 | |
| Author | Charles III Tony Juniper Ian Skelly |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Harper |
| Pages | 336 |
| Awards | Nautilus Book Award |
| ISBN | 0061731358 |
| OCLC | 419857221 |
Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World is a 2010 book written by Charles, Prince of Wales (later King Charles III), with Tony Juniper and Ian Skelly. The book focuses on the world's environment which includes climate change, architecture and agriculture. The book has been translated into many different languages. There is also a children's edition of Harmony.
In a review in The Guardian , Rowan Moore said that Harmony: A New Way of Looking at Our World contained a number of "amateurish" mistakes, and was also inconsistent in its use of science—embracing scientific evidence when it supported a belief in climate change, but ignored scientific evidence that cast doubt on alternative medicine. He added "he can employ people to do his reading for him. Two such loyal readers-cum-scribes, Tony Juniper and Ian Skelly, presumably wrote the hard bits of this book". [1]
In 2018, Edzard Ernst wrote that "Harmony is full of praise for even the most absurd forms of alternative therapies and bogus diagnostic tests." In Ernst's book More Good Than Harm? The Moral Maze of Complementary and Alternative Medicine he and ethicist Kevin Smith call Charles "foolish and immoral" and "conclude that it is not possible to practice alternative medicine ethically". Ernst said that the prince's private secretary contacted the vice chancellor of Exeter University to investigate Ernst's complaints against the Smallwood Report which Charles had commissioned in 2005. While Ernst was "found not to be guilty of any wrong-doing, all local support at Exeter stopped, which eventually led to my early retirement." [2]
In 2010 an hour-long documentary, Harmony, directed by Academy Award and Directors Guild Award nominee Stuart Sender [3] [4] and narrated by Charles was broadcast on the US NBC network. Alessandra Stanley in The New York Times called it "breathtaking and beautifully filmed", but that "there is something a bit stagy and embarrassing to his presentation" and "the back story and ulterior motives of its star at times blunt the show's stated purpose". [5] The film premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, and was praised by Robert Redford. [6]
The book received a Nautilus Book Award in 2011. [7]
Alternative medicine is any practice that aims to achieve the healing effects of medicine despite lacking biological plausibility, testability, repeatability or evidence of effectiveness. Unlike modern medicine, which employs the scientific method to test plausible therapies by way of responsible and ethical clinical trials, producing repeatable evidence of either effect or of no effect, alternative therapies reside outside of mainstream medicine and do not originate from using the scientific method, but instead rely on testimonials, anecdotes, religion, tradition, superstition, belief in supernatural "energies", pseudoscience, errors in reasoning, propaganda, fraud, or other unscientific sources. Frequently used terms for relevant practices are New Age medicine, pseudo-medicine, unorthodox medicine, holistic medicine, fringe medicine, and unconventional medicine, with little distinction from quackery.
Charles Robert Redford Jr. is an American actor and filmmaker. He has received numerous accolades such as an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and two Golden Globe Awards, as well as the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 1994, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award in 1996, the Academy Honorary Award in 2002, the Kennedy Center Honors in 2005, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2016, and the Honorary César in 2019. He was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2014.
Magnetic therapy is a pseudoscientific alternative medicine practice involving the weak static magnetic field produced by a permanent magnet which is placed on the body. It is similar to the alternative medicine practice of electromagnetic therapy, which uses a magnetic field generated by an electrically powered device. Magnet therapy products may include wristbands, jewelry, blankets, and wraps that have magnets incorporated into them.
Charles III is King of the United Kingdom and the 14 other Commonwealth realms since 8 September 2022.
Harmony, in music, is the use of simultaneous pitches, or chords.
Simon Lehna Singh, is a British popular science author, theoretical and particle physicist. His written works include Fermat's Last Theorem, The Code Book, Big Bang, Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial and The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets. In 2012 Singh founded the Good Thinking Society, through which he created the website "Parallel" to help students learn mathematics.
BBC Radio Shropshire is the BBC's local radio station serving Shropshire.
The Coral are an English rock band, formed in 1996 in Hoylake on the Wirral Peninsula, Merseyside. The band emerged during the early 2000s. Their 2002 debut album The Coral, from which came the single "Dreaming of You", was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize and listed as the fourth best album of the year by NME. Their second album, Magic and Medicine (2003), produced four UK Top 20 singles, including "Pass It On". In 2008, after guitarist Bill Ryder-Jones left the band, they continued as a five-piece.
Edzard Ernst 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.
Anthony Juniper is a British campaigner, writer, sustainability adviser and environmentalist who served as Executive Director of Friends of the Earth, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. He was Vice Chair of Friends of the Earth International from 2000 to 2008.
The bibliography of Charles III, King of the United Kingdom and 14 other Commonwealth Realms, is a list of approximately three dozen works which the King has written, co-written, illustrated or narrated, and includes works for which he has written a foreword, introduction or preface.
Sir Ian McColl Kennedy is a British academic lawyer who has specialised in the law and ethics of health. He was appointed to chair the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority in 2009.
The Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health (FIH) was a charity run by King Charles III founded in 1993. The foundation promoted complementary and alternative medicine, preferring to use the term "integrated health", and lobbied for its inclusion in the National Health Service. The charity closed in 2010 after allegations of fraud and money laundering led to the arrest of a former official.
Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial is a 2008 book by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst. The book evaluates the scientific evidence for alternative medicines such as acupuncture, homeopathy, herbal medicine, and chiropractic, and briefly covers 36 other treatments. It finds that the scientific evidence for these alternative treatments is generally lacking. The authors concluded that homeopathy is merely a placebo.
The Sundance Film Festival is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with 423,234 combined in-person and online viewership in 2023. The festival takes place every January in Park City, Utah; Salt Lake City, Utah; and at Sundance Resort, and acts as a showcase for new work from American and international independent filmmakers. The festival consists of competitive sections for American and international dramatic and documentary films, both feature films and short films, and a group of out-of-competition sections, including NEXT, New Frontier, Spotlight, Midnight, Sundance Kids, From the Collection, Premieres, and Documentary Premieres. Many films premiering at Sundance have gone on to be nominated and win Oscars such as Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role.
The College of Medicine (CoM) is a United Kingdom-based organisation founded in October 2010 that grew out of The Prince's Foundation for Integrated Health after it was shut down due to accounting fraud. It is chaired by Michael Dixon, a former director of the Foundation. It promotes alternative medicine.
The Good Thinking Society is a nonprofit organisation promoting scientific scepticism established by Simon Singh in September 2012.
The Smallwood Report, officially entitled The Role of Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the NHS: An Investigation into the Potential Contribution of Mainstream Alternative Therapies to Healthcare in the UK, was a 2005 report promoting the use of so-called "alternative medicine" in Britain's taxpayer funded National Health Service, as a cost-effective and efficacious alternative to evidence-based medicine. The report was written by economist Christopher Smallwood, commissioned by Charles, Prince of Wales, and funded by disgraced Tory politician Dame Shirley Porter. The report recommended that a number of treatments be made available on the NHS, including acupuncture, homoeopathy, manipulation therapies and herbal remedies. Graeme Catto wrote the introduction. Smallwood is an economist with no background in healthcare.
Edzard may refer to:
Ian Skelly is a British writer, continuity announcer and BBC radio presenter. Born in Manchester, he grew up in West Lancashire and studied at Birmingham City University.