An eye-opening look at how the American medical industry’s rigidity has stunted its reliability.
The misguided prevalence of “gut feeling” in medical dogma.
In his follow-up to The Price We Pay (2019), Makary, a public health researcher and professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, elaborates on the enduring misconceptions plaguing modern medicine in terms of research breakthroughs that have been largely underappreciated, overlooked, or simply ignored in a clinical setting. He cites several recent studies to bolster his position, such as a 16,608-woman study on menopausal hormone replacement therapy concluding that it causes breast cancer development. Despite the lack of evidentiary support for this conclusion, the study’s authors continue to tout it to clinicians while overlooking HRT’s considerable benefits. The overuse of prescribed antibiotics for infections is juxtaposed against research citing the microbiome imbalance they cause by obliterating beneficial bacterium. Makary also discusses the medical groupthink about dietary cholesterol, ovarian cancer, silicone breast implants, and complicated childbirths, among others. Presenting a fascinating study on peanut anaphylaxis, Makary rails against the American Academy of Pediatrics’ recommendation that children avoid the nuts altogether instead of considering research indicating that reintroducing small doses of peanuts (in conjunction with powerful immune suppressants) can actually prove curative. He pauses midway through the book to lucidly examine how the mechanisms of the human mind naturally resist innovative ideas and approaches. As a public health advocate, Makary is simultaneously dazzled by the sophistication of modern medicine and alarmed by the medical industry’s stubborn reluctance to adapt and evolve in the midst of supportive research meant to challenge interventional therapies and procedures. The author’s critical eye is well suited to this clinically sound report appealing for closer scrutiny and a redesigning of the medical establishment, and he coaches readers with or without clinical expertise to “ask for the underlying evidence or rationale to support a health recommendation.”
An eye-opening look at how the American medical industry’s rigidity has stunted its reliability.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2024
ISBN: 9781639735310
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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