Follies And Fallacies In Medicine

The progress of science and the growth of knowledge, claim the authors, depend upon challenging accepted dogma and belief. Their purpose in this book is not to criticize medicine or those who practice it but to advocate the need for criticism in medicine. Doctors, they claim, can discover new ways and improve old ways to ease the human journey from cradle to grave--through rational inquiry, honest admission of ignorance, and by demystifying rituals. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

A fierce, honest, elegant and often hilarious debunking of the great fallacies that drive modern medicine. By the award-winning author of The Way We Die Now. Seamus O'Mahony writes about the illusion of progress, the notion that more and more diseases can be 'conquered' ad infinitum. He punctures the idiocy of consumerism, the idea that healthcare can be endlessly adapted to the wishes of individuals. He excoriates the claims of Big Science, the spending of vast sums on research follies like the Human Genome Project. And he highlights one of the most dangerous errors of industrialized medicine: an over-reliance on metrics, and a neglect of things that can't easily be measured, like compassion. 'A deeply fascinating and rousing book' Mail on Sunday. 'What makes this book a delightful, if unsettling read, is not just O'Mahony's scholarly and witty prose, but also his brutal honesty' The Times.

First edition published in 2002. Second edition published in 2008.