The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine: Revised Edition

by James Le Fanu MD

Overview

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 judicious examination of medicine in our times, which has won 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 century.
 

"[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

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780465058952
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	11/06/2012
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	608
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.70(d)
Age Range:	13 - 18 Years

About the Author

James Le Fanu, M.D., is a medical columnist for the Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph as well as a writer for the Times, the Spectator, and GQ.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements xv

Preface to the Revised Edition xvii

Introduction 1

A Lengthy Prologue: Twelve Definitive Moments

1 1941: Penicillin 13

2 1949: Cortisone 27

3 1950: Streptomycin, Smoking and Sir Austin Bradford Hill 40

4 1952: Chlorpromazine and the Revolution in Psychiatry 74

5 1952: The Copenhagen Polio Epidemic and the Birth of Intensive Care 84

6 1955: Open-Heart Surgery - The Last Frontier 96

7 1961: New Hips for Old 120

8 1963: Transplanting Kidneys 131

9 1964: The Triumph of Prevention - The Case of Strokes 147

10 1971: Curing Childhood Cancer 157

11 1978: The First 'Test-Tube' Baby 179

12 1984: Helicobacter - The Cause of Peptic Ulcer 202

Part I The Rise

1 Medicine's Big Bang 215

2 Clinical Science: A New Ideology for Medicine 223

3 A Cornucopia of New Drugs 234

4 Technology's Triumphs 248

5 The Mysteries of Biology 263

Part II The End of the Age of Optimism

1 The Revolution Falters 275

2 The Dearth of New Drugs 281

3 Technology's Failings 288

4 The Clinical Scientist as an Endangered Species 300

Part III The Fall

1 The Brave New World of The New Genetics

i The Beginning 311

ii Genetic Engineering 325

iii The New Eugenics 333

iv Gene Therapy 339

v The End 345

2 Seduced by The Social Theory

i The Beginning 351

ii The Rise and Fall of Heart Disease 361

iii Beyond Tobacco: Sir Richard Doll and the 'Causes' of Cancer 383

iv Environmental Alarums 389

v The End 396

3 The Unsolved Problem: The Mysteries of Biology Revisited 406

Part IV The Rise and Fall: Causes and Consequences

1 Learning from the Past 417

2 Looking to the Future 428

Epilogue to the Revised Edition

Epilogue 437

Introduction: Ten Years On 439

1 Doing More 443

2 The New Genetics Triumphant - or Not 454

3 Big Pharma Rules 465

4 The Next Ten Years 490

Appendix I Rheumatology 497

Appendix II The Pharmacological Revolution in Psychiatry 503

References 515

Index 577