Medical expert Paul A. Offit, M.D., offers a scathing exposé of the alternative medicine industry, revealing how even though some popular therapies are remarkably helpful due to the placebo response, many of them are ineffective, expensive, and even deadly.

Prologue : taking a look at alternative medicine --Introduction : saving Joey Hofbauer -- Rediscovering the past : Mehmet Oz and his superstars -- The vitamin craze : Linus Pauling's ironic legacy -- The supplement industry gets a free pass : neutering the FDA -- Fifty-one thousand new supplements : which ones work? -- Menopause and aging : Suzanne Somers weighs in -- Autism's Pied Piper : Jenny McCarthy's crusade -- Chronic Lyme Disease : the Blumenthal Affair -- Curing cancer : Steve Jobs, shark cartilage, coffee enemas, and more -- Sick children, desperate parents : Stanislaw Burzynski's urine cure -- Magic potions in the twenty-first century : Rashid Buttar and the lure of personality -- The remarkably powerful, highly underrated placebo response -- When alternative medicine becomes quackery -- Epilogue : Albert Schweitzer and the witch doctor : a parable.