A Madness Fit For A King

"He has attacked progressive thinkers such as Copernicus and Descartes and the “scientific revolution” for causing us to lose our 'integrated vision of the world.' He has criticized the British Medical Association for modern medicine’s obsession with cells and molecules at the expense of 'traditional' holistic medicine. He has been a great promoter of alternative health, which has in fact become increasingly mainstream, but he has also championed 'quack' cures that have proven unhelpful or even dangerous. Homeopathy is one of the treatments Prince Charles believes should be integrated with regular medicine, although a major review for the medical journal The Lancet indicated that this therapy works no better than a placebo. The treatment is based on the idea that “like cures like,” so that if you give the patient small amounts of toxins, the body will boost its healing powers to tackle the disease. However, according to Creighton University School of Medicine in Omaha, Neb., the toxins are distilled and diluted until the amount of curative/toxins remaining in some treatments is negligible.

In June 2004, Prince Charles was strongly criticized for touting the benefits of a cancer treatment called Gerson therapy. The treatment rejects science-based medicine in favour of caffeine enemas, weekly vitamin injections, and 13 glasses of fruit and vegetable juice every day to 'boost your body’s own immune system,' according to the Gerson Institute website. In an open letter to the Times of London in April 2008, Edzard Ernst, a professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter, strongly criticized two alternative health guides that the prince and his Foundation for Integrated Health had released. The problem wasn’t that alternative medicine didn’t have important uses, Ernst wrote, but that the guides embellished how these treatments could be used. They were full of 'numerous misleading and inaccurate claims,' Ernst said. Chiropractic was recommended for digestive orders. Acupuncture was suggested for addiction and osteopathy as a treatment for asthma. 'The majority of alternative therapies appear to be clinically ineffective,' he said, 'and many are downright dangerous.'”

-- Alexandra Shimo, in a must-read birthday piece on "the potty prince", for Canada's Macleans.