BMJ  2004;329:858 (9 October), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7470.858

Letter

The prince and the professor

Which emperor is naked?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

EDITOR—The crux of Baum's argument seems to be that the Prince of Wales should not be advising people to embrace "unproved" therapies.¹ Baum seems to take particular exception to the Prince of Wales's recent show of support for the so called Gerson therapy, a cancer treatment based on vegetable juices and coffee enemas.

The Gerson therapy is unproved in that it has not been subjected to systematic study. Whether it is of broad benefit to cancer patients is simply not known. Was it so wrong for the Prince of Wales to call for more study in this area? But, even before the evidence is in, Baum seems to dismiss nutritional therapy out of hand and describes the experience of patients with cancer who are apparently cured by it as an "urban myth." So far as the potential benefits of a treatment are concerned, absence of evidence does not . . . [Full text of this article]

London drjbriffa@aol.com

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An open letter to the Prince of Wales: with respect, your highness, you've got it wrong

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Competing interests..?

Austin Elliott
bmj.com, 19 Oct 2004 [Full text]

Re: Competing interests..?

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bmj.com, 20 Oct 2004 [Full text]