Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine is a groundbreaking analysis that delves into more than 30 of the most popular alternative healing treatments. From acupuncture to homeopathy, aromatherapy to reflexology, chiropractic to herbal medicines, each is examined for their benefits and potential dangers.

Whether you are an ardent believer in alternative medicine, a skeptic, or simply baffled by the range of services and opinions, this guide lays to rest doubts and contradictions with authority, integrity, and clarity.

Authors Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst strive to reassert the primacy of the scientific method as a means for determining public health practice and policy. They answer pressing questions such as: What works and what doesn't? What are the secrets, and what are the lies? Who can you trust, and who is ripping you off? Can science decide what is best, or do the old wives' tales really tap into ancient, superior wisdom?

In the last thirty years, the big pharmaceutical companies have transformed themselves into marketing machines selling dangerous medicines as if they were Coca-Cola or Cadillacs. They pitch drugs with video games and soft cuddly toys for children; promote them in churches and subways, at NASCAR races and state fairs. They've become experts at promoting fear of disease, just so they can sell us hope.

No question: drugs can save lives. But the relentless marketing that has enriched corporate executives and sent stock prices soaring has come with a dark side. Prescription pills taken as directed by physicians are estimated to kill one American every five minutes. And that figure doesn't reflect the damage done as the overmedicated take to the roads.

Our Daily Meds connects the dots for the first time to show how corporate salesmanship has triumphed over science inside the biggest pharmaceutical companies and, in turn, how this promotion-driven industry has taken over the practice of medicine and is changing American life. It is an ageless story of the battle between good and evil, with potentially life-changing consequences for everyone, not just the 65 percent of Americans who unscrew a prescription cap every day.

An industry with the promise to help so many is now leaving a legacy of needless harm.

What happens when a young brain is traumatized? How does terror, abuse, or disaster affect a child's mind—and how can that mind recover?

Child psychiatrist Bruce Perry has helped children faced with unimaginable horror: genocide survivors, murder witnesses, kidnapped teenagers, and victims of family violence. In The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, he tells their stories of trauma and transformation through the lens of science, revealing the brain's astonishing capacity for healing.

Deftly combining unforgettable case histories with his own compassionate, insightful strategies for rehabilitation, Perry explains what exactly happens to the brain when a child is exposed to extreme stress—and reveals the unexpected measures that can be taken to ease a child's pain and help him grow into a healthy adult.

Through the stories of children who recover—physically, mentally, and emotionally—from the most devastating circumstances, Perry shows how simple things like surroundings, affection, language, and touch can deeply impact the developing brain, for better or for worse.

In this deeply informed and moving book, Bruce Perry dramatically demonstrates that only when we understand the science of the mind can we hope to heal the spirit of even the most wounded child.