Dr. Paul Offit Examines the "Sense and Nonsense" of Alternative Therapies

Paul Offit, MD, chief of Children’s Hospital’s Division of Infectious Diseases, has long been a magnet for controversy. A co-creator of the rotavirus vaccine Rotateq, Dr. Offit’s willingness to speak his mind, question popular (and at times ill-informed) wisdom, and to defend science against its detractors has earned him many vocal critics over the years. For example, he has received hate mail and even death threats for working to debunk the now discredited connection between vaccines and autism.

In a move sure to earn him some new critics while reinforcing his reputation for outspoken honesty, Dr. Offit recently published a new book, Do You Believe in Magic?: The Sense and Nonsense of Alternative Medicine. Some of Dr. Offit’s previous books include Deadly Choices, about the anti-vaccine movement, and Autism’s False Prophets. In his latest book, Dr. Offit, who also directs CHOP’s Vaccine Education Center, examines the science and science fiction behind megavitamins, supplements, and alternative treatments like coffee enemas and laetrile.

Released Tuesday, Dr. Offit’s book has already received a great deal of attention from the media. USA Today, NBC News, and CBS This Morning have all featured stories about the book. Dr. Offit also published an opinion piece on CNN recently, and is slated to discuss his work on-air with the network’s chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, MD.

In the book, Dr. Offit acknowledges that people often turn to alternative treatments after becoming disillusioned with conventional medicine. However, while “conventional therapies can be disappointing, alternative therapies shouldn’t be given a free pass,” Dr. Offit writes.

This is because alternative medicine, as Dr. Offit points out, “can be quite harmful. Chiropractic manipulations have torn arteries, causing permanent paralysis; acupuncture needles have caused serious viral infections or ended up in lungs, livers, or hearts; dietary supplements have caused bleeding, psychosis, liver dysfunction, heart arrhythmias, seizures, and brain swelling; and some megavitamins have been found to actually increase the risk of cancer.”

Though many people think “excess vitamins can’t do any harm,” it turns out that “large quantities of supplemental vitamins can be quite harmful indeed,” Dr. Offit writes in The New York Times. In his recent op-ed, “Don’t Take Your Vitamins,” he notes excess amounts of vitamin E have been shown to increase the risk of heart failure and prostate cancer.

However, because megavitamins and other supplements are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, “consumers don’t know that taking megavitamins could increase their risk of cancer and heart disease and shorten their lives,” Dr. Offit writes. All therapies should therefore “be held to the same high standard of proof,” he notes in Do You Believe in Magic?

“Because the truth is, there’s no such thing as conventional or alternative or complementary or integrative of holistic medicine. There’s only medicine that works and medicine that doesn’t,” he says.

To read more about Dr. Offit’s new book, see his homepage. All proceeds from Do You Believe in Magic? will be donated to The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.