"The Cochrane Collaboration... rivals the Human Genome Project in its potential implications for modern medicine." - C. David Naylor, The Lancet"How can we have a rational health service if we don't know which of the things being done in it are useful and which are useless or possibly even harmful?" - Archie Cochrane, Effectiveness and Efficiency, 1972What's hocus-pocus and what really works?In the complex, ever-evolving realm of modern medicine, how can you even beg...

"Alan Cassels strips layers of expectation, hype, jargon, false-starts, and conflicts of interest off the medical screening mantra." —Nortin M. Hadler, author of Worried SickWhy wouldn't you want to be screened to see if you're at risk for cancer, heart disease, or another potentially lethal condition? After all, better safe than sorry. Right?Not so fast, says Alan Cassels. His Seeking Sickness takes us inside the world of medical screening,...

Cassels offers a novel perspective on the part played by ideology in international relations over the past two centuries. His treatment is not restricted to the familiar totalitarian ideologies of communism and nazism, but also includes conservatism, liberalism and nationalism. The focus and emphasis given to ideology in an historical survey of such broad scope make this book unusual, and even controversial.

From a nationally recognized expert, an exposé of the worst excesses of our zeal for medical testingGoing against the conventional wisdom reinforced by the medical establishment and Big Pharma that more screening is the best preventative medicine, Dr. Gilbert Welch builds a compelling counterargument that what we need are fewer, not more, diagnoses. Documenting the excesses of American medical practice that labels far too many of us as sick, Welch examines the soci...

**#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again.A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century**At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, sh...

Welcome to the world of sexed-up medicine, where patients have been turned into customers, and clinics and waiting rooms are jammed with healthy people, lured in to have their blood pressure taken and cholesterol, smear test, bowel or breast screening done. In the world of sexed-up medicine pharmaceutical companies gloss over research they don't like and charities often use dubious science and dodgy PR to 'raise awareness' of their disease, leaving a legacy of misinformation in their wake....

How do we know whether a particular drug, therapy or operation really works, and how well? How reliable is the evidence? Are clinical trials truly unbiased? And is current research focused on the real needs of patients? Such timely and pressing questions are raised and addressed in this probing enquiry into modern clinical research, with far-reaching implications for daily medical practice and patient care.Aimed at both patients and professionals, Testing Treatments builds a lively and tho...

We all feel uncomfortable about the role of profit in healthcare, we all have a vague notion that the global $600bn pharmaceutical industry is somehow evil and untrustworthy, but that sense rarely goes beyond a flaky, undifferentiated new age worldview. Bad Pharma puts real flesh on those bones, revealing the rigged evidence used by drug companies. Bad information means bad treatment decisions, which means patients suffer and die: there is no climactic moment of villainy, but drug...

**How genomics, big data, and digital technology are revolutionizing every aspect of medicine, from physical exams to drug prescriptions to organ transplants“The Creative Destruction of Medicine should be required reading by all physicians and in all medical schools. It is simply that good.” —Forbes**Technology dominates our lives, and personal genomics is revolutionizing biology. But despite the availability of technologies that can provide virtual, perso...

Longlisted for British Columbia's National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction 2018Dr. Danielle Martin sees the challenges in our health care system every day. As a family doctor and a hospital vice president, she observes how those deficiencies adversely affect patients. And as a health policy expert, she knows how to close those gaps. A passionate believer in the value of fairness that underpins the Canadian health care system, Dr. Martin is on a mission to improve me...

**The essential guide to how digital technology enables all of us to take charge of our health“Dr. Topol’s vision is compelling, combining an empowering view of technology with the recognition that medicine requires something more.”―Wall Street Journal**A trip to the doctor is almost a guarantee of misery: you make an appointment months in advance, wait for several hours when you arrive, talk to a doctor for fifteen minutes, then wait longer for lab tests, the resu...

Recent scientific breakthroughs—demonstrating that mind body strategies can actually “switch off” or “switch on” gene activity associated with health and disease—have triggered a mind body revolution in the medical world.In the 1970s, Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School ushered in a new era of understanding in the field of mind body medicine. Coining the term “relaxation response,” Dr. Benson identified the body’s physiologic reaction that is the exact opp...