Dr. Donsbach Tells You What You Always Wanted to Know about Prostate
Dr. Donsbach Tells You What You Always Wanted to Know about Prostate front cover
By Dr. Kurt Donsbach
Published in 1983 by The International Institute of Natural Health Sciences, Inc.
I know I am different from most people, but the first thing I wondered when I read this book’s title was whether I could trust a book with such a grammatically awkward title. (I can’t.) Actually, that was the second thing I wondered. The first thing I wondered was if (and how) the book would handle the delicate discussion of the simple joys of having a finger up your ass. As much as I might like to claim otherwise, I honestly was not terribly surprised that the book did not discuss the joy of manual stimulation of the prostrate with a finger or other object. I would have been more surprised if it had, and you could have knocked me over with a feather if it had delved into the obscure subject of prostate milking.
Thanks to the fine folks at quackwatch.org, I was able to learn everything I wanted to know about the storied career of Dr. Donsbach. I personally am quite skeptical of alternative medicine, but even alternative medicine’s advocates would be well advised to be suspicious of the likes of Dr. Donsbach.
Even if I wasn’t able to read the quackwatch.org article, it takes little time for even a layperson like me to determine that Dr. Donsbach’s medical advice isn’t to be trusted as he devotes the book’s first half to outlandish and unsupportable claims about the restorative properties of nutrition as it relates to prostate health.
The most entertaining portion of this book is Dr. Donsbach’s “Liver-Kidney-Bowel Cleansing Fast.” Unless you enjoy scat play, I can’t imagine that anyone would ever attempt to follow this particular program.
Even though absolutely nothing in this book seems factually reliable, I did enjoy it thoroughly. However, it was the same sense of enjoyment that I derive from driving by a car wreck.
As a fellow kinkster, I was really excited to read your blog until I came upon this post where you referenced quackwatch.org. Surely you must know that Dr. Steven Barrett never passed the board examinations to practice psychiatry (which, even if he had, it doesn’t make him the expert on many other medical fields that he claims to be).
At 23 years old, I was bedridden with 63 mysterious autoimmune symptoms and gave myself a year to find what was wrong or I was going to commit suicide because I was in so much misery. Well, I found Dr. Andrew Hall Cutler (PhD, Chemistry, Princeton University, 1985) and he claimed that he had fallen ill from mercury poisoning due to the release of mercury vapor from his dental amalgams. Well, he described all my symptoms in detail, including very strange ones like narrowing peripheral vision, stuttering, numbness in my toes, and sore throat. He had used his expertise in chemistry to quantify how much mercury was released from his fillings and after he had them removed, he used chelation drugs and was able to determine how much mercury was being excreted from his body. I used his methods and within a year I was almost completely recovered. People like Dr. Barrett attempt to discredit people like Dr. Cutler, despite Cutler’s credentials, experience, and scientific methods.
I’m not a conspiracy theorist, I am an advocate for the freedom to decide how to pursue my own healthcare. I’m disappointed that you would condone the actions of someone like Dr. Barrett.
Ashley,
I’m sorry to hear that my reference to quackwatch.org in my review of Dr. Donsbach’s work was enough to sully your opinion of the entire site.
To be frank, I didn’t know a great deal about Dr. Barrett when I wrote the original review. As I recall, his article on Dr. Donsbach seemed credible at the time I read it. After reading your comment, I did a bit more digging into Dr. Barrett’s practice and work. While I did discover a few links that reference your claim that he was not a qualified psychiatrist, none of these were listed in sources I would deem credible (newspapers, professional journals, etc). Instead the references I found were to alternative medicine forums and chiropractic websites which seemed of dubious value as sources. As nearly as I can tell, Dr. Barrett is a well regarded researcher and critic of alternative medicine practices of dubious quality.
That said I have no particular vested interest in his qualifications. Even if I assume that Dr. Barrett is completely lacks credibility, it does nothing to alter my impression of Dr. Donsbach (the author of the book I reviewed). The book itself was sufficient enough for me to conclude that Dr. Donsbach is unqualified to offer health advice.
In addition to researching Dr. Barrett, your comment made me research dental amalgams. While I am sorry to hear about your illness, my own research made me very skeptical that your illness was a physical response to dental work. The evidence supporting such a viewpoint seems scant. That you got better after taking chelation drugs does nothing to alter this impression. While it is possible that you suffered from an unknown illness that responded to chelation drugs, it is just as possible (from where I am standing) that said drugs had no effect on your illness and your recovery happened concurrent with you taking them. It is also possible that you had a psychosomatic illness and chelation drugs offered a psychosomatic cure. There are other possibilities as well, but I think you get the point.
At any rate, I’m not going to change my review to remove any of the references that bothered you. Sorry.
Todd