The book, written by a guy who doesn't really have any academic credentials to speak of, aside from serving as an in-house science writer for NASA, MIT and the NIH (his bio also plugs his joke-writing skills as provided to both The Tonight Show and Saturday Night Live), is definitely funny in places, to be sure. But he relentlessly hammers on his pet peeves in the book, regardless of whether or not they're relevant to the topic at hand--including his opinion of how anyone who watches TV is apparently "brain dead." Plus there are fundamental weaknesses in the text, primarily consisting of faulty logic, or a dearth of actual research and facts, or both. (A glimpse at the footnotes reveals that Wanjek is guilty of quoting his own medical stories, which almost entirely discredits him in my own mind.)
I can't entirely pan the book, as it wasn't a terrible read--I did finish it, after all. But, at the same time, it has serious flaws and is much, much too weak to stand on its own as any kind of an authoritative tome on the subject of quack medicine--especially considering that all of 42 pages is spent on this particular element of the book. Middle school students looking for an interesting book to do a book report on would do well to grab this text, but for those who hold more than a passing interest in medicine, this book is very nearly an insult to the intelligence.
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