ABOUT THIS BOOK:
 
Unlike my 2005 book Food At Work, Bad Medicine is humorous.  It's so humorous that, upon publication in 2003, I got loads of hate mail from, unsurprisingly, those readers convinced that drinking urine and chanting medieval hymns is good for your health... because the ancients were wise to the ways of science and who was I to challenge age-old traditions.
 
Bad Medicine is the sequel to Phil Plait's Bad Astronomy.  The publisher, Wiley & Sons, envisions a "bad" series of myth-busting books to guide us in these dark times.  Now, if you think Uri Geller really bends spoons telepathically because he uses more than 10 percent of his brain, as he claims, then this book isn't for you.  If you think alternative health guru Deepak Chopra really levitates, as he has claimed, and that good thoughts cure disease and that you can reverse the aging process and heal someone telepathically, then this book isn't for you.
 
If you think diseases arise from imbalances of vibrational energy, whatever that means, and that cures arise from balancing unseen forces in nature, then this book isn't for you.  If you think that traditional medicine must work because it is old and because it is natural---as natural as poison ivy and hemlock---then this book isn't for you.  If you think germ theory is "just a theory" and lean more towards intelligent disease, also known as the Jerry Falwell theory of the origin of HIV and hurricanes, then this book isn't for you.
 
Come to think of it, if these things do describe you, maybe you should read the book.  Please download chapters 1 and 2.
 
-cw
 
If you like Bad Medicine, try Bad Music.
 
Bad Medicine is available from online bookstores such as Amazon.com.
For songs and other humor pieces in the same vain, visit Raw Tracks and Leno Submissions.
SELECTED TABLE OF CONTENTS
Part I. I Sing the Body Eclectic
1. Only Use 10 Percent of Your Brain?
2. Brain Size and Intelligence
4. The Tongue Map is Wrong
5. Liver Detox Scam
6. The Appendix Isn't Useless

Part II. Growing Old
13. Life Span, Life Expectancy

Part III. It’ll Make You Sick
16. How to Catch a Cold
17. Ill-Advised War on Bacteria
19. Sharks and Cancer Scam

Part IV. Eating It Up
21. The Antioxidant Scam
24. Organic vs... what, Inorganic?
25. Bottled vs. Tap Water
Part V. Return of the Witch Doctor
26. Homeopathy, the Delusion of Dilution
27. The Magnet Therapy Scam
30. Oxygen Bars and Oxygenated Water

Part VI. Risking It All
34. Why Everything Really is Toxic

Part VII. Just Like in the Movies
40. What Really Happens When You
      Get Knocked Out
 
 
 
The never-before-seen bootleg...