If It Sounds Like a Quack...: A Journey to the Fringes of American Medicine

by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling

Overview

A Pulitzer Prize finalist's bizarre journalistic journey through the world of fringe medicine, filled with leeches, baking soda IVs, and, according to at least one person, zombies.

It's no secret that American health care has become too costly and politicized to help everyone. So where do you turn if you can't afford doctors, or don't trust them? In this book, Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling examines the growing universe of non-traditional treatments — including some that are really non-traditional.

With costs skyrocketing and anti-science sentiment spreading, the so-called "medical freedom" movement has grown. Now it faces its greatest challenge: going mainstream. In these pages you'll meet medical freedom advocates including an international leech smuggler, a gold miner-turned health drink salesman who may or may not be from the Andromeda galaxy, and a man who says he can turn people into zombies with aerosol spray. One by one, these alternative healers find customers, then expand and influence, always seeking the one thing that would take their businesses to the next level—the support and approval of the government.

Should the government dictate what is medicine and what isn't? Can we have public health when disagreements over science are this profound? No, seriously, can you turn people into flesh-eating zombies? If It Sounds Like a Quack asks these critical questions while telling the story of how we got to this improbable moment, and wondering where we go from here. Buckle up for a bumpy ride...unless you're against seatbelts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541788879
Publisher:	PublicAffairs
Publication date:	04/04/2023
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	1,023,219
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling is a journalist specializing in narrative features and investigative reporting. He has been named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, won a George Polk Award, and been voted Journalist of the Year by the Maine Press association, among numerous other honors. He is the author of one previous book, A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear, and his writing has appeared in Foreign Policy, USA Today, Popular Science, Atavist Magazine, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, the Associated Press, and elsewhere. He lives in Vermont.

Editorial Reviews

02/13/2023

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. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Prepare yourself for a wild ride. With a carefully calibrated balance of wit and horror, Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling leads readers into dark historical corners and down internet rabbit holes to understand the origins and influence of the ‘medical freedom’ movement. A book full of rich characters and shocking details about America’s war on science you won’t soon forget.”—Seyward Darby, author of Sisters in Hate

“Matt Double-H is a must-read writer for me, if only for the belly laughs. Here he spins a fantastically weird and entertaining tale about medical quackery in twenty-first century America and the faltering efforts of the government to curb it. Adds credence to the idea that we are living through a Counter-Enlightenment.”—Richard Grant, author of Dispatches from Pluto

“My jaw hit the floor and still hasn’t recovered. From the slimy secrets in hospital basements to preventable tragedies that elude the healing powers of God and magic, If It Sounds Like A Quack . . .  tells unfathomably flabbergasting tales of the wacky world of American snake-oil sales. Readers will come away inoculated against the allure of any one true cure.”—Kavin Senapathy, SciMoms.com

“A wry, wide-ranging investigation into the ‘alternative medicine’ business…rollicking…entertaining…but there is a dark side. [Hongoltz-Hetling] knows when to be funny and when to be serious.”—Kirkus

“Blistering…novelistic…by turns humorous, enraging, and heartbreaking…a powerful antidote to medical disinformation.”—Publishers Weekly

 “If It Sounds Like a Quack is a genuine scream: irreverent, very often snarky, sometimes bawdy, but always insightful and well reported.”—Science Magazine

 “If It Sounds Like a Quack is wry, irreverent, and hilarious, poking equal fun at presidents, patients, and quack practitioners alike, while it makes a big point: faux medicine is relatively harmless, until it’s not and someone gets hurt.” —Marco Eagle News

“Hongoltz-Hetling revels in the weirdness as he recounts a variety of questionable alternative treatments touted by so-called medical freedom movement… Be prepared to both laugh and feel horrified”—Booklist

From the Publisher

03/01/2023

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

Library Journal

2022-12-10
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.

Kirkus Reviews

This audiobook evokes both disbelief and dismay. It recounts true stories of hucksters and how they came to believe that only they knew the one way to cure medical conditions that science--with all of its research, testing, and proven methods--couldn't. Jamie Renell does a superb job of walking a fine line between incredulity and shock as he shares stories of mostly well-intentioned people doing mostly wacky things to try cure the ailments of family and friends. Some of these stories will leave listeners disbelieving how gullible people can be. Others make one wonder how smart people can do such dumb things. This is an entertaining listen for anyone who has ever wondered: "How could someone think that would ever work?" J.P.S. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

MAY 2023 - AudioFile

This audiobook evokes both disbelief and dismay. It recounts true stories of hucksters and how they came to believe that only they knew the one way to cure medical conditions that science--with all of its research, testing, and proven methods--couldn't. Jamie Renell does a superb job of walking a fine line between incredulity and shock as he shares stories of mostly well-intentioned people doing mostly wacky things to try cure the ailments of family and friends. Some of these stories will leave listeners disbelieving how gullible people can be. Others make one wonder how smart people can do such dumb things. This is an entertaining listen for anyone who has ever wondered: "How could someone think that would ever work?" J.P.S. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

MAY 2023 - AudioFile