I never thought that I’d learn so much about leeches nor that it would be woven into such a dynamic and lyrical story.

Like most translations to audio of written texts that tell multiple stories mixed across multiple chapters (as opposed to telling story one then story two, etc), there were moments when I’d have to rewind so that I could re-process where we were in the story. This book was totally worth having a few of those moments.

This is a very broad overview of the “quack” science and sacrificed certain details (especially relating to Qanon) that I feel would have rounded out telling the story. There was little to no discussion on how “quackery” related to race or in the context of indigenous practices which might just not be the author’s expertise but I feel would have rounded out a lot of the points being made.

There’s also little to no discussion about multi level marketing schemes and in a text that devotes so much space to discussing the supplement market that feels like a large missing piece of the puzzle.

There are some really clever references and analogies in here (for example, measuring how much blood a large group of leeches could consume in units of members of boybands) that make up for the areas that might make you more squeamish.

There’s a detailed case of medical abuse and child neglect in here that I was familiar with before and in my opinion is portrayed respectfully and sensitively. Those who may be triggered by mentions of medical religious exemptions and cult dynamics should tread lightly with this text.

Overall, I would recommend this to people who have a casual interest in public health, health science, or folks with a curiosity about all the supplements they see advertised on Instagram.

While I expected more quack fringe medicine being exposed (vitamin C IVs, essential oils, plexus/pink drink, homeopathy, etc), I found the ones presented fascinating. Throughout the entire book he develops the stories of the quack ways he has decided to explore. I found it fascinating how almost all of the ones he presented have been in my circle of friends!! I come from a fundamentalist evangelical homeschooling background, so I suppose it’s not a surprise. It was validating of my red flags I’ve felt about those methods. I appreciate very much that the author also exposed faith healings as a method of fringe medicine. It definitely deserves to be exposed, and be included in this book.

He led up to how one cure-all managed to be sent all the way up to Trump, who brought it up on TV as the covid cure. Ridiculous, yet makes sense. It’s sad that so many in our society lack the common sense to follow true science, and know how to discern what are quack claims.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.