The achievements of medicine since World War II rank as one of the most sustained triumphs of human endeavour since the Renaissance. So dramatic and profound has been the assault on disease that it is now difficult to imagine the world of just half a century ago when there were no drugs for most killer diseases. These achievements have had a profoundly beneficial affect on people's lives as well as being a liberating force, freeing them from the fear of illness or untimely death, permitting most of them for the first time in human history to live out their natural lifespans, and significantly ameliorating the chronic disabilities associated with ageing. This book argues, however, that whilst the scope of medicine is immeasurably greater than it was, the optimism generated by its advances seems to have evaporated: medicine is doing better but feeling worse. The author presents a wide-ranging appraisal of the science, philosophy and politics of modern medicine.

The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine

James Le Fanu

Little,Brown & Co

Eat Your Heart Out: The Fallacy of the Healthy Diet

Pan/Macmillan

In the years following World War II, medicine won major battles against smallpox, diphtheria, and polio. In the same period it also produced treatments to control the progress of Parkinson's, rheumatoid arthritis, and schizophrenia. It made realities of open-heart surgery, organ transplants, test-tube babies. Unquestionably, the medical accomplishments of the postwar years stand at the forefront of human endeavor, yet progress in recent decades has slowed nearly to a halt. In this winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, medical doctor and columnist James Le Fanu both surveys the glories of medicine in the postwar years and analyzes the factors that for the past twenty-five years have increasingly widened the gulf between achievement and advancement: the social theories of medicine, ethical issues, and political debates over health care that have hobbled the development of vaccines and discovery of new "miracle" cures. While fully demonstrating the extraordinary progress effected by medical research in the latter half of the twentieth century, Le Fanu also identifies the perils that confront medicine in the twenty-first. 16 pages of black-and-white photographs add to what the Los Angeles Times cited as "a sobering, contrarian challenge" to the "nostrum of medicine as a never-ending font of ‘miracle cures'." "[From] a respected science writer ... important information that ... has been overlooked or ignored by many physicians." —New Republic "Provocative and engrossing and informative." —Houston Chronicle "Marvelously written, meticulously researched ... one of the most thought-provoking and important works to appear in recent years." —Choice

Medical Books

Administration & Medicine Economics

Basic Books

Libro usado en buenas condiciones, por su antiguedad podria contener señales normales de uso

Health, Lifestyle and Environment: Countering the Panic

Aaron, Wildavsky

Peter Berger

Robert, Browning

Petr Skrabanek

Peter Finch

Raymond Johnstone

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Social Affairs Unit

The 'Daily Telegraph' Family Encyclopedia of Medicine and Health

Reference

Encyclopedias & Subject Guides

Robinson Publishing

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Books by James Le Fanu