Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine

[sparklecat]

Has anyone ever heard of this journal? It's claiming to be peer-reviewed, but completely apart from the title of it making me a bit suspicious, the claims in this article I read (http://gerson-research.org/docs/HildenbrandGLG-1995-1/index.html) sound just a bit too good to be true. 21-43% increased survival rate by changing your diet discovered in a 1995 study and the doctors aren't all over it by now?



I suppose my real question is this: is there any comprehensive review of the different journals that are claiming to carry out proper trials, or any way of weeding out the good from the bad without basically gaining an entire education in the appropriate medical field? This one was a bit blatant, but it threw me that they're copying the usual studies' formats and language well enough to make you actually check it out. Any advice on navigating my way through these things?

[Cuddles]

This sounds like a fairly respectable journal. The people in charge are not obviously nuts and include people from real medical backgrounds as well as "alternative" types. The paper you linked seems well written and does not jump to any conclusions other than stating the results are encouraging and worthy of further research, which any sensible sceptic would agree with. The gerson-research website seems distinctly less respectable, but I am willing to accept this study as genuine research.

Edit : The fact that it was published in 1995 and nothing has been heard since implies that further research was conducted, as suggested, and found nothing.

[zooloo]

Can't post links yet - Google for medline

Not exactly what you asked for but perhaps a start

[Deetee]

Has anyone ever heard of this journal? It's claiming to be peer-reviewed, but completely apart from the title of it making me a bit suspicious, the claims in this article I read (http://gerson-research.org/docs/HildenbrandGLG-1995-1/index.html) sound just a bit too good to be true. 21-43% increased survival rate by changing your diet discovered in a 1995 study and the doctors aren't all over it by now?



I suppose my real question is this: is there any comprehensive review of the different journals that are claiming to carry out proper trials, or any way of weeding out the good from the bad without basically gaining an entire education in the appropriate medical field? This one was a bit blatant, but it threw me that they're copying the usual studies' formats and language well enough to make you actually check it out. Any advice on navigating my way through these things?Gerson therapy is no stranger to these pages.
The journal (http://www.alternative-therapies.com/at/staticpages/static.jsp?pagename=ABOUT) seems well produced, but as you say, who can say how well regarded is it outside its own CAM field? Citation indexes may assist, but a well cited journal can still be a useless journal (just as well cited articles can be well cited because they are held up to be examples of bad science and oft quoted as such). It seems to be well regarded among those in the CAM field.
It certainly seems superficially to conform to usual values of a fair standard of peer review, but it would require careful analysis of a spread of its articles before one could comment on things such as appropriate methodology/conclusions etc.
One thing that many authors of science articles tend to do is discuss caveats/limitations of their studies in the discussion section. Most CAM journal articles do not do this (or mention rather specious limitations). Some studies have potentially large sources for bias or error (as in the Gerson study which is retrospective and uncontrolled except for comparison to patients under conventional therapy reported elsewhere in the available medical literature, has clearly some selection bias, and makes assumptions that deaths in patients were "probably" due to melanoma, to name just a few of the obvious ones I saw skimming the paper). I am sure this paper has been analysed pretty thoroughly - perhaps someone else here can point to a review. Prof Baum debunked some of this stuff in his infamous letter to Prince Charles (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Pharmacology/dc-bits/baum-2004.pdf)2 years ago (Sheesh! Was it that long ago...?)

[Hydrogen Cyanide]

What I think zooloo was mentioning was the index of medical journals that can be accessed from www.pubmed.gov (http://www.pubmed.gov).

That article is indexed there:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Search&itool=pubmed_AbstractPlus&term=%22Hildenbrand+LC%22%5BAuthor%5D

What I think is interesting is that a search on www.pubmed.gov (http://www.pubmed.gov) for "Hildebrand GL" or for "Gerson Research Organization" brings up only one paper --- and that is it!

Here is another article by a retired oncologist about Gerson's cancer treatment. It is on the internet, and not peer reviewed... so you'll have to take that into account:
http://members.bordernet.com.au/~pmoran/cancer/Gerson.htm

But being indexed on Pubmed is no guarantee that the journal is reputable. They also index homeopathy journals and the ever popular with quacks "Medical Hypothesis" (which will publish just about anything as long as you pay them!).

edited to add missing link