed by the flood of dubious products, although he notes that several of the therapists he interviewed ended up in jail. This is entertaining stuff, but there is a dark side. "Silliness crosses a line into toxicity if it harms the public health by convincing people to forgo medical care," Hongoltz-Hetling writes, and he provides a list of people he encountered in his research who died by opting for a fringe treatment. It is a sobering conclusion but a necessary one. A walk on the weird side with an author who knows when to be funny and when to be serious.
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February 13, 2023
In this blistering survey, journalist Hongoltz-Hetling (A Libertarian Walks into a Bear) explores the “world of science-lite health care, its origins, and how, between 2000 and 2020, it changed the face of America.” In novelistic detail, Hongoltz-Hetling chronicles the lives and careers of nine alternative medicine purveyors, including a failed Montana gubernatorial candidate who tangled with the FDA over supplements he had developed to cure his mother’s cancer and a South Dakota dentist who claimed to have invented a laser capable of harnessing “universal healing light” to remedy any ailment. The profiles highlight the individuals’ predictable eccentricities (Alicja Kolyszko, a proponent of leeches, goes by “Dr. A-Leech-A”), but the author also excels at teasing out the sometimes tragic undertones: Leilani and Dale Neumann—founders of a Pentecostal ministry and “confident that prayer, not medical science, was the One True Cure”—suffered the death of their 11-year-old daughter from untreated diabetes after prayer failed to save her, leading to the couple’s conviction for reckless homicide. By turns humorous, enraging, and heartbreaking, the vivid stories drive home the stakes and consequences of hawking unproven treatments, though it feels like a missed opportunity that Hongoltz-Hetling doesn’t address the larger social forces behind the rise of quack medicine. Still, this proves a powerful antidote to medical disinformation.
March 1, 2023
Award-winning journalist Hongoltz-Hetling (A Libertarian Walks into a Bear) has written a sardonic indictment of some of the most non-traditional health care treatments in the United States. The author finds the comedy and horror in the earnest curative use of lasers, supplements, and bleach, while shedding serious light on the dangers of these quack treatments. The book also describes the uneven attempts of the FDA to monitor and control poorly tested and potentially dangerous approaches. The desperation in the face of advancing and irreversible illness lends a pathos lens to the tale of this sub-rosa curative industry. Underneath the book's broad comedy of "healers" convinced of their marvelous wares lies the more tragic story of the desperate customers misled into trusting quackery, possibly to their deaths. The book's humor is best taken with a dose of compassion and hope for the swindled. VERDICT A witty and informative examination of several alternative health-care practices in the United States that indicts both pseudo-healers and unsuccessful efforts to regulate them.--Dorian Gossy
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April 15, 2023
Hucksters have convinced vulnerable Americans try crazy treatments; leeches, anyone? In this well-reported look at current dubious non-traditional medicine, awardwinning journalist Hongoltz-Hetling presents a motley cast of characters on the furthest fringes of health and healing. Meet Toby McAdam, a failed gubernatorial candidate from Billings, Montana, who marketed Bloodroot Toothpaste, created supplements to treat his mom's cancer, and who believes that a bad person can turn others into zombies with an easily transmissible virus, like rabies. Scarily, McAdam notes that it's legal for registered researchers like him to order up to five vials of anthrax and smallpox. Consumers are gullible. One study showed that illegally selling the erection-improving drug sildenafil through a bogus online pharmacy was 2,000 times more profitable than selling cocaine and less likely to result in criminal penalties. Hongoltz-Hetling revels in the weirdness as he recounts a variety of questionable alternative treatments touted by the so-called medical freedom movement, with Donald Trump tapped as its "game show host." Be prepared to both laugh and feel horrified.
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