The Rise And Fall Of Modern Medicine [Paperback]

Take this book on holiday--it's a gripping story full of drama and suspense, heroes and villains and, despite charting dark periods when evil triumphed over virtue, has an optimistic message at the end. James Le Fanu has an enviable talent for making medical history fascinating and has produced a story about medicine's rise and fall since the Second World War that will surprise, intrigue and shock you. He claims that in a period of intense innovation between 1940 and 1970 medicine conquered all the major chronic diseases affecting the very young and the very old. With only the much rarer conditions that effect very small numbers of the population in middle life left to address, the revolution dramatically slowed down and innovation almost came to a halt.

Medicine looked subsequently for new frontiers but went up blind alleys, "The New Genetics" and "The Social Theory" of disease. Neither of these new "paradigms" have produced the same level of innovation and are responsible in part for bringing medicine into disrepute.

Despite enormous levels of funding, understanding the "code of life" has not produced any major therapeutic pay-offs, because genetically caused diseases--with only a few exceptions--are rare; genetic engineering and screening proved largely fruitless and genetic therapy made little impact. Theories that social behaviour causes disease, however, has not just been shown to be invalid but has also caused an epidemic itself of health hysteria amongst the well and resulted in blaming the sick for contracting their disease. He regards social theories such as the false idea that high- fat diets cause heart attacks as intellectual scandals that should be apologised for.

Perhaps his most controversial suggestion is that all university epidemiological departments should be closed down in order to prevent any further misinformation from being produced. But Fanu offers criticism of as well as praise for clinical practitioners, and scientists too. He suggests that doctors need to start listening to patients again and interpreting histories instead of ordering barrages of tests if they want medicine to regain respect. And clinical science needs to start trying to discover the biological transmissible agents of the diseases of middle-life if it is to awaken to a new dawn of innovation in the future. --Dorothy Porter --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Stand by for a brilliant read ... will send your heart palpitating and your blood pressure rising from the start (DAILY MAIL )

Has the great knack of making even the most complex technical developments exciting and intelligible (OBSERVER )

A major achievement (THE TABLET )

Epic and entertaining. (THE LANCET )

'Stand by for a brilliant read ... will send your heart palpitating and your blood pressure rising from the start'

'Has the great knack of making even the most complex technical developments exciting and intelligible'

'Well written, fascinating and informative'

* A fascinating survey of the key moments of post-war medical discovery

* Concludes with a genuinely original commentary on the state of medicine today

The achievements of medicine in the post-war period rank as one of the most sustained epochs of human endeavour since the Renaissance. So dramatic and profound has been the assault on disease that it is now almost impossible to imagine the world of just fifty years ago when there were no drugs for most killer diseases. These achievements have had a profoundly beneficial effect on people's lives as well as being a liberating force, freeing them from the fear of illness or untimely death, permitting them for the first time in human history to live out their natural lifespans, while significantly ameliorating the chronic disabilities associated with ageing. The scope of medicine is immeasurably greater than it was fifty years ago, but the optimism generated by those achievements seems to have evaporated. Medicine is doing better but feeling worse.

THE RISE AND FALL OF MODERN MEDICINE presents for the first time a comprehensive and searching appraisal of the science, philosophy and politics of modern medicine.

National Newspaper Reviews
"We fret over our health more than ever before despite the fact that, for the first time in all human history, most of us can expect to live longer than the biblical span" Dr James Le Fanu's book addresses the discontent among doctors and why, in spite of the triumphs of modern medicine, patients are resorting to alternative practitioners. Medical science has become subject to a law of diminishing returns: each incremental benefit to health being bought at even greater cost. "It is these paradoxes and problems that Dr Le Fanu addresses inhis well written, fascinating and informative book, which should be read by anyone with an interest in contemporary medicine, writes Anthony Daniels in the SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (6 June)." "everyone will finish this book knowing much that he did not know before, and stimulated into thought about the future of medicine. At the very least, the reader will have a more realistic appreciation of the powers and limitations of medicine: and in an age of hysteria about the subject, that is no mean achievement." From the OBSERVER/ Roy Porter writes "Dr James Le Fanu writes with clarity and authority, and has the great knack of making even the most complex technical developments in immunology or embryology exciting and intelligible." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

James Le Fanu is a GP in South London, who writes a weekly medical column for both the SUNDAY and DAILY TELEGRAPHs and regular features for THE TIMES.