The Importance of Being Ernst – Edzard Ernst, retired British-German academic physician and researcher
By Baldmichael Theresoluteprotector’sson
Who specialised in the study of complementary and alternative medicine according to Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edzard_Ernst
It says
Edzard Ernst (born 30 January 1948) is a retired British-German academic physician and researcher specializing in the study of complementary and alternative medicine. He was Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, the world’s first such academic position in complementary and alternative medicine.
I have come across his name before, but he is probably best known (for those that do know of him) for his disagreement with Charles III when Charles was Prince of Wales. This was over Complementary and Alternative medicine (CAM) in the NHS.
According to Wikipedia
He was Professor of Complementary Medicine at the University of Exeter, the world’s first such academic position in complementary and alternative medicine.
I gather he held this from 1993 until 2011, about 18 years.
He has a website and having examined it and looked at a few articles I though it worth doing and exposé on the man. This is primarily for his support of vaccines. This is a picture of him.
His website indicates he has various letters after his name:
MD, PhD, MAE, FMedSci, FRSB, FRCP, FRCPEd
This always makes some people feel good about themselves and others look up to them. He has received another boost to his ego.
https://edzardernst.com/2024/05/an-unexpected-email/
He is apparently 86th best scientist in the UK. As I gather he is no longer in the UK and gone back to Germany I am not sure how they worked that out. It is probably a scam.
Early life
Ernst was born in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 1948. As a child, his family doctor was a homeopath, and at the time he saw it as part of medicine. His father and grandfather were both doctors, and his mother was a laboratory assistant. Ernst originally wanted to be a musician, but his mother persuaded him that medicine might be a good “sideline” career for him to pursue.
I have wondered before about the ‘Bad’ places in Germany (link at the end), but it amuses me to see someone like him who is bad for promoting toxic vaccines should came from Wies-bad-en!
If you look up Wiesbaden on Wikipedia it does not refer to him as a notable person. Perhaps they forgot or don’t think that much of him.
In any event I note that Wiesbaden anagrams to ‘ie bad news’ and certainly that is true of him.
It would have been better for all concerned if he had stayed with music as we shall see.
Please note that he is fundamentally a German who obtained British citizenship in 1999, thus was probably 51 years old at the time.
There is a footnote link which leads to this.
A Scientist in Wonderland: A Memoir of Searching for Truth and Finding Trouble Paperback – 12 Jan. 2015
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scientist-Wonderland-Searching-Finding-Trouble/dp/1845407776
The overview by Ernst says regarding his research into Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM)
Clashes were inevitable, but the sheer ferocity with which advocates of alternative medicine would go in order to protect their field from scrutiny came as a profound surprise. This memoir provides a unique insight into the cutthroat politics of academic life and offers a sobering reflection on the damage already done by pseudoscience in the field of medicine.
Which may well be partly true of CAM. However, it applies far more particularly to advocates of pharmaceuticals who have attacked those of us who have seen the damage they cause and/or understand why they cannot be good.
Edzard Ernst: outspoken professor of complementary medicine 19 Oct 2014
It says
But Ernst didn’t set out to wage war against the unconventional. Indeed, fresh from his studies, he began his career in a homeopathic hospital. “To me, homeopathy wasn’t as strange as it would be to many other people because, in a way, I was brought up on homeopathy – our family doctor was a homeopath,” he says. But something didn’t quite fit. “I had of course noticed that in medical school you don’t hear about [homeopathy] except when the pharmacologists go into a blind range (sic) about it.”
So here we have the fact that the medical schools didn’t teach homeopathy, being subject to the irrationality of pharmacologists.
Chatting to his boss at the homeopathic hospital, Ernst became curious. “I asked him why patients could get better on homeopathy. His answer should have made me think a lot because he didn’t say ‘because of our homeopathic remedies’; he said ‘because we discontinue all the rubbish medicine they come in with’.
Now it would be fair to criticise the homeopathic remedies if they are not justified, but I now understand and have done since 2020 how rubbish is the pharmaceutical approach.
Judging by comments on the internet it seems many people are better off when they stop taking all their medications. I have said it elsewhere, but it is hardly surprising when the one word anagram of ‘medication’ is ‘decimation’!
In the article he is asked some questions including:
Q. Are you worried about population increase?
A. One has to be worried: the increase in numbers and the increase in stupidity of the number.
This may be why he thinks poisonous vaccines are a good idea. As to stupidity he is living proof sadly.
Training and early career
Ernst qualified as a doctor in Germany in 1978 where he also completed his M.D. and Ph.D. theses. He has received training in acupuncture, autogenic training, herbalism, homoeopathy, massage therapy and spinal manipulation. He learned homeopathy, acupuncture and other modalities whilst at a homeopathic hospital in Munich, when he began his medical career. In 1988, he became Professor in Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation (PMR) at Hannover Medical School and in 1990 Head of the PMR Department at the University of Vienna.
There is a footnote link talking about his position in Vienna and his transferal to Exeter University in 1993.
The alternative professor
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2003/sep/25/scienceinterviews.health
It says about his start in Exeter
“At the beginning I had more opposition from mainstream medicine locally. At the hospital and the Trust [in Exeter], they felt they did not need a witch doctor in the first place and certainly not a German witch doctor. A lot of people thought once they had seen what I was up to that it was a waste of talent and money.”
Given that mainstream medicine is pharma based I am not surprised. I guess they thought he might actually prove that CAM worked and threaten their prestige and livelihoods.
He won most of the mainstream critics over, but failed so regularly with the CAM lobby that after a few years of assiduously attending meetings, giving lectures and trying to convince them of the value of rigorous randomised controlled trials, he gave up: “They say you can’t squeeze a holistic, individualised approach like homeopathy or spiritual healing into the straitjacket of RCTs – not that it is the only research tool, but it is a good one. The argument surfaces on a daily basis. It is as frequent as it is wrong.”
I have not looked in detail at randomised controlled trials (RCTs) but even Wikipedia points out the disadvantages of them.
RCTs are trying for a ‘One size fits all’ which benefits big pharma companies. They can use the results to skew and spin the advertising.
It seems obvious that each person is an individual and RCTs cannot prove that something has helped or not helped an individual whether is pharmaceutical or herbal etc, there are just too many variables. The real problems occur with the longer term.
But in the short term the exception might be for example the use of adrenaline. I had it injected three times into my body in late 2019 when my blood pressure dropped alarmingly whilst being monitored in hospital. It worked within about 5 seconds every time.
I note that ‘randomised controlled trials’ will anagram to ‘or Satanic demon troll riddles’ which suits the nature of RCTs.
Work in complementary medicine
The world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Ernst researches complementary medicine with an emphasis on efficacy and safety. His research mainly surveys systematic reviews and meta-analyses of clinical trials; the institute has not performed a clinical trial for some time due to budget constraints.
As the department seems to no longer exist and hasn’t for some time now that is hardly surprising. There is a footnote link
Complementary therapies: The big con?
22 April 2008
It says
That clash of philosophies set the scene for the battles that Ernst has waged ever since. Alternative therapists think he is out to destroy them. But he denies he is a “quackbuster”. “I don’t see myself as that at all. When the evidence is positive, I say so. When it is negative, I say so. The alternative is to tell lies, which I will not do. It is a disentangling exercise – lots of [alternative medicine] is rubbish, but a few things are to be encouraged.”
He will not tell lies eh? Mm…
Why is it so popular, then? Ernst blames the providers, customers and the doctors whose neglect, he says, has created the opening into which alternative therapists have stepped. “People are told lies. There are 40 million websites and 39.9 million tell lies, sometimes outrageous lies. They mislead cancer patients, who are encouraged not only to pay their last penny but to be treated with something that shortens their lives. “At the same time, people are gullible. It needs gullibility for the industry to succeed. It doesn’t make me popular with the public, but it’s the truth.
Well, I am sure that some CAM people tell lies to sell their services and products, but it would be hypocrisy to ignore the fact that this is exactly the way big pharma works.
And if anything it is considerably more expensive. I have been a supposed cancer patient myself since 2020 and I have seen something of it from the inside. See my link at the bottom re sodium nitrite.
But to be fair to Ernst he does say this.
“Mainstream medicine is pretty awful, too. Doctors lack empathy and time. There is plenty of evidence that people using alternative medicine don’t even expect effective treatment – they are just looking for a therapeutic relationship. They are not getting it from their GP, so they look for it elsewhere.”
So he does agree that mainstream medicine is pretty awful, too. But it is not just empathy and time that is lacking, it is a holistic view of the individual that is severely lacking in mainstream medicine and again I have suffered as a consequence. Continuing with Ernst’s main wiki page.
He has over 700 papers published in scientific journals.
‘Haff you got your papers?’ Seriously though, having a lot of published papers sound impressive but they could be all rubbish for all we know. Volume does not mean quality.
He has said that about five percent of alternative medicine is backed by evidence, with the remainder being either insufficiently studied or backed by evidence showing lack of efficacy.
But we have no presentation of the percentages of the remainder. How much is insufficiently studied, can’t he tell us?
Ernst’s department at Exeter defined complementary medicine as “diagnosis, treatment and/or prevention which complements mainstream medicine by contributing to a common whole, by satisfying a demand not met by orthodoxy or by diversifying the conceptual frameworks of medicine.”
Ernst asserts that, in Germany and Austria, complementary techniques are mostly practiced by qualified physicians, whereas in the UK they are mainly practiced by others. He also argues that the term “Complementary and Alternative Medicine” (“CAM”) is an almost nonsensical umbrella term, and that distinctions between its modalities must be made.
That seems fair, something is either helpful or it is not.
Since his research began on alternative modalities, Ernst has been seen as “the scourge of alternative medicine” for publishing critical research. In a 2008 publication in the British Journal of General Practice, his listed treatments that “demonstrably generate more good than harm” was limited to acupuncture for nausea and osteoarthritis; aromatherapy as a palliative treatment for cancer; hypnosis for labour pain; massage, music therapy, relaxation therapy for anxiety and insomnia; and some plant extracts such as St John’s wort for depression; hawthorn for congestive heart failure; guar gum for diabetes.
So it is not all bad in his opinion.
In our book More Good Than Harm? … ethicist Kevin Smith and I discuss the many ethical issues around alternative medicine and essentially conclude that it is not possible to practice alternative medicine ethically.
Mmm, that could be levelled at mainstream pharma medicine with at least the same accusation. I have pointed out that ‘pharmaceutical’ contains the longest single one word anagram ‘malpractice’ (apart from ‘pharmaceutic’). It is most appropriate when one considers the matter.
Ernst presented at the first Global Congress on Scientific Thinking and Action, which took place on 17-20 March 2021. He spoke about the risk and dangers of alternative medicine, pointing to homeopathy and chiropractic as the most problematic areas within alternative medicine at the time.
One might think that this was an unbiased congress. But if you look at the subject list one might wish to reconsider. There is a footnote link.
Aspen Global Congress on Scientific Thinking and Action
Stuart Vyse
April 1, 2021
https://skepticalinquirer.org/exclusive/aspen-global-congress-on-scientific-thinking-and-action/
I note the date of the article. Perhaps it is an April Fool? After all it does say the panellists are all experts! These are the subjects;
1) Overcoming Science Denialism,
2) Science Literacy and Popularization: Understanding How Science Works,
3) Risks and Dangers of Alternative Medicine,
4) Dousing the Fires of Climate Change Denial,
5) Defeating Vaccine Hesitancy through Communication,
6) Food Biotechnology for a Sustainable Future.
I note in 5) there is mention of an Ovidiu Covaciu from Romania. I cannot find much at all on the internet about him although there is a Wikipedia page for a Romanian professional footballer. Expert is he, really? How much did they pay him to be an expert?
From the internet it appears this is him. He looks rather young to me.
I think he is used to a load of balls, so useful for the panel.
And his name anagrams to ‘CIA oui UV Covid’. It’s a joke clearly.
Also there is also speaking a Kavin Senapathy from Illinois where the ill come from. This is her website.
Apparently she uses the she/they. She says she was raised atheist from birth!? I suppose she didn’t hear her mother say ‘Oh God, it’s a girl!’
But is see she is critical of Monsanto as she says in her links “However, I gradually began to sense that there was something very wrong with the GMO gospel.”
Her name sounds like a disease and anagrams to ‘heavy pink Satan’. She is a nutter; just not quite a complete nutter.
Look who funds The Aspen Institute. Oh dear.
The Aspen Institute is largely funded by foundations such as the Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Gates Foundation, the Lumina Foundation, and the Ford Foundation, by seminar fees, and by individual donations.
from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen_Institute
As to Ernst he says to a panellist in a video “…homeopathy is nothing and therefore it does nothing and it is dangerous because it does nothing…”
Well, I have to say I would rather be no worse with homeopathy than poisoned by big pharma drugs which do something harmful if anything.
Smallwood Report
In 2005, a report by economist Christopher Smallwood, personally commissioned by Prince Charles, claimed that CAM was cost-effective and should be available in the National Health Service (NHS).
Ernst was initially enlisted as a collaborator on the report, but asked for his name to be removed after a sight of the draft report convinced him that Smallwood had “written the conclusions before looking at the evidence”. The report did not address whether CAM treatments were actually effective and Ernst described it as “complete misleading rubbish”.
The report is of some length and I do not intend to read it all but you can find it here.
https://www.getwelluk.com/uploadedFiles/Publications/SmallwoodReport.pdf
It does point out the serious difficulties in subjecting CAM to the same approach as to pharmaceuticals. See page 26 Design Difficulties.
Continuing
Ernst was, in turn, criticised by The Lancet editor Richard Horton for disclosing contents of the report while it was still in draft form. In a 29 August 2005 letter to The Times Horton wrote: “Professor Ernst seems to have broken every professional code of scientific behaviour by disclosing correspondence referring to a document that is in the process of being reviewed and revised prior to publication. This breach of confidence is to be deplored.”
This did not prevent Richard Horton from agreeing with Ernst after the report was formally published. In a letter to the Guardian he wrote:
The summary includes the following : “The best evidence for homeopathy, in terms both of improved health benefits and reduced costs, is associated with its use as an alternative to conventional medicine in relation to a number of everyday conditions, particularly asthma.”
Let’s be clear: this report contains dangerous nonsense.
From
Rational medicine is being undermined
8 Oct 2005
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2005/oct/08/health.lifeandhealth
The words ‘…in general care…’ are for some reason omitted after the words “everyday conditions” which is in the report. And he doesn’t quote the whole paragraph which qualifies the statement. See below.
His comment is quite frankly ridiculous by being at best misleading. The report is clear that the evidence is fragmentary for benefits from homeopathy. He continues.
In any event it seems reasonable to have criticised Ernst for jumping the gun and commenting before the formal publication.
Prince Charles’ private secretary, Sir Michael Peat, also filed a complaint regarding breached confidentiality with Exeter University. Although he was “cleared of wrongdoing”, Ernst has said that circumstances surrounding the ensuing university investigation led to his retirement.
Which is quite frankly Ernst’s own fault.
In the 1 January 2006 edition of the British Journal of General Practice, Ernst gave a detailed criticism of the report.
Which you can find in a footnote link here.
The ‘Smallwood report’: method or madness? 2006 Jan 1
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1821425/
He says
The ‘Smallwood report’ is one of the strangest examples of an attempt to review CAM that I have ever seen. One gets the impression that its conclusions were written before the authors had searched for evidence that might match them. Both Mr Smallwood and the ‘Freshminds’ team told me that they understand neither health care nor CAM. Mr Smallwood stressed that this is positive as it prevents him from being ‘accused of bias’. My response was that ‘severely flawed research methodology almost inevitably leads to bias’.
I think lots of things can lead to bias. Being indoctrinated in the ways of big pharma leads to bias.
In any event the report makes recommendations to be followed up including RCTs which Ernst loves so much. I daresay he has a point but generally methinks he doth protest too much.
There is a separate Wiki page for the Smallwood Report but it says precious little. There is however a link to David Colquhoun who according to his Wiki page ‘is a British pharmacologist at University College London (UCL).’
However, I think he retired formally in 2004 and is only an Honorary Fellow. See
Anyway, he has a website and thinks Covid is a new disease, vaccines have been good for people and Marianna Spring has done a terrific job. He says
And the BBC appointed its first specialist disinformation and social media correspondent, Marianna Spring. She’s done a terrific job in investigating conspiracy theorists. She’s talked to some of the more extreme people -those who claim that the Covid virus doesn’t exist and that the pandemic was a hoax,…
From
How do we stop a resurgence of fascism?
Published March 11, 2024
https://www.dcscience.net/2024/03/11/how-do-we-stop-a-resurgence-of-fascism/
He also sees Prince Charles as he then was as “a threat to constitutional government and to the health of the nation”. See
The Quacktitioner Royal is a threat to constitutional government and to the health of the nation
Published July 30, 2013
Well that might be true nowadays but Colquhoun has omitted the far greater threat of pharmaceuticals to our health. King Charles is only a figurehead after all, controlled by the money men.
But then Colquhoun is a pharmacologist so I understand, he has invested his working life into it.
I see and anagram of his name is ‘qua old Covid Hun’. Sounds more like Edzard Ernst who is an ‘old hun’, but as qua apparently means ‘in the capacity of’ I guess that is fair.
Trick or Treatment
In 2008, Ernst and Simon Singh published Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. The authors challenged the Prince of Wales, to whom the book is (ironically) dedicated, and The Prince’s Foundation for Integrated Health on alleged misrepresentation of “scientific evidence about therapies such as homeopathy, acupuncture and reflexology”. They asserted that Britons spent £500 million each year on unproven or disproven alternative therapies. In a review of Trick or Treatment in the New England Journal of Medicine, Donald Marcus described Ernst as “one of the best qualified people to summarize the evidence on this topic.”
Which he might well be, although the amount spent each year by Britons on alternative therapies pales into insignificance compared to pharmaceuticals, most of which are poisonous and harmful. Apparently
In 2021, the annual turnover of pharmaceutical goods wholesalers in the UK was over 57 billion British pounds.
From
Pharmaceutical industry in the United Kingdom (UK) – Statistics & Facts
Feb 14, 2024
https://www.statista.com/topics/5056/pharmaceutical-industry-in-the-uk/#topicOverview
It looks like almost £18 billion of the costs are through the NHS.
With alternative therapies these are presumably by and large paid for directly by the patient, whereas with the pharmaceuticals the taxpayer pays for the cost regardless. This gives a steady market for big pharma and its toxic drugs.
Continuing
In 2008, Ernst sent an open letter urging the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain to crack down on high street chemists that sell homeopathic remedies without warning that the remedies lack evidence for claimed biological effects. According to him, this disinformation would be a violation of their ethical code:
My plea is simply for honesty. Let people buy what they want, but tell them the truth about what they are buying. These treatments are biologically implausible and the clinical tests have shown they don’t do anything at all in human beings. The argument that this information is not relevant or important for customers is quite simply ridiculous.
He seems to make a fair point but the same must be argued for pharmaceuticals, not on the basis that they don’t do anything at all for human beings, but that they invariably harm, being merely highly refined and concentrated/synthesised versions of what is available in plants etc.
Any argument that there is plenty of evidence for efficacy in actually helping people is countered by the fact that the studies are done by those with bias towards pharma industry. And that has vested interests in maintaining the fraud.
In a 2008 interview with Media Life Magazine, when he and Simon Singh were asked this question—”What do you think the future is for alternative medicine?”—they replied:
For us, there is no such thing as alternative medicine. There is either medicine that is effective or not, medicine that is safe or not. So-called alternative therapies need to be assessed and then classified as good medicines or bogus medicines. Hopefully, in the future, the good medicines will be embraced within conventional medicine and the bogus medicines will be abandoned.
Which all sounds fair, but the same must apply to pharmaceuticals.
In a 2009 article entitled “Should We Maintain an Open Mind about Homeopathy?” published in the American Journal of Medicine, Ernst and Michael Baum—writing to other physicians—offered strong criticism of homeopathy:
Homeopathy is among the worst examples of faith-based medicine. … These axioms [of homeopathy] are not only out of line with scientific facts but also directly opposed to them. If homeopathy is correct, much of physics, chemistry, and pharmacology must be incorrect…. To have an open mind about homeopathy or similarly implausible forms of alternative medicine (e.g., Bach flower remedies, spiritual healing, crystal therapy) is therefore not an option.
Whilst physics and chemistry can be seen to be fundamentally reasonable and justified, pharmacology is based on germ/viral theory and a misunderstanding of body chemistry.
Pharmacology is incorrect in its presumption that refined chemicals are better for the body than food (unadulterated) that we eat as a means to maintaining our health. We are what we eat.
More Harm Than Good?
In 2018, Ernst and co-author Kevin Smith, a medical ethicist, published the book More Harm Than Good? The Moral Maze of Complementary and Alternative Medicine.
Kevin Smith is a senior lecturer at Abertay University, Dundee, Scotland. He is someone who thinks that
Genetically-modified babies ‘ethically justifiable’, academic claims
19 November 2019
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-50460721
He is reported as saying
Dr Smith said the creation of genetically-modified babies was “highly desirable”.
He said that if common disorders could be avoided or delayed by genetically modifying humans, the average disease-free lifespan could be “substantially extended”.
Dr Smith said that to win public trust, an ethical approach must be at the heart of any advances, as society was “largely opposed” to genetically modifying humans.
Most people would find his view highly questionable that genetically-modified babies are desirable. More harm than good they might say. Kevin Smith ignores the genetic harms to people caused by pharmaceuticals. And he co-authored a book with Ernst eh? Continuing
In a review of the book for Skeptical Inquirer, Harriet Hall called Ernst the “world’s foremost expert on the claims and the evidence (or lack thereof) for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM).” Hall said that Ernst and Smith direct their attention to the ethicists and the scientific community for this book with the goal “to inform, not to entertain. It is not a easy or ‘fun’ read, but it is an important one”.
Harriet Hall died in 2023 but she was a founding member of Science-Based Medicine.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science-Based_Medicine
It says she gave a positive review of a book Irreversible Damage by Abigail Shrier (she has a substack page).
However it also says
within two days, the review was removed and replaced with a retraction notice authored by Steven Novella and David Gorski.
Those two are vaccine/pharma shills so it is not surprising. Continuing
Dougal Jeffries, writing for the British Journal of General Practice, said the book was “replete with both theoretical and real-life examples and is thoroughly referenced, but is a rather turgid read. It clearly demonstrates the extraordinary capacity of intelligent beings, including both practitioners and patients, to hold to irrational beliefs in the face of contrary evidence, but the authors show little sympathy for this very human tendency.”
The footnote link from which the above quote is taken also says this.
I know many sensible people who seek CAM treatments; I also number a handful of CAM practitioners, all of them moral beings, among my acquaintances. I doubt that any of them would have their minds changed by reading this book.
https://bjgp.org/content/68/670/241
It may well be fair to say that CAM adherents hold some irrational beliefs in the face of contrary evidence but then so does Ernst. I found this link.
Edzard Ernst: The “natural” equals “safe” fallacy
August 15, 2012
https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2012/08/15/edzard-ernst-the-natural-equals-safe-fallacy/
He says
Much of the popularity of AM can be explained through our attraction to all things natural; according to its proponents, AM is natural; and, by definition, this means that it is devoid of risks—not like those nasty, synthetic, chemical prescription drugs, which are a major cause of mortality!
He is being sarcastic re nasty, synthetic, chemical prescription drugs I assume, but nevertheless it is true.
But the point about ‘natural’ is fair, although what is natural anyway. He says
What, for instance, would be natural about an acupuncturist sticking needles into patients…
True enough, but they don’t inject toxic synthetic chemicals via the needles unlike in vaccinations.
I had three sessions of acupuncture at the year end of 2018 related to trying to cure my facial palsy. It did not work but I now know why as my problem was a chemical affecting my nerves.
The closer we look, the more we realise that, in AM, natural is little more than a false label which might be good for PR, but which frequently does not coincide with reality.
Which is reasonable. Of course big pharma spend a huge amount on PR.
Big Pharma spent an additional $9.8 billion on marketing in the past 20 years. It worked
January 9, 2019
It says
In 1997, drug companies spent roughly $17.1 billion on marketing for prescription drugs and any health conditions that may be associated with them. (A relatively paltry $600 million was spent to market condition awareness, health services, and lab testing.) By 2016, that figure was $26.9 billion. Simultaneously, total US spending on prescription drugs skyrocketed from $116.4 billion to $329 billion.
So in 1997 roughly 96.5% was on advertising. And most of that was aimed at the doctors.
Of all the money spent advertising drugs, the majority went towards efforts to market to doctors. In 1997, the total spending on marketing to physicians was $15.6 billion. By 2016, it was $20.3 billon. Marketing to physicians includes sending paid representatives to doctors’ offices to talk about a drug, free samples of it, or compensating physicians for speaking engagements about the drug.
If you recall the Sackler family affair and the opioid crisis in the USA you will understand the above. Back to Ernst’s article of August 15, 2012.
Similarly, herbal remedies can cause adverse effects through the toxicity of their ingredients or through interactions with synthetic drugs.
So what? Why are they being given with synthetic drugs? The whole point is alternative, not alongside as the chemistry may be bound to interact harmfully.
What if they are not given with synthetic drugs? Did he ever check? This is a very misleading comment of his.
But, on the whole, AM is relatively safe, ie it causes less problems than conventional treatments, enthusiasts would insist. This argument may well be true but, if employed to promote AM, it is nevertheless misleading.
If AM causes less problems that’s better than taking toxic big pharma drugs. If it is true then it is true. Whether AM actually helps people is another matter.
He points out that post-marketing surveillance systems for AM do not exist. I assume that is broadly true. But he says
It is therefore conceivable, perhaps even likely that adverse-effects of AM are simply not being picked up.
All of which is conjecture. The article is an opinion piece only though, but gives an idea of his thinking, or lack of thinking.
Early retirement from Exeter
It is probably enough to say that he was essentially forced to retire because of being
…accused by Prince Charles’ private secretary of having breached a confidentiality agreement regarding the 2005 Smallwood report.
Ernst apparently said
“There never was a formal confidentiality agreement with signature etc. But I did feel bound to keep the contents of the Smallwood report confidential.”
But that didn’t stop him going public on the draft before final publication so he broke his own feelings.
It appears really he should have waited rather than attack it earlier. At least he could not have been accused of breaking confidentiality then.
As I said earlier he has only himself to blame, however justified he may have felt.
There is this footnote link.
Professor calls Prince Charles, others “snake-oil salesmen”
July 25, 2011
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-prince-charles-professor-idUSTRE76O5F520110725/
It says
Ernst said that during his 18 years of researching the efficacy of hundreds of different types of alternative medicine – from acupuncture, to herbal remedies, to homeopathy and chiropractic therapy – he has found that “snake-oil salesmen and pseudo-science are ubiquitous and dangerous.”
Asked whether he included Prince Charles in that category, he said, “yes.”
However,
According to Ernst, “The snake oil salesman story is an entirely separate issue”, which “happened years later.”
His logic is bizarre. Either Reuters lied when they reported what he said or not. What does it matter if he refers to it years later??
Still I see it is reported that
He says he has identified around 20 such therapies which “demonstrably demonstrate more good than harm” including the herbal remedy St John’s Wort for the treatment of mild depression, hypnosis for the relief of labor pain and hawthorn for the treatment of congestive heart failure.
So he doesn’t right-off the whole of CAM, just most of it.
There is another footnote link.
Remember Prince Charles’ ‘Duchy Originals Detox Tincture’?
12 March 2021
https://edzardernst.com/2021/03/remember-prince-charles-duchy-originals-detox-tincture/
He says at the beginning
As I don’t live in the UK at present…
I am rather relieved to hear that. In fact I gather he is no longer a British citizen but has become a German again!
Yesterday, the Royal Mail delivered my German passport
22 July 2022
https://edzardernst.com/2022/07/yesterday-the-royal-mail-delivered-my-german-passport/
He says
People who know me well are aware of the fact that I was never really proud of being German. As I grew older, I was often even ashamed. One of my research subjects had long been medicine during the Third Reich, and it was this topic that disenchanted me with Germany. Therefore, it seemed entirely right to become a Brit. In fact, I felt proud – the UK was my chosen home, and the decision was meant to be for life.
Here’s an interesting link on medicine in the Third Reich. Note that
After the war, only a few of the biomedical experts who helped to implement and to legitimize Nazi racial hygiene policies were ever indicted or disciplined professionally. Many continued their careers.
From
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/index.php/content/en/article/nazi-medical-experiments
Never in my wildest dreams did I think in 1999 that Britain would one day succumb to the collective death wish of leaving the EU. After the deeply dishonest referendum in 2016, I was still convinced that this act of extraordinary self-harm would be prevented.
Which is why we have had so many issues with Brexit with him and others who aren’t British. They think they have a right to impose their views on those of us who are and go back generations.
His wife is Danielle, born in Brittany and French. See also
https://edzardernst.com/2020/01/31-january-2020-a-day-to-contemplate-what-happened-to-britain/
He says the reason he lived here
…was because of the beautiful memories. And it was because of my deep appreciation of the people. I had grown to admire their humour, their tolerance, their openness, their way of life, their way of dealing with problems, their politeness, their understatement, their honesty, their fair play.
So he has gone back to Germany and its Fourth Reich. He talks of a death wish by leaving the EU, yet wishes to be injected by vaccines presumably.
I call that a death wish and plain insanity.
Other work and recognition
In a May 1995 Annals of Internal Medicine publication, Ernst detailed the Nazi “cleansing” of the University of Vienna medical faculty that allowed the “medical atrocities” of Nazi human experimentation.
The University of Vienna medical faculty is where he worked. There is a footnote link with an abstract.
A Leading Medical School Seriously Damaged: Vienna 1938
https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/0003-4819-122-10-199505150-00009
Only the abstract is available but it says
After the collapse of the Third Reich, most members of the Faculty were burdened with a Nazi past. Most remained in office, and those who had to leave were reinstituted swiftly. The Jews evicted in 1938 were discouraged from returning. These events have significantly—and with long-lasting effects—damaged the quality of a once-leading medical school. This story needs to be told to honor its victims and to fortify us so that history does not repeat itself.
This is highly significant given I have pointed out the Germanic origins of most of big pharma. This is a plus point to Ernst.
He has been on various committees and is a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
According to the Wikipedia link it
is a program within the U.S. non-profit organization Center for Inquiry (CFI), which seeks to “promote scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_for_Skeptical_Inquiry
It was co-chaired by Paul Kurtz and Marcello Truzzi.
In the early 1970s, scientific skeptics were concerned that interest in the paranormal was on the rise in the United States, part of a growing tide of irrationalism.
Probably due to big pharma drugs and vaccines. Kurtz and Truzzi are no longer alive; I wonder what they would think of today’s irrationalism. You know, the ‘I have had several vaccines and I am now very unwell but they must be working as I might have died from COVID (a.k.a. the ‘flu)’.
I see Marcello Truzzi
…left the organization after only a short time, arguing that many of those involved “tend to block honest inquiry, in my opinion. Most of them are not agnostic toward claims of the paranormal; they are out to knock them. […] When an experiment of the paranormal meets their requirements, then they move the goal posts.” Truzzi coined the term pseudoskeptic to describe critics in whom he detected such an attitude.
I think Ernst has been reasonably serious into looking into the claims of CAM, but given his defence of vaccination with no evident research of his own that I can see, one can reasonably say he is a pseudoskeptic.
Books
He has written various books which you can look up. I will highlight this.
A Scientist in Wonderland: A Memoir of Searching for Truth and Finding Trouble. There is a footnote link.
Edzard Ernst: a scientist in wonderland
15th May 2015
https://www.spiked-online.com/2015/05/15/edzard-ernst-a-scientist-in-wonderland/#.V74Pm5N95oM
This is by a Robin Walsh, a student at the time at Sheffield University, UK. It says of Ernst
Originally, he had no particular academic bent and scraped into medical school via a convoluted route.
Remember that originally medicine was suggested as a ‘sideline’ to him. Still, even the most brilliant students get things wrong, so he can’t complain.
Today, with the current furore around vaccinations in the US, the campaign against pseudoscience is heating up again. Yet, while Ernst was doing battle with the establishment, the pro-science side in the vaccination debate at times takes on a patronising and hostile attitude towards members of the public – people who simply aren’t yet won over by the science. Ernst’s book is a reminder of the need to have the courage to tell the truth as you understand it, and fight your corner against those in authority, while never losing a compassion for patients and a commitment to winning the debate.
The campaign against pseudoscience is certainly heating up and has been since 2020. Of course it is the pseudoscience of vaccination I am thinking of, let alone pharmaceuticals in general.
As for pro-science I assume he means the vaccine cultists. Those of us who are against poisoning ourselves with pharma products have done our ‘science’ and woken up to the vaccine scam.
But the writer highlights ‘the patronising and hostile attitude towards members of the public’ which is what altered so many to question vaccination etc.
But the writer, Robin Walsh, is clearly a patronising pillock himself, using the words “…people who simply aren’t yet won over by the science.” My stress is on the “yet”. There is no way in hell that I will return to what I once vaguely believed, that vaccines were of some use but not for the ‘flu as people fell ill anyway.
How about some anagrams of Ernst’s name?
Anagrams
Edzard Ernst
Edzar nst = 8 individual letters
Single words:
Darnedest – longest word
Retarded
Deadens
Deadest
Errants
Ranters
Reddest
Denser
Ersatz
Sadder
Sneer
Arse
Nerd
DDT
I also note:
Ardern – in fact these are consecutive letters in his name!
Some phrases:
Dresden tzar
NZS retarded
Razed trends
Red tzar dens
Trends Zared
Adder RN zest
Dense dr tzar
Des nerd tzar
Errant sd zed
Nerd rats zed
Den dr ersatz
St zed Ardern
Dearest dr zn
Er zn DDT arse
What is interesting is that in German his name will anagram to
Arzt Dresden – meaning ‘Physician Dresden’ (arzt is a male doctor)
His website blog
He has this picture of himself, one of a collection of skeptic trumps.
I believe it was created by this chap, Crispian Jago. Jago is an atheist.
https://crispian-jago.blogspot.com/2010/05/skeptic-trumps-cards-001-040.html
As of 2010 as far as I can see Crispian was pro-vaccine and believes in evolution. Atheism, evolution and pro-vaccine seem to go together. He has done nothing on Covid it seems, which is rather surprising.
He does an article on Ernst which has a quote from this.
Detox: flushing out poison or absorbing dangerous claptrap?
29 Aug 2011
https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2011/aug/29/placebo-effect-detox-harm
He says
Unless someone is very severely ill, the elimination of toxins is most efficiently being taken care of by various organs – for instance, the liver, kidneys, skin, lungs and the gut. In a healthy person, the function of these systems is already optimal. No improvements are needed or can be achieved by detox therapies.
Overall that is true for a healthy person. But what about an unhealthy person?
Anyway, as far as Ernst’s blog it says at the top of the page
Please remember: if you make a claim in a comment, support it with evidence.
But then there is this link of his.
09 September 2023
Yet he says in a comment
Edzard on Tuesday 12 September 2023 at 10:26
no, I never claimed that this is a science blog.
if you want to read my science, I need to refer you to my ~1 000 publications in scientific journals.
If it’s not a science blog why bother with evidence, the blog is just a forum for discussion and opinion then.
Then there is this exchange.
Edzard on Sunday 10 September 2023 at 17:29
Perhaps you want to read my ‘conclusions’ again:
“I know, it would be politically incorrect, unkind, unhelpful, etc. but is anyone not tempted to simplify the issue by assuming that people who are against (COVID) vaccinations are intellectually challenged?”
Would it be fair to say that I ask a question?
Would it be correst to state that I did not draw a conclusion?
A reply
The Crack Emcee on Sunday 10 September 2023 at 19:31
I agree, this approach is “unhelpful,” that’s for sure – and wonder why a Doctor would want to be so?
You’re just “asking questions,” but you’re also being a weasel. As disingenuous as a man can be. I don’t have to wonder how homeopathy lasted for 200 years in the face of scientists acting this badly.
Ernst’s reply
Edzard on Sunday 10 September 2023 at 19:43
as they say: when you run out of arguments, insult your opponent!
Which, if you see later, is what Ernst does, the hypocrite.
You can read through the comments to see the nature of Ernst’s arguments or lack of them.
Primarily he seems to base his conclusions on one study from Sweden. It makes a lot of assumptions, primarily being that the personality tests given to the military age people were worthwhile in the first place.
It also ignores the fact that the test would have been one-off at the time of enlistment, i.e. in the individual’s youth. To assume that the results would be the same in their later years is plain ridiculous.
He also assumes that the better scores on the tests will mean the same as common sense. Sadly as we have seen during COVID this is not the case.
Here’s another post by Ernst.
21 December 2019
Firstly I would say that the pro-vaccination movement is financed by big pharma and governments.
Still, I think that it is true to a fair degree that parts of the anti-vaccination movement are financed by the dietary supplement industry, but this is because there are opportunists and people who always want to make money.
I am always suspicious of those with something to sell based on what they say, even if it is true as with vaccines being a fraud. Here’s a thread from the above link.
Roger on Sunday 22 December 2019 at 02:21
Gosh, we cant have people questioning the status quo pro-vaxxer position. That would be un-American. Come on! Join the herd! And for someone to use their own money to support this position…. positively criminal. Obviously the thought police need to do a better job to foster “authoritarian ultra-nationalism characterized by dictatorial power, forcible suppression of opposition, and strong regimentation of society and of the economy.” * Oh, that’s right, the tech giants are working on it for the greater good by censoring all anti-vacccine and many other alternative viewpoints . Thank goodness; we’re being saved!
* Wikipedia: Fascism
Ernst replied
Edzard on Sunday 22 December 2019 at 07:32
Wikipedia: Moron
I assume he is referring to himself.
Another link.
21 July 2018
Marcus on Saturday 23 March 2019 at 01:05
Agreed Lucy. If vaccines are safe and effective why is there a vaccine court to pay for injuries paying out millions a year. Why do our kids need 60 vaccines by the time they are 18 and why is autism estimated at 1:40? 1:88 is a stat that is 4 yrs old in case anyone wants to debate that. Why do they use aluminum to preserve vaccines which doesn’t have a safe injectable amount?
His reply.
Edzard on Saturday 23 March 2019 at 06:39
And why do you not inform yourself better before promoting anti-vax nonsense on this blog?
And that’s the quality of his reply??
There are more comments like that on that link from him and his troll fiends.
Another post by Ernst.
14 November 2013
Doctor Jack on Thursday 21 April 2016 at 23:00
While I agree with the author of the above post – that most of the alternative approaches to healthcare are of no benefit and some are harmful – the same thing can be said of conventional medicine. (See Starfield Report). Medical science is just that – Medical Science – but that doesn’t mean it’s real science in the real world. Basing one’s conclusions upon symptom palliation after administering any treatment is not a reliable measurement of treatment efficacy; in fact, it’s quite unreliable. Therefore, the very quackery this author mentions would also apply to all that he’s learned from the entrenched schools of drugging. The exceptions would be for accidents, injuries, emergencies, birth defects and some corrective surgeries. This is where medical training is mostly correct. For all other anomalous health events, the causes are mal nutrition, i.e., physiologically incorrect habits of living. Physician heal thyself!
Ernst’s reply
Edzard on Friday 22 April 2016 at 06:59
in case you are trying to say that conventional medicines are supported by no better evidence than alternative treatments, you are VERY WRONG.
As you can see Ernst cannot come up with answers, let alone evidence, to refute the obvious statements of Doctor Jack.
Remember again his statement at the top of his website.
Please remember: if you make a claim in a comment, support it with evidence.
He is a hypocrite.
Summary and final thoughts
Well he is Edzard which sounds like ‘head’s hard’ to me, a hard headed German. In fact it seems this is not far off.
https://www.babynamespedia.com/meaning/Eckhard
As Ernst means ‘serious’ in German we have a serious hard headed German here.
Starting with the plus side, Ernst has done an in depth look at CAM and at least thinks some of it is worthwhile even if not much. I haven’t tried to analyse his assessment of those things he has examined closely but I am sure there will be scams in CAM.
He has indicated that mainstream medicine is pretty awful as well as CAM, although the indications are he may only think this is limited to the lack of empathy and time doctors devote to patients rather than any concerns with pharmaceutical products.
He has also exposed the Nazi influence at Vienna University which is hardly surprising, but the question is how much lingers on? A great deal I believe and not just there but around the world.
On the down side he was against Brexit and part of the problem and why we needed to come out of Germany and its Fourth Reich Europe.
He and others have caused us a lot of grief as a consequence.
He is an atheist, and that will always be problematic as he will never fully understand the way the world works.
He is not right wing he says and has never voted conservative whatever that means, but neither is he right about a number of things. This is a list of his of what he says he isn’t.
https://edzardernst.com/2024/05/woke-fraud-racism-etc-all-those-things-that-i-am-not/
He does say he is not
an expert on any subject other than so-called alternative medicine (SCAM)
Yet he is happy to say that vaccination is a good thing. He has no grounds to justify that except his own vain opinion.
He has ignored the fact it is very difficult to do studies similar to pharmaceutical medicine on certain aspects of CAM.
He agrees that there are problems with conventional medicine but thinks vaccines have saved lives.
He approach on his blog shows huge variation between sensible conclusions and outright ignorance and blind stupidity.
I have given a glimpse of some of his inane and arrogant replies to commenters (Old Bob seems to get his particular attention for these).
He is in short vacillating between sensible and stupid, very stupid.
As to the causes, well I suppose growing up in post-war Germany wasn’t easy, the country had been affected by so much trauma, not just the second but also the first world war.
He came to this country and appreciated so much our humour, tolerance, openness, way of life, way of dealing with problems, politeness, understatement, honesty, and fair play.
Yet he displays a distinct lack of tolerance for views about the vaccines for example, leaves others to try and argue about them and is rude to commenters who are sensibly against them.
He and his fan club use verbal clubs rather than reasoned arguments and denigrate those with sensible contrary views. As The Crack Emcee indicated it is like a school playground and Ernst and his supporting cult act like children.
And as he also said Ernst is just being a disingenuous weasel, as bad as the Nazi doctors in Vienna University he ran away from.
So I say overall he is a hard headed, arrogant, hypocritical and substantially ignorant man. I say he has done more harm than good. Retarded seems to be a good conclusion to sum him up. It is after all in his name.
He obviously places importance on letters after his name and his recent ‘award’.
So that is Ernst who is full of his self-importance, the importance of being Ernst!
P.S. If you wish to see more evidence of Ernst’s crass stupidity and arrogance, along with that of his minions who attempt the arguments instead of him, see his website. These are two further links.
The contribution of 50 years of vaccination: 10·2 billion years of full health gained
05 May 2024
The plastic surgeon who turned fraudulent anti-vaxer
29 March 2023
Here are some links of mine for any who have not seen which might be of use. At least there is some humour which is more than can be said for Ernst.
“Why vaccines do not work” in a nutshell
Why are so many German cities Bad?
Sodium nitrite (E250) – the poison in your food and how to remedy it.
and Stupid 20 of which Ernst has a terminal case.
Just a heads up to say thanks for any comments. I cannot make 'like' for comments work from my PC but I have been able to do so on an other machine but that is not so convenient. If you do find I have liked this will be because I have used another machine. I will advise again if I can make work.
The doctor said the mans illness was terminal
So he decided to get a second opinion. The next doctor also said his illness was terminal. Feeling disheartened, he decided to get a third opinion from a homeopathic doctor.
This doctor recommended he take daily mudbaths. Finally relieved, he asked "Thats great! will this cure me??" to which the doctor replied "No, no. But it will get you used to being in dirt"